Pickup trucks are a recipe for disaster

Pickup trucks are a recipe for disaster

When you mix boys/men with pickup trucks, you are just asking for trouble.

Speaking for those of us willing to admit to making less-than-cerebral decisions when getting behind the wheel of a pickup truck, whether in the woods of North Wisconsin or the prairie country of North Dakota, I can authenticate the accuracy of my opening statement.

My history of pickup trucks, whether it was me doing the driving or another idiot, could fill a pickup truck box with unforeseen calamities that happened to us and the trucks.

Let us start with a 1941 Ford pickup that my oldest brother took in payment for raking leaves around all the cabins of a large Plum Lake resort back in the mid-60s.

That truck took us on quite a few fishing and hunting expeditions with remarkably few bad outcomes. Until…

There was this time when said brother, along with our middle brother and a cousin, headed out on a duck hunting expedition one sunny, warm Sunday afternoon in mid-October.

I will preface this by telling you that earlier in the afternoon my dad and I in his 56 Ford pickup headed for the same lake which the boys headed for on their expedition a few hours later.

Following rough logging roads, Dad and I stopped atop a ridge where below there was a wet spruce swamp directly in the way we were going to get to our destination lake.

My dad made the decision that he and I would walk the final quarter-mile distance to the lake. We walked that distance, found no ducks of any kind, and walked back to the truck, which quickly brought us back out to a main road that would take us to our next target lake.

The other three characters, thinking the way we did that there would be ducks on our first-choice lake, headed the ’41 Ford down the logging road. Looking at the swamp, they jointly decided it would be easy to roar through the watery ruts, thereby eliminating the need for humping over the remaining terrain in clunky hip boots.

I’m sure you know what happened. The abused truck got a short distance into the swamp before abruptly sinking hub deep in the mud.

The boys did walk to the lake, found no ducks, and then walked about four miles back to our house.

By that time, my dad and I had given up on our duck hunt plans and were firmly ensconced on a living room couch watching a Green Bay Packers football game.

So, you guessed it, the boys took my dad’s truck along with a stout chain to go back out with a plan to drag the ’41 out of the swamp.

Disaster struck. The chain wasn’t long enough to reach the ’56 truck, which necessitated inching it into the swamp edge. It was an easy prediction to make that minutes later, after lots of pushing and shoving, the boys would be embarking on another four-mile walk.

End result. Leonard Olson was hired to bring his 4X4-tow truck well after dark out to the swamp, where he pulled the two swamp victims to hard ground.

Now, it should be noted that I have sometimes made mistakes with pickup trucks as well, the first occurring when I was 15 and without a driver’s license.

On that occasion, I swiped my brother’s truck and headed down a sand road to a crossing of Plum Creek. I was smart enough not to attempt a creek crossing, but in backing up and turning around, I soon found the rear tires hub deep in soft sand.

It was my turn for a three-mile hike back to civilization to get my brother. Back to his truck we went with my dad’s truck. A chain went directly around the bumper of the ’41, right in the middle.

Easy pull, we both said. Idiots we both were. One yank on the chain and the bumper snapped, the sharp end of one piece of the bumper sticking like an arrow into the radiator.

Lack of an inexpensive replacement radiator led to a premature retirement of the ’41. Years later, when my brother had been married for a while, we went duck hunting one fall day.

Returning home that evening, we found something was missing. The ’41 was no more. Some other guys who were out hunting passed my parents’ house, saw the '41 sitting in the woods, put on the brakes, came to the house, knocked on the door, and were delighted when my sister-in-law quickly sold them the truck for a grand total of $25.

Since then, I have been involved in many pickup truck adventures, most of them ending well despite naturally occurring things connected with deep snow, mud, downed trees across a long-abandoned logging road, and so on and so forth.

Walking rather long distances to borrow and beg the necessary equipment to rescue a pickup truck on such occasions has not been an unexpected phenomenon in the eyes of my family members.

Then again, it’s been over a year since I have made a miles-long walk home to borrow a vehicle and some manpower to rescue yet another truck that betrayed me deep in the forest.