I Never Met a Three-Quarter-Ton Pickup Truck I Liked: (Will Rogers would've said this if he'd ever met one)

« ^ I Never Met a Three-Quarter-Ton Pickup Truck I Liked (Will Rogers would've said this if he'd ever met one) Wayne Hogan It's always been my understanding of Before going any further let me say human nature that southerners, above all, right off that I'm really quite a tolerant are downright born to love pickup sort of guy. I can stand kites real good, trucks. But I'm a southerner ana I hate And crickets'n frogs'n bats'n gray tufted pickup trucks. I've always wondered titmice. Stray dogs, some, cats a little why. less. Can even abide a flea now and 50 then. But what I can't stand, what I loathe to the very bottom of my being, is a three-quarter-ton pickup truck. I can barely stand to look at one and feel my blood pressure rising way high just thinking of them. "Why do you hate pickup trucks so, being a southerner and all? I've often asked myself. My uncle had a blue '38 Ford pickup truck, once. It was the family's only means of transportation back in Oklahoma, not that we ever went any place much, and when we did my uncle never under any circumstances drove faster'? 30 miles an hour. Not even fast enough to stir up dust on the red dirt road we lived on. Surely, though, none ofthis could cause me later on in life to hate three-quarter-ton pickup trucks! The cause, I've thought, must surely lie elsewhere. It's become a real puzzlement. My many years in the sociology business, while not entirely a total waste in the matter, haven't been all that helpful, either. What they've done is leave me with the vague sense that there're reasons for everything if only we can divine them; that God does not shoot craps. Another thing I picked up from sociology after studying it all those years is that we are what we read. This nearly uniquely sociological insight was arrived at long before that unlicensed dietitian out in southern California (as I understand it) came up with the "you are what you eat" craze, certainly before the "you are what you carry" saying was ever heard of. Be all that as it may, as one formerly schooled in the labyrinthian intricacies of sociology, my thoughts naturally turned to some of my past reading matter as maybe sources of insight into why I hate pickup trucks so. Maybe it was John Steinbeck that did it, him and his story of that Joad family's misadventures in the '30s fleeing the swirling Oklahoma dust in, as I remember it, a black three-quarter-ton pickup truck, bound for California glory. Or maybe it was The Red Badge of Courage. Don't know why but I've always half-felt that the story Crane was really trying to write was one about a gutsy-pushy little red three-quarter-ton pickup truck. Possibly not. Maybe my gut-wrenching aversion to pickup trucks is tied somehow to Kafka's Trial, I've once or twice speculated to myself, the closed-in cab ofthe pickup and its open cargo bed being parallels, somehow, to his entire life's work. Even Ferber's So Big has occasionally sprung to mind (wasn't there a pickup truck or two in. there somewhere, to haul those beautiful cabbages?). The Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment became, if but for the briefest moment, a possibility, though try as I have on further reflection, I can't point to a single thing about this epic story that's even remotely suggestive of a three-quarter-ton pickup truck. In desperation I've even considered going far afield from my parent discipline of sociology to venture into psychology for the answers I seek. This course, I knew full well, would instantly take me to such foreboding places as thumb-sucking, security blankets, and, possibly, bed-wetting, but if, I reasoned, it would help I'd gladly go. So far I've held off taking this radical step, though, ultimately not being able, just yet, to face the...