The Truck Trope

The truck is a big draw for H's pals. They like to climb all over it, sit behind the wheel, stomp around in back. Where does the truck-trope come from? Not to get essentialist here, but it seems buried deep somewhere near the heart of guydom. So far, very few little girls have expressed interest in either of our trucks, but boys seem drawn to them, magnetically. Is it the big, boxy, toylike shape? The deep growl of the engine? Or just the simple, blunt, graspable size of everything?

 I had a serious truck-trope as a boy, and would stare at them for hours. My family lived in an apartment in Montreal. We had a very metropolitan lifestyle. My father wasn't at all interested in trucks, or cars, though we always had a sedate sedan, which he always traded in every three years, after consulting me on what to buy next, since he didn't much care.  I remember my first ride out in the open, in the back of a pickup truck, at Goose Rocks Beach, Maine when I was 6. I learned to drive the summer I was 12, in a 1951 Chevrolet Advanced Design pickup that Emil Cochand drove all the way home to St Marguerite, Quebec, from Missoula, Montana, where he was on the U of Montana ski team.

              Emil's truck had a suicide knob on the wheel; very cool.
              My next truck-love was the 1961 Apache I drove when I was working on the GH Ranch in Sundre, Alberta.