After living in New York City for neigh on two years now, I am beginning to miss strange things in The Great State of Alabama.
Sure, everybody misses grits, sweat tea, houses with columns, and beguiling Southern women when they first leave Dixie. But I’m getting worried about my mental health–I’m finding myself pining away for red ants, kudzu, and tractor pulls.
Yesterday, I wistfully longed to see a pickup truck. Now, I’ve never owned a pickup truck. I’ve never seen a pickup in New York. And I don’t know whether this means Yankees are sissified or more practical.
I asked my Yankee friend, Marvin Bagelbottom, to go to a dealership with me so we could look at a pickup truck. I won’t tell you which dealership because if it’s not the brand you drive, you probably wouldn’t ever read this column again. That’s how serious pickup truck owners can be.
Anyway, after about 30 minutes of looking at polished chrome and steel that would put a ’59 Eldorado to shame, Marvin asked me what a pickup was good for. He pointed out that pickup trucks aren’t much use in hauling cargo–even on paved roads since pickups are front-end heavy, tend to get stuck in mud, spin out on pine straw, flip like tiddlywinks, and the cargo is exposed to the elements and theft.
“Well Marvin, that is just another ignorant Yankee statement that is typical of Northern-liberal condescension,” I said. I usually say something like that when I have no other argument to offer.
I thought back to the pickups of my childhood: real pickups. Real pickups don’t cost $25,000. They don’t come with four doors, running lights, chrome bumpers, CD players, “big gulp” cup holders, or bed liners. Real pickups don’t travel in a straight line without considerable effort from the driver. Real pickups don’t move faster than 47 mph unless they are loaded up with watermelons, bricks, manure, or scary-looking children. Real pickups don’t need sissy gadgets like, oh, windshield wipers, turn signals, floorboards, bumpers, headlights, horns, or spare tires. Real pickups only come in one color: primer. They do not sport bumper stickers that promote environmentalism, communism, or any other “ism” for that matter.
Real pickups do need great quantities of oil to travel small distances. They need gun racks to hold umbrellas. They need pieces of string, coat hangers, duct tape, and rust to run right. They need elbows sticking out broken windows to bump down dirt roads. Pickup trucks need good ol’ boys to drive ’em. Pickup trucks need nasty slobbering dogs to chase them. Real pickups drive better with McDonald’s wrappers on the dashboard and assorted boat equipment, Yoohoo bottles, cement blocks (often referred to by the pickup operator as the “emergency brake” or “cruise control”), and spent shotgun shells rolling around in the bed. An appropriate bumper-sticker on a pickup truck, provided it has a bumper, would be “American by birth, Southerner by the Grace of God.”
I explained all of this to Marvin and the new-truck-Country-Cadillac dealer. They looked at me kinda funny for awhile and then shrugged. These were the same kind of folks who thought the “Ranchero” and the “El Camino” could replace pickups like Ford’s F-100 series or Chevy’s Scottsdale, Silverado, Bonanza, and GMC tags.
“HA!” I hollered, “I’ll bet you once drove a Volkswagon pickup, too.” Don’t worry about how ugly your truck is, Alabama. They’re better broken in.
—Morgan Murphy