The first vehicle I bought new was a black 1984 Ford F150 pickup. If I remember correctly, I paid around $8,000 for it. There was nothing special about it, but it seemed like a big deal at the time. In those days, it seemed like every household had a pickup. I don’t know that I ever really needed one. From a financial standpoint, it would probably be cheaper to rent one when I needed it. Perhaps it’s just holding on to something from the past, but it just seems like a man ought to have a truck.
There was undoubtedly a time when a truck was necessary for farming families. If you only had one vehicle, it was probably a truck. But as we’ve developed away from an agricultural society, the pickup has remained. Why is that?
There was no kindergarten in the public schools when I was growing up. Gene Morris and I attended kindergarten together at the Methodist church in McDonough, and I can remember coming home in the back of a pickup. The prime seats were on the wheel wells, where you could look through the windshields and see up ahead, but you also got the wind in your face like you were on an amusement park ride. It was very common to see children in the backs of pickups in those days.
If you wanted to get an argument going, one of the easiest ways was to start talking about who made the best truck, Ford or Chevy. I think we had both at one time or another. Most people had one or the other. One exception was Mr. Billy Morris. He had a Dodge. Someone asked him why he had a Dodge, and he said it was because he had a sense of adventure – not ever knowing if his truck was going to start or not. He had one incident with it where Dodge would not fix something, and there was some dispute about it. He had his tailgate painted to say “This Dodge is not dependable” or something along those lines. I think they came to some settlement, and he removed the tailgate later.
The pickup just seems to stir up memories of good times. I can remember the smell of Papa’s (my paternal grandfather’s) truck. He had an F150 with a Leer camper shell on it. If you opened it, you were greeted with the smell of those rubber worms that we used to go bass fishing. That smell still makes me think of him and the trips I took with him to Lake Erma. As I think I’ve written about before, I can remember sleeping in the back of daddy’s F150 between runs to check our lines when setting hooks. I can remember laying in the the bed of my truck with my kids watching a meteor shower – seeing an occasional shooting star, but mostly just being together. I suppose keeping my truck around is illogical, but I think I’ll hold onto it a while longer.