There's just no market for used, gas-guzzling pickups
GREG BEAN Coda
When some people get to my age and tap their memory banks, they say they often associate important events in their lives with songs.

For one female friend of my acquaintance, DaveMason's big hit from1977, "We Just Disagree," takes her back to the tumultuous breakup of her first marriage, and Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight" takes her back to the first time she clapped eyes on her second husband, the one she's still married to, later that same year.

I think it's that way formost people who lovemusic. Forme, life ismeasured in Van Morrison albums. I own almost everything the man has ever recorded, and I can't put a single one of them on without boarding thememory train for a return trip to whatever was going on in my life when that album was released.

For personal reasons, I sometimes put "Tupelo Honey" on when I'm feeling a little blue and nostalgic. When I'm feeling energetic and full of vinegar, it's "Wavelength." When I'm feeling sophisticated, I throw on "Back on Top." When I'm traveling, I'll listen to any album or compilation that includes "Bright Side of the Road."When I'm feeling goofy, I listen to that country album he released a couple of years ago, "Pay the Devil," but that's only happened once or twice. For me, marking life's milestones by associating them with particular Morrison songs is usually pleasant.

Unfortunately, I also associate important events inmy life with the cars I owned at the time, and that is not always so pleasant.

I come from a culture where automobiles were usually used for work, and not status, or even comfort. In that climate, a 20-year old Dodge Power Wagon with a thousand dings and rust spots, springs poking through the upholstery, and a hole in the floorboard that the water splashed through might be a thousand times more valuable than a new Cadillac - as long as the engine and drivetrain were solid. You might want to move calves from one pasture to the next in the back seat of your Cadillac, or creep down a steep, boulderstrewn incline toward a creek bank in that vehicle, but I wouldn't recommend it. The calves will ruin the back seat and the boulders will rip out your oil pan.

In that culture, you'd buy a four-wheeldrive pickup, maintain the important mechanics and run it until the tires fell off. Then you'd buy a set of recaps and hit the road again.

The angriest my father ever was with me (I was 17 at the time, and fairly ignorant) was the day I came home with an almost new 1967 Firebird convertible (I'd sold the old Chevy pickup he gave me as my first car for $250). It was a burgundy, four-barrel, 400-cubic-inch, two-wheeldrive Kamikaze sled that I couldn't afford to pay for on the wages from my part-time job at the hamburger shack and was totally useless in Wyoming winter.

"I thought I raised you smarter than that," he said, shaking his head sadly.

He was right, at least about the frivolity of a sports car in a high plains winter. A year and a half later, I got tired of getting stuck in storms and spinning cookies on black ice, sold the Firebird for a loss and bought a 10-year-old International Harvester pickup as big as a Sherman tank with a stock rack, four-wheel drive, studded recaps and a passenger door held shut with baling wire. It was a hideous vehicle whose engine knocked like a woodpecker, but it would plow through a 4-foot snowdrift like it was cotton candy.

That big, ugly green monster of a truck set the pattern for most of the rest of my life, a succession of used work vehicles - Fords, Chevy pickups, Jeeps (several of those) and Dodges- that were in the shop every other week, but would save your life or haul a refrigerator if you could keep them running.

Those dented, oil-leaking, used Wranglers and trucks were testaments to my practicality, and whenever I see a photo of one of them, it takes me back to memories of whatever life difficulty, challenge or momentous event I was facing at the time. To this day, I can't look at a photo of my little red 1969 Chevy pickup without remembering the day I had to load a favorite dog in the back and take her to the vet for her final visit (she had cancer). I can't look at a photo of my 1976 Dodge Power Wagon without thinking of my wife, and our first date. That's a pleasant memory, to be sure, but it signaled a massive life change. We drove that pickup on our honeymoon, and that's a good memory too.

It's an embarrassing admission, but I've only owned two brand-new vehicles in my life. One was a minivan - a concession to a growing, soccer-playing family - which we drove until the cargo door literally fell off at Home Depot and the engine seized. My wife drove the van while I drove a succession of second- and third-hand Jeeps, however, so it doesn't really count.

The second was a Ford F-150 four-wheel drive with a camper shell that I bought in 2003 and will be paid off this July - just as gas is predicted to hit $4 a gallon or more.

Don't get me wrong; this has been a wonderful vehicle and I love it. And since I've maintained it carefully and it only has about 60,000miles on the odometer, I'd figured I could look forward to several years of payment-free transportation. There's nothing in this world that says freedom like a paid-off car that runs dependably.

But now, knowing myself for the cheapskate that I am, I don't think I'll be able to live with $120 fill-ups.And lately, I've been reluctantly considering the notion of selling my beloved pickup and buying something much smaller and more fuel efficient.

The very thought of doing that makes me depressed, however. First, nobody in their right mind wants to buy a used gasguzzler these days, so my sweet truck has about as much resale value as a lead paperweight. Second, it's shallow, but I don't think I could stand the blow to my selfimage. Some guysmy age buy flashy sports cars to bolster their self-image - but I've almost always seenmyself as a pickup kind of guy, and the thought of cruising down the highway in a tiny hybrid is enough to send me into a complete funk. Might as well check into the nursing home while I'mat it, because life, as I know it, will be over.

It's gonna have to happen, though. And 20 years from now, if I'm still around, I'll look at a photo of my big, white whale of a Ford and tell my grandkids, "Yep, those were the Good Old Days.

"The days when I had a brand-new Van Morrison CD on the stereo and my pickup was actuallymore valuable than the 30 gallons of gas in the tank."

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.