Vehicle defines the man (sadly)

Originally published March 5, 1998 in the Mountain News, Lake Arrowhead, Calif.

I enjoy being married. Love doing the dad thing. Take pride in the little projects I
complete around the home. Into the domestic thing as a whole.

But I am not a van guy, a man who drives a mini-van as his primary mode of transportation.

For the past decade I’ve been a truck guy. Love my truck. Love the freedom it affords me. Love seeing a perfectly good concrete block on the side of the road, pulling over and throwing it in the back in case I need it some day.

You cannot – cannot – just leave a concrete block, a rusty piece of cable or any other such roadside treasure in the back of a mini-van. It isn’t right.

Trucks give you a sense of power, even when you’re not behind the wheel. People are
always calling up a truck owner to borrow his vehicle.

“Hi, Clem?”
“Yep.”

“This is Roscoe. Say, could I borrow your truck this weekend?”
“What fer?”

“Fer about three or four hours.”
“Okey-dokey.”

Rarely does someone call up a friend to ask to borrow his minivan. Instead, the van
owner is the one doing the calling.

Plus, a pickup truck allows you to act like you’re still a young man on the prowl – or
maybe just like a a little boy with an $18,000 toy.

So it’s with a bit of a fight that I’ve agreed to sell my truck and get a sports utility
vehicle of some sort instead. And we’ve been going round and round to decide
who’s going to drive it and who gets the mini-van.

A mini-van is the vehicle of someone whose wild days are behind him. Way behind
him. You aren’t sowing any wild oats in a Mazda MPV or Dodge Caravan. You are
hauling a lot of grocieries, kids and pets, though.

Does anyone cool drive a mini-van? I don’t mean nice. I mean cool…like James Dean. Burt Reynolds drove a Trans-Am in “Smokey and the Bandit.” Steve McQueen piloted a Mustang in
“Bullitt.” Charles Grodin and Alan Alda drive mini-vans. Even that nebbish Woody Allen avoids them by taking cabs or the subway everywhere in New York City.

What is behind man’s fascination with trucks? Texas honky tonk singer Jerry Jeff Walker
summed it up perfectly in “The Pickup Truck Song,” which details the simple
pleasures of owning such a vehicle:

Yea, I used to look forward to Saturdays
When me and my grandpa’d get away
We’d hop in his pickup truck
And we’d go to town

We had a couple chores that we had to do
It didn’t take long before we were through
Then we’d just let the pickup truck just wander around

We’d make a run to the county dump
We’d always wave when we saw someone
Grandpa’d make up a song as we rolled along

To the post office without fail
We’d get some feed and we’d check out the mail
And we never took the same road twice on the way back home

If you let a mini-van wander around, you’d end up at a PTA meeting. In a mini-van, you always take the same road on the way back home. It’s required in the owner’s manual.

But, we’re mature and have reached a compromise. I’ll take the van Mondays, Tuesdays
and Wednesdays, but I get the new vehicle the other days, when I’m more likely to be seen around town. I've got a rep to uphold.