Side Trail
THE EVOLUTION OF PICKUP TRUCKS
John Duncklee
I learned how to drive a motorized vehicle in an old International pickup truck that one old cowboy on the ranch referred to as a “binder”. A binder is a now an obsolete farm machine that makes its way pulled by a team of horses or mules through a field of grain. This resulting marvel from some engineer’s acute imagination cuts a swath of standing wheat, oats or barley and guides it all into the bowels of the machine where it is skillfully tied into bundles with binder twine and tossed out on the ground behind. The bundles are then shocked by hand and left to cure in the field until threshing time. But, that’s another story. I am talking about pick up trucks but I couldn’t resist describing a grain binder because there are few people around these days who have a clue about binders. Grain is now harvested by those monster combines that zip through the grain fields and vomit the kernels of grain into large truck beds. The old cowboy called my old International pickup truck a binder because International Harvester made binders.
As the years went by pickup trucks became fancier and fancier. Soon they had paint jobs with a variety of colors. No more did only black pickup bodies roam the ranches and farms. There were greens, blues, tans, but there were always some painted black. Tradition rules! The bodies with different designs and even small windows in the back corners of the cab delighted those in the market for a new pickup. It wasn’t long before drivers other than cowboys, ranchers and farmers began buying and using their pickups to shop or haul things.
The era of wannabe cowboys driving pickups while wearing sometimes outlandish cowboy hats became common sights, but mostly on city streets where the driver could be sure to be seen by their public.
Some automobile marketing genius must have had a lurid dream when he or she designed a pickup truck with seating space behind the driver. That design lengthened the passenger space and shortened the load bed. I suppose this was meant for the driver that didn’t really want to carry much of a load in his or her pickup truck, but wanted room for more passengers so that they could all feel like real cowboys.
Dual-wheeled pickup trucks became the popular rage, especially when fifth wheel RV’s entered the market. I once saw an old rancher at the wheel of his “dually” driving down the main street of town. He looked like an old little boy because the pickup truck was such a tall and wide vehicle. I parked nearby his destination just to see how big this rancher might be when standing outside his pickup. I was astonished to see a man over six feet tall step out of this shiny black motorized workhorse.
Because of my interest in the evolution of pickup trucks I followed an ultra shiny black pickup sporting the Cadillac emblem on its tailgate. I could believe my eyes that I was viewing a Cadillac pickup truck. What was this world coming to? Who in the name of the Devil would buy a Cadillac pickup truck much less drive it on public thoroughfares?
This precocious vehicle pulled into a gas station and stopped next to one of the pumps. I stopped nearby to watch. I wanted to see just what kind of a person would elect to buy and drive a Cadillac pickup truck.
A woman wearing tailored trousers topped with a colorful definitely art shirt and on her feet a pair of silver tipped cowboy boots bearing a new shine on the leather stepped forth swinging her arms that were each decked out with at least a dozen silver and turquoise bracelets. She sported a black felt cowboy hat with curled brims and a silver buckled hatband. She must have been happy that it was not a windy day. I couldn’t help think that before my eyes was a wannabe cowgirl who, in the future, would become a western dowager, most likely living in a mansion next to a golf course.
As I drove away shaking my head at what I had witnessed I tried my best to envision the Cadillac pickup truck bouncing over a two-tracked dirt road with a load of cottonseed meal to feed the cattle that had wandered in to the waterholes. Somehow that picture could not get projected on my screen. My imagination flashed to a museum of old farm machinery where the wannabe cowgirl stood next to a half rusted out International Harvester binder with her nose crinkled wondering what she was looking at.
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