The 1949 Chevrolet Pickup Truck
Anyone remember those? I do. As a teenager, they were pretty popular among both the old folks and the teens, for different reasons. The old folks had them because they still ran very well, did all the tasks assigned to them, and it meant they didn't have to go into debt for another vehicle. They used them for everything including hauling a truck-bed full of kids to church on Sunday down dusty Arkansas backroads.
The teenagers liked them because it was likely the first vehicle they learned to drive in. Around here, they might have been 10 or 11 years old when they first started driving one out on the farm, so they were pretty skilled by the time they were old enough to drive to town on a Saturday night.
My particular memory is of one Halloween when I was about 16 years old. A bunch of us teens got together on the Kroger's parking lot and decided to all ride around in my then-boyfriend's fathers 1949 Chevy pickup. When I say a bunch, I mean there were 27 of us. We managed to squeeze 4 in the narrow front seat, and the rest sat back in the bed of the truck.
Are you aware that so many teen bodies in the bed of a truck will actually make the front end come off the ground when you give it the gas? We weren't either till it happened. So, when that was discovered of course it had to happen often.
We got pulled over by one of the two local law enforcement officers. Why? Not because of no seat belts. Not even because of so many people nor because they were in the bed of the truck. But because he suspected we'd sudsed the fountain in front of the bank. We hadn't and told him so. He turned us loose. No ticket. Just a warning to "Y'all be careful."
Nothing like that could happen today. No one was hurt. No one committed a violent crime. (Stupidity really isn't a crime.) By midnight, every one of us was again safely at home.
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posted by Ann crum @ 1:59 PM
2 Comments:
My Papaw used to have a truck very similar to that one, only his was black and maybe a 50s model. He had it up until I was about 5 years old, and that was in 1975. He turned it over to my Dad and told him that was to be MY first vehicle. Dad sold it a few years later, and Papaw was NOT happy.
Isn't it amazing, we had many more freedoms in times past, at least where riding around in cars was concerned, and the small-town roads, at least, seemed a lot safer?
I live in a town now where a father takes his son and some other kids home, and they ride in the bed of his pickup....extremely illegal, but at the same time, I am glad the kids are getting to experience that. I just think it should be relegated to the backroads instead of the main highway, which is full of people who can't drive and don't care.
One of my friends had a truck just like that. He called it Charity. It worked well, could be tuned at home, had no smog or air conditioning, and ran on "regular." Gasoline was 29.9 cents per gallon.
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