Lee Pitts: It’s Genetic

 

I’ve researched why people drive the brand of pickup they do and I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s genetic. If both your father and your mother drove Fords you will too. This is called “being homozygous” for the Ford gene. If both your parents drove a Chevy or a GMC so will you. If one parent drove a Chevy and the other a Ford you probably drive a RAM. Having two parents with different truck genes means you are “heterozygous” or “trans”, which has nothing to do with the transmission. If somehow you drive a Toyota pickup yet both parents were homozygous for the Chevy gene, this is called a “mutation” or “mutant”. No offense.

I’ve loved trucks all my life. My old man was a long haul trucker and he never owned anything but a Kenworth, or KW as they’re known in the trade. If I were a trucker I’d drive a KW too because that’s what I learned to drive in. But I gotta admit I’ve seen a lot of Peterbilts and Mack trucks that made my heart go pitter-patter.

I also love fire trucks because both my grandpa and my great-grandpa were Fire Chiefs for decades on our volunteer fire department. I went with grandpa once to a trade show where he was looking to buy a new fire truck for our town. We looked at Peterbilts, Macks, Sutphens and Seagraves but it was the American LaFrance that grandpa and I settled on. (It had nothing to do with France. LaFrance was the last name of the founder.) I still collect fire truck ephemera and one of my unattained goals in life was to either have a six horse hitch of Clydesdales pulling a Concord stage, or an old fire truck I could drive in local parades and blare the siren. Both, no doubt, would stampede the Paso Fino riding group and terrorize the piccolo players in the band.

Today’s pickups are fabulous but my all time favorite is the 1952 Chevy. Preferably blue with baby moon hubcaps. It’s a step-side truck which made it easier to get in and out of the bed. This is a big deal for old geezers like me who need either a ladder or a forklift to get in the bed of today’s trucks...

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