So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[belfastboy]

Ever notice how the people who drive those jacked-up ferocious-looking, Off Road Vehicles are always the kind of characters who are least likely to go within ten feet of the woods at any time. And conversely, the real Mark Trail types always seem to drive around in old Volvo station wagons.

Well, you should visit out west where there are still wide open spaces where a person can hunt and fish without too much of a drive and those big trucks are for go not for show. What you say is perhaps true in the effete east but not out here in the west.

 

[tonyb]

Well, you should visit out west where there are still wide open spaces where a person can hunt and fish without too much of a drive and those big trucks are for go not for show. What you say is perhaps true in the effete east but not out here in the west.

Kinda depends on where in the West. And what sort of “truck.”

I recently rode in a double-cab 4WD truck with bells and whistles of all types familiar and of types I had never seen before. Leather upholstery, of course. Power everything. The MSRP on the thing was $90K. That’s not a typo.

Maybe a person in a position to buy a $90K truck wouldn’t hesitate to take the thing off road, bouncing off the trees and the rocks and the ocassional elk or moose or chipmunk or whatever. But I kinda doubt it.

The hoity-toity shopping mall I drive past almost daily has a parking garage well stocked with Range Rovers. Them babes don’t come cheap, neither.

But if you’re talking banged-up 30-plus-year-old 4WD pickups with cracked windshields and plow blades up front, that’s a whole nuther matter.

 

[belfastboy]

Kinda depends on where in the West. And what sort of “truck.”

I recently rode in a double-cab 4WD truck with bells and whistles of all types familiar and of types I had never seen before. Leather upholstery, of course. Power everything. The MSRP on the thing was $90K. That’s not a typo.

Maybe a person in a position to buy a $90K truck wouldn’t hesitate to take the thing off road, bouncing off the trees and the rocks and the ocassional elk or moose or chipmunk or whatever. But I kinda doubt it.

The hoity-toity shopping mall I drive past almost daily has a parking garage well stocked with Range Rovers. Them babes don’t come cheap, neither.

But if you’re talking banged-up 30-plus-year-old 4WD pickups with cracked windshields and plow blades up front, that’s a whole nuther matter.

Yep, for every rule, for every trend there is the exception. My comment was directly in response to the initial position on the correlation between big wheels and their usage. In my travels in the west these past few years I see a lot of big trucks, expensive trucks, that are well used and beat up. More of them than the Land Rovers in the mall parking lot with the bush guards.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The beater trucks you see around here are usually 1970s models used by lobstermen to haul their gear to the docks -- the beds are almost completely eaten thru by the salt water, and the trucks are always registered with Antique Auto plates so they don't have to pass inspection. And they never, ever have rubber testicles hanging from the trailer hitch.

When I was little, you'd occasionally see Model A Ford trucks used for such purposes -- the wooden beds actually held up better under such abuse than the newer metal ones did.

 

[Woodtroll]

Extended exposure to high levels of atmospheric lead has been proven to make people stupid, aggressive, and violent ...

That may be true, but the atmospheric lead has largely been removed from big cities, with no apparent improvement in behavior.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well now I wouldn't say that. I spent the better part of an entire day in New York this summer, walking the length and breadth of Harlem, and I never met anything but pleasant, helpful people who went out of their way help the weird white woman with the saddle shoes find her way to Convent Avenue. And then back down again to Lexington when the people I was supposed to meet weren't home.

By the way, Sugar Hill really is more of a small mountain, especially if you're going up it.

 

[tonyb]

Yep, for every rule, for every trend there is the exception. My comment was directly in response to the initial position on the correlation between big wheels and their usage. In my travels in the west these past few years I see a lot of big trucks, expensive trucks, that are well used and beat up. More of them than the Land Rovers in the mall parking lot with the bush guards.

You got your anecdotes, I got mine.

I’ve lived “out West” for more than half a century. I’ve never been to Maine. But I have my doubts that the run of Mainers are any more “effete” (to use your disparaging term) than your typical Westerner.

A more empirically supportable comparison might be between urban and rural rather than East or West.

Maybe we should consult some Newfies. That’s a ways east, ain’t it? I wonder how they might take to being called “effete.” Would they get a chuckle out of that? Or would they take it as fighting words?

 

[LizzieMaine]

We do get a few effete types here, but most of them don't survive the first winter. Although they say Oscar Wilde was a big hit with the lumberjacks when he came to Bangor on a speaking tour in the 1880s, so you can never tell.

I was referring more to the type of sad-eyed thirty-eight year old family man with three kids, a mortgage on a "starter house," a white collar job that he hates, a receding hairline, and a NO FEAR tattoo that he has to keep hidden, who subscribes to rock-climbing magazines and goes to rock-climbing movies in hopes that one day he might actually climb a rock, but never actually does because he just can't get the time off. They always seem to be climbing out of a nine-foot high pickup truck with illuminated running boards on their way into Hannaford's to get a box of Barefoot White, a family pack of Scottissue, and a scratch ticket. The Boys know their market, and I imagine they'll find such prospects in the shattered-dream neighborhoods of any town or city in any part of the country.

Not to say that there aren't actual sho' nuff cowboys out West who actually do drive the big wheels out on the range when they aren't ropin' dogies and drinking boiled coffee out of a rusty tin can. The only part of the west where I've actually spent any time is Southern California in the early 80s, where the only cowboys I saw were coming out of dance clubs, so I can't really be a judge of what goes on under the Big Skies.

 

[tonyb]

...

Not to say that there aren't actual sho' nuff cowboys out West who actually do drive the big wheels out on the range when they aren't ropin' dogies and drinking boiled coffee out of a rusty tin can. The only part of the west where I've actually spent any time is Southern California in the early 80s, where the only cowboys I saw were coming out of dance clubs, so I can't really be a judge of what goes on under the Big Skies.

I did ranch work during my late teens and early 20s. It's the kind of work suited to strapping young men -- it's hard, it's dirty, the hours are long and the money is short. It's a lousy job, really, but it beat washing dishes at the Riverside Inn.

I never once saw a lasso there. Footwear was more like what you'd see on warehousemen than Country/Western crooners. Few of us wore cowboy hats, although those cheap one-size-fits-some straw things with a green plastic visor incorporated into the front of the brim were much in evidence. (The hats cost maybe a couple bucks at the store in town.) There were horses, but the only ones really indispensable to the operation were a pair of Clydesdales that pulled a buckboard on runners to haul hay to the cattle during the winter. If I ever got astride a horse during my time there, I have no recollection of it.

But there were pickups. Lots of 'em, mostly aged, with old blankets where the upholstery used to be and wires dangling beneath the dash and floorboards worn shiny where they weren't rusted through. There were newer ones, of course, and in better condition. But none of the pickups, older and newer, went off road with any regularity. There were tractors and such for that.

 

[tonyb]

When I was little, you'd occasionally see Model A Ford trucks used for such purposes -- the wooden beds actually held up better under such abuse than the newer metal ones did.

Wooden floors on pickup truck beds were commonly available into the 1960s model years and were still seen on some models into the 1980s.

I don't see it much anymore, but it wasn't so many decades ago that I frequently saw wooden flatbeds and stake beds homebuilt on the frames of pickups.

 

[GHT]

I was referring more to the type of sad-eyed thirty-eight year old family man with three kids, a mortgage on a "starter house," a white collar job that he hates, a receding hairline, and a NO FEAR tattoo that he has to keep hidden, who subscribes to rock-climbing magazines and goes to rock-climbing movies in hopes that one day he might actually climb a rock, but never actually does because he just can't get the time off. They always seem to be climbing out of a nine-foot high pickup truck with illuminated running boards on their way into Hannaford's to get a box of Barefoot White, a family pack of Scottissue, and a scratch ticket. The Boys know their market, and I imagine they'll find such prospects in the shattered-dream neighborhoods of any town or city in any part of the country.

Great description, you should visit London, you would be in your element people watching. There's a snobbery class of people who reside in the Chelsea/Kensington area. Having a £3M house just doesn't cut it, sending your children to ballet classes in designer outfits, getting the kids into the top fee-paying schools, slavishly observing whatever the current diet fad is, the no carbs one was funny, they would order a burger and leave the bread on the plate. But the must have status symbol of these people is the huge, four wheel drive, Sherman Tank. As in the BMW X6, the Range Rover, the Audi 8 and a number of others, none of which you would get much change out of eighty grand. I don't know who it was that first coined the term for this type of car, but the name stuck so well that it's entered into the lexicon of Britspeak. They are known as Chelsea Tractors.

 

[tonyb]

…

But the must have status symbol of these people is the huge, four wheel drive, Sherman Tank. As in the BMW X6, the Range Rover, the Audi 8 and a number of others, none of which you would get much change out of eighty grand. I don't know who it was that first coined the term for this type of car, but the name stuck so well that it's entered into the lexicon of Britspeak. They are known as Chelsea Tractors.

"Cowboy Cadillac" was once a tongue-in-cheek reference to banged-up pickups. But in this modern era, when pickups might be as luxuriously appointed as any high-end sedan, that phrase is likely taking on other connotations.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And to think of my grandfather's 1935 Chevy pickup with the passenger's door held shut by a piece of greasy clothesline.

 

[tonyb]

The lovely missus has fond memories of riding with her grandfather in his early-'60s Ford pickup. I suspect we'll get a similar truck, one of these days, when the right deal comes along. It turns out that that basic body style, which was in production from the '61 through '66 model years, has quite the fan base, so the asking prices generally reflect that.

Fads come and go; the economy has its ups and downs. A person shopping for a '61 through '66 Ford pickup isn't looking for a vehicle to use AS A TRUCK so much as a toy. If s/he was looking for a work truck, far more serviceable examples could be had for far less money.

 

[BobHufford]

But none of the pickups, older and newer, went off road with any regularity. There were tractors and such for that.

Around here (rural SW Missouri) tractors are used for on-road transportation as well. I typically see one or two at WalMart when we get to town. Sorta like this area's version of a golf cart in a retirement community.

 

[GHT]

Around here (rural SW Missouri) tractors are used for on-road transportation as well. I typically see one or two at WalMart when we get to town. Sorta like this area's version of a golf cart in a retirement community.

View attachment 150994

At upmarket supermarkets you get upmarket tractors:

Have you ever wondered what the DB on Aston Martin cars stand for? David Brown, Tractor manufacturer.
The second one is a Lamborghini.

 

[Bushman]

20 years ago, when I was still a child, my town was much more rural than it is today. A lot of family farms around, and the sight of a tractor going down the road wasn't uncommon in the planting and harvesting months. Now, though, they're a much rarer sight as the family farms have been paved over to make way for the yuppies that moved from the city for better schools and more spacious backyards. And as rare as it is these daus to see a tractor rolling down the street, it never ceases to amuse me to see a yuppie raging stuck behind a tractor.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
Kinda like the folks who move to the country and complain that the dairy down the road smells like a dairy.

 

[vitanola]

I can go just about anywhere in a Ford Car that those ginks can go in their jacked up trucks.

 

[vitanola]

At upmarket supermarkets you get upmarket tractors:

Have you ever wondered what the DB on Aston Martin cars stand for? David Brown, Tractor manufacturer.
The second one is a Lamborghini.

Give me a Rumley any day.