When we got back from Germany in late 2013 something was hooked in my brain. The barb finally pulled loose one day on Highway 49. I looked up and my rearview mirror was filled with a pickup logo. I guess I just wasn’t going fast enough for the gentleman behind me. Long past my days of giving a one-fingered salute that might bring on a road rage incident, I did the next best thing; I slowed down. Not very adult, I know, but I really felt that there was no need for this person to be pushing me. We were on a two lane road and I had traffic in front of me. Couldn’t he see that neither of us were going anywhere fast? I assumed he had passed the DMV eye test. I do try pull over as soon as I find myself the drum major of such a lethargic parade, but how could the driver a foot off my license plate holder know that? Maybe the state should make clairvoyance testing mandatory, as well.

If you use your trucks for their designed purposes, you can stop reading right now. I know several truck owners; Paul and Brian are contractors, Bill and John live up in the wilds of Sheep Ranch, Lonnie is a concrete wizard and Sonny is a retired sheet metal aficionado. What I’m trying to say is that they need and use their trucks. I am sure all are conscientious, as pickup drivers are. As an ex-policeman, Bill had better be one.

So, what was it bothering me about Germany? Not once during our two weeks did I see a single pickup. Sure, we were in tourist-rich Bavaria but the green expanses between castles and old-world sights were all farmlands, even the near-vertical vineyards hanging nearly over the Rhine. So, why don’t they have pickups? Don’t they need big, honking four-by-fours to pull themselves, their crops and gear out of that rich loam?

I imagine the fact that Europeans pay twice what we do for petrol (it’s been priced that way since I was tooling around the Mediterranean in the 60’s, courtesy of Uncle Sam) has a lot to do with it. They are also the land of high-performance sedans so maybe their drivers get their jollies off on the Autobahns and don’t feel the need to drive muscle trucks. The historically narrow streets of both hamlets and large cities probably account for the rest of my epiphany.

Having processed the nagging question above, a study of those “Jollies” came fast on its heel. The phenomenon is not local, nor is it recent. Back in Sonoma County when the kids were going to school, you’d see huge pickups jacked up so high the driver and passengers had to use a rope ladder, or something equally creative, to get in and out of the cab. There was usually a gun rack was in the window, a John Deere ball cap and a can of Skoal on the dash,and Charlie Daniels’ “Going Down to Georgia” blaring out of the speakers. It was obvious that it was not a work vehicle. Like the Hispanic low-riders, Beach Boys woodies and psychedelic Hippy VW bugs, the vehicle was an extension of the driver’s personality and they usually drove accordingly.

Now, I have no problem with car people. Bill, from above, said once, “I love my Dodge pickup; if I’d met it first I woulda married it.” I get that. What I don’t understand is some driver’s aggressive behavior once they get their shiny, tooled babies out on the county’s two lane roads. On one trip to Senders in Mountain Ranch, I was almost run off the road by one truck. Still unnerved by the first close call, another pickup passed me on a curve. I had slowed way down but I still remember the look of terror on the face of the sedan driver coming at me who missed a head-on by inches. I made it over the hill and just before the turnoff to California Caverns a third pickup was on its top in the drainage ditch. This was all during what I had hoped to be a leisurely half-hour trip to get some chainsaw oil and a tri-tip sandwich.

I wish that day was an anomaly but it wasn’t. I drive a Durango and I realize that all that power just begs to be opened up. During one county meeting a deputy-sheriff observed that the problem “is all these flatlanders not knowing how to drive up here.“ That may be true but it shouldn’t be too much to ask that drivers who need to test their manhood (sorry ladies but it’s been mostly males that I’ve encountered in these really scary pickup situations) do so in a way that doesn’t take out whole families of oncoming traffic. It is intoxicating to be young and full of testosterone. That can be a deadly combination. Our roads are dangerous; to paraphrase Rodney King, can’t we all drive them accordingly?

Jerry Tuck is a retired San Andreas resident and an indie author. Contact him at olwhofan@aol.com or use the Contact Form.