My first dream car was not a car at all, it was a pickup truck, and it was the only dream car, or in this case, truck, that I’ve ever actually managed to own.

I’ve always liked pickup trucks. I’ll bet you never knew I was a pickup man. Pickups are awesome. Go anywhere, do anything. Ride high. Look cool. You never know how useful one is until you actually own one and you never realize how much you really used it until you no longer owned one.

My pickup was about as bare-bones as you could get, but that’s what I liked about it. ’93 Toyota Pickup, 4X4 deluxe, forest green. They were not called Tacoma’s back then, they were just ‘pickup trucks’. I don’t know why they called my model a ‘deluxe’, since the only option that it came with was a tach and intermittent wipers, but none of that mattered to me. I liked that everything was manual. Crank windows, single cab, sliding rear window, bench seat, no AC, manual locking hubs (totally bulletproof), 5 speed, and a really cool lever to switch between 2 wheel, 4 high and 4 low. Fuck those fancy buttons on the dashboard. A neat lever sticking out of the floor. That’s the way to go. Rough trail ahead? Lock the hubs and you’re ready. You can shift into 4-high on the fly. If things get really bumpy, stop, push in the clutch and go into 4-Low.

When that Toyota was in 4-low, it would crawl over practically anything. I got to some damn good fishing holes that way.

It came with an AM/FM radio in it, no cassette, no CD player. I pulled that out and put in a Clarion tape deck and some of those really big speakers that hide behind the seat. Throw in my CDB’s ‘Decade of Hits’ or Hank Jr’s ‘The Pressure is On’ and I was good to go, yo. Oh yeah, I was a full on redneck dude. Actually, I still am, kinda. I just don’t have my truck anymore.

I kept my truck pretty stock, I never lifted it or anything like that, except for an upgrade in the tires and rims department. 31 inch Goodyear Wranglers wrapped around some American Racing Gambler rims. Sweet. Add in a tonneau cover for the bed, a bug deflector, and sticker in the rear window that read, ‘Pretty Cool, Huh?’ and there you have it.

One of the best things about the Toyota was the ground clearance. You never had to worry about getting hung up on anything on the trail. Prior to the ‘Yota I owned a Chevy S-10 4X4. One day my friend, who had a Toyota, and I went fishing. The trail to get to the pond was pretty rutted with some big rocks and what not. Not impassable. You just had to take it slow. Well, when we came out of the woods at the end of the day, he washed off his truck and I took mine to the shop for a couple grand in front end repair. That’s when I decided Toyota was the way to go. That thing handled whatever you threw at it. Snow, mud, rocks, whatever. I remember it was really good in the snow. It would churn though all kinds of snow drifts and whatever kind of snow/ice barrier the plows left at the end of my drive-way during a storm.

Another one of the great things about a truck is all the stuff you can haul with it. Wood, stones, furniture, anything. When you’ve got a truck, there’s always somebody that needs to move something somewhere, something that’s too big for a car, and ‘hey can you help me out on Saturday to…’ haul/tow/move some thing or another.

And last but not least, the tail-gate. Where do you think the term ‘tail-gating’ came from anyway? A tail-gate is a great place to hang out and have a beer or two. You don’t even have to be at a football game to enjoy a quality tail-gate.

There’s just something women like about a pick-up man. Damn I miss that thing.

Ernie likes his trucks like he likes his women. Insert your own joke here

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