Dang, What on earth did I do without ya??

Every single one of us has had in our possession, something that has been really important to us, and for one reason or another it has slipped out of our fingers. Maybe it was a photograph of a lost love or a coin with a certain important date on it, or an article the we read and cut out cause we wanted to save it. That one thing we lost might be something very small, like a special Elk ivory that had been saved and handed down. It might also be something large, like a piece of land that you've left your imprint on for years only to see it sold to the highest bidder.

I can think of some things that I've lost in one way or another that I've thought about many times over the years. Things that were passed down to me and then through my negligence, are no longer with me. It really, honestly pains me to think of a couple of things, and I think of them often. Not because of their great monetary value, but simply because they were important to someone else before they were entrusted to me. I'll write more about these things another time. Right now I wanna concentrate on something different, something that is more of a feel good thing, and I wanna feel good.

Do you know what it is like for an Elk Hunter to be without his pickup truck? It's really weird I tell ya! I've been the owner of many a pickup truck. Yep I've had big ones, little ones, medium sized ones, foreign ones, domestic ones, good lookin' ones and not so good lookin' ones. The thing is, I've had me some pickup trucks, and I've enjoyed em', yup I have.

Truck #1 was a 1960 Ford 1/2 ton short box. This was a boxy little number that wasn't big on looks, but it had all the potential in the world to be a 16 year old's dream rig. Problem was it drank almost as much oil as it did gas and therefore it was not in my possession for long enough for me to get attached. Yeah, my Dad took it back down to the dealer that I bought it from and got me my money back. There was a reason I got her cheap, but keepin' her would have gotten pretty expensive.

Truck #2 came to me as a 1972 Ford 1/2 Ton 4X4. This truck was a looker. It had big tires and wheels and shined like a new penny. I'd been drivin' an Econoline SuperVan that I really did like, but when I drove by the Ford garage and saw this 72 4X4, I was hooked. So I said goodbye to my Van (by the way, this was a window van and I had installed a window mural of Elk that went all around the van. I was cool lookin', really.......) and drove away in my first 4X4.

Truck #3 was the result of me being too cheap to keep runnin' gas through the really thirsty 4X4 and wanting to find a rig with a bit less of a thirst for fossil fuels and my hard earned cash. That's how I got myself a Chevy Luv. She was a 1977 mini truck, and I'm a 1959 XXL. I was young though, so foldin' myself up and getting myself pried out of the cab was still a doable thing at that point. She got great mileage and got me out in the hills, up in the mountains and back and forth to work. What more could I ask for?

Truck #4 was what I asked for. See the 77 Luv got to overheating and I wound up sellin' her to a local mechanic before I had to foot the bill for all the repairs that were coming soon. Anyhow, my Dad had a neighbor down the road a bit who had an old 70 Ford 1/2 ton, and he was lookin' to peddle it. It was pretty dull lookin' and all, but she ran out alright and I picked her up for a little bit of nothin', so I was pretty pleased. I kept her until I fell in love with the only rig I'd really like to have if I didn't have a pickup truck, a FJ40 Landcruiser!! I still miss that rig and would buy it back from the folks who I sold it to if they'd ever decide to sell it. Yeah, I was hard up and needed the cash, so I sold my FJ40 to a couple in North Powder about 25 years ago. They said that if they ever decided to sell her, that they would let me know. Would you believe it?, they still have her. I check in every now and then, and they aren't ready to sell. Arrggghh.

Truck #5 was another 77 Chevy, only this one was a Full Size 4X4. I bought it off a friend of mine who had fixed her up and was selling it. It was good ole pickup and I had an canopy on it with a bed in it. It went camping and hunting a bunch but again it fell to me once again deciding that I wanted to get something that saved me some change at the pump.

Truck #6 was my gas saver. She was a 1987 Mazda B2000. She was a pretty thing too, black and chrome with white pin striping. The only new vehicle I've ever bought and I really enjoyed her. My oldest son named her BlackJack. She was the CabPlus version of the B2000 and had jump seats in the back. I spent a lot of time on the back roads of Eastern Oregon in this little rig and I believe I even shed a tear when I sold her, sniff..........

Truck #7 was the anti-gas saver. A 1982 Ford F250 4X4 SuperCab. This thing was a mile long and built like a tank, just ask the new Ford pick up I ran into. Five MPH crash and that new rig looked like it had been in a roll over. My truck, hardly a scratch........ The problem with this rig was that, as in my first Truck, it was, shall we say, NOT mechanically sound. I poured more money into it than what I paid for it and it still never got more than 10 mpg. Oh well, I enjoyed my big pick-em-up truck.

Truck #8 was the pickup truck that wasn't supposed to be. I had been lookin' to get me a new rig and had checked out a couple of em and was headed out with my two boys to test drive what I thought would be my new wheels. Neither of the pickups I'd gone to look at were what I had hoped they'd really be, so we were headed home when we came across this 1999 Dodge QuadCab 4X4 that caught my eye and made me do a double take. We went back and checked it out and ended up drivin' it home. I had that truck until I just needed more seats for my kids that had grown in size and number. That's when I traded her in on a Durango. Not a bad rig mind you, except that my buddy kept sayin', "Why on earth are you driving a daggone hearse". I drove the 2004 Durango for 5 years, I did, yep, me and my hearse. Then I got back in the Pickup Truck way of livin'.

Truck #9, and my current mode of transportation, at least when I'm not on my Kawasaki Vulcan 1500, is a 2008 Dodge QuadCab Hemi. I do love driving this rig. Comfy and tough all at the same time. Gas mileage isn't great, but hey, it's got a Hemi afterall. I can't believe I went all those years without a pickup truck. I can haul stuff again, no really, I can!! And there's so many things a person can haul. Well, I hauled stuff over the years in a few rigs that weren't designed particularly well for hauling, but hey, you gotta get the gear into the hills and back out, right? I think I'll stay in the pickup truck way of doin' things. You see, I'm a pickup man, That's what I am!

You take care Elk Camp alums. Until next year this is the elkaholic sayin', "Drive a Truck kids".