Throwback: The Cars of Our Lives

Dancing With The Cars: Volume 5--The Truck Years.
My sister sold me this Mitsu Pick-Up right around the time I abandoned the checkerboard Nova in a parking lot behind Appletree Stereo in Normal (Hell, it may still be there!)
it was my first go-around with 4-Wheel drive--and I've had something with 4WD ever since. This truck carried me many nights and mornings from Normal to Peoria and back working in my first two radio jobs. A typical weekend would start Friday at 10PM-2AM in Bloomington, then to Peoria for 6-Noon, then back to Bloomington for a 2-6PM shift. Nap, dinner, then back to peoria for Mid-6AM plus board op for the religious shows til' 8AM when Jon Symmonds would come in for the 1-0-Sixties. Then back to Bloomington for noon to 6. Whew. Took out a few cornfields in the by-and-by, but that truck kept kicking. I put the most obscene stereo in that thing. It was too big for the dash (with the EQ, CD and Cassette….oh yeah) so I strapped it to the tranny hump with some huge screws and jammed!
Funniest Moments: 1) Filling up the tank on the way out of town, and my Amoco Card gets rejected. So, Gomer cuts up my card right in front of me--and there's still the matter of the gas I purchased and not paid for. I have to leave him my license, and the whole episode makes me late for work in Peoria…so i'm 'making up time' and get pulled over--with--wait for it--NO LICENSE. I tell the cop my predicament and to my surprise, he lets me go! 2) There once was a topper from Delaware…the topper for this truck was held on with some c-clamps, that, over the 2 years or so that i ran this thing, loosened themselves right up and fell off. The double-sided sticky tape heroically stood up to a few trips back and forth, but finally, on the entrance ramp from 51 north to 74 West, the thing lifted off like a parasail, spinning and floating silently in my rear-view mirror before smashing to the ground and splintering. Ashes to ashes, I say, and drive on… 3) A trip to NIU or EIU to visit my buddy and sleeping in the bed of the truck on a couch while drunk college students pounded on the roof. I remember a LOT of beer cans scattered about. 4) One very angry, very large, very drunk NOT ex-boyfriend of the girl in the passenger seat trying to lift the back of the truck off the ground whilst I tried to drive away...