I took an interest in trucks when I was 15. I had two friends, Justin and Matt, who were both one year older than me and already had their drivers license and their trucks. They both had Ford Rangers. I didn’t want one of those, cause they already had them. Plus, I had read they were cumbersome to work on. I-beams and stuff and I wanted to bag it. Also, I had always been told that Fords were a bit clunky. My dad had always had a Chevy and so did my Grandpa, although he would later deal away his black 1985 Chevrolet C10 for a modernized Dodge Ram extended cab.

He once took my brother with him on a trek to North Carolina to see my cousin Ryan, and his family, in that new Dodge. To those who may be concerned and have read some of my prose, he is not one of my stupid cousins.

To make my point about this road trip, my grandpa brought a handgun with him that sat perched in the glovebox, and a case of Keystone light in a cooler, one of which at all times found a permanent, favorable home in the center cup holder throughout the trip. I’m certain this violated the 2^nd amendment and the 21^st. But who knows. I’m not a pro on those laws and I don’t care enough to Google it. If Google had been available to my grandpa, he wouldn’t care, either. So what if he was drinking a beer and holding a gun through the mountains of the Carolinas. My only qualm is that it was a Keystone Light. Get an Old Style or Bud for Christ’s sake.

Back to my first truck. My dad gave it to me. It was a 1987 Chevy S-10. The motor was a 2.5 liter 4 cylinder with a 4-speed manual transmission. A sharp contrast from the 6-speed that today’s 16 year olds lark about the neighborhood in. That old 4-banger went uphill both ways, topping out at around 70mph at its upper limit of liveliness, and maybe had 80 horsepower under the hood. Not much more than Henry Ford’s original flivver that he made in 1908. The thing was a damn good truck. Didn’t go very fast and probably couldn’t outrun a school bus, but it could burn through a set of tires like nobody’s business. You’d think the Chevy was on fire because of the smoke that hung in the air well after I had popped the clutch and transferred my foot to the break while my other foot punched the gas to the floor. The concern of fire may have also been from the sound the truck was making as I sent the RPMs of the little motor to another dimension. I had my buddy’s dad perform some exhaust work on it. Straight pipes screaming like a weed eater on human growth hormone. The engine going mad like Hannibal Lector, eating pavement and throwing rubber on the ground like a sheet of flesh over the face of a psycho. That machine is probably still running somewhere. Who knows. The 2.5 liter 4 cylinder known as The Iron Duke and The Tech IV was the best motor GM ever produced. To this day, I tell ya! 150.8 cubic inches of control and dominance all under the hood of my first truck.

I also had the truck painted. The truck was originally solid black, but it had some rust above the fenders and the black was a little faded. So I had a new coat of black sprayed over the entire truck. To top the aesthetics of the machine off, I had two red racing stripes painted down the top of the entire truck like a super sport ’69 Chevelle. Like Superman’s cape, what better way to achieve the yielding power of The Iron Duke than with red racing stripes. I already had straight pipe exhaust on the thing, and dual pipes chrome-tipped out the back. If you saw the truck in a parking lot, you’d think it had a 350ci under the hood. What an embarrassing site it was when the ignition signaled the motor to begin its combustion and all you heard was an angry squirrel stuck in a trap.

I’ve had a number of vehicles since then, but that 87 S-10 was the best truck I ever had. Give me a cigarette, a thermos filled with Maxwell House, a honey bun, and a cassette converter that’ll let me play Joe Diffie’s John Deere Green over my phone through the dry-rotted 4×6 dash speakers. I’d drive it forever.