Pickup Truck? Hell Yes!: The Truck as Cultural Dissent in Suburban America
Mark Metzler Sawin, Eastern Mennonite University
In 1925 Ford introduced the “Model T Runabout with Pickup Body” for $281. At that time half of all Americans lived in rural areas and 13.5 million people (1/4 of workers) were farmers. Further, in 1920 only 1% of America’s 3 million miles of roads were paved. The pickup was built for these farmers—people who hauled livestock, drove dirt roads, and went to town once a week. But America changed. Following WWII America rapidly urbanized, and thanks to new mechanized farming methods, the number of farmers the nation needed dropped precipitously. By the end of the 20th century only 18% of Americans were rural, less than 2% lived on farms, and 3 million miles of paved roads handled 99% of all traffic. Given this huge demographic change, logic would suggest that the pickup truck would have become a thing of the past—as necessary to most Americans as a hay wagon. But instead of dropping, pickup truck sales grew, and amazingly, since the year 2000, American truck sales have exceeded American car sales 15 out of 16 years!
Why?
I will use a range of cultural documents to illustrate how pickup trucks have become a method of dissent in suburban America. As America suburbanized, Americans began to feel less independent, less self-sufficient, and less powerful. Men felt this especially keenly as “manly” work—both farm and factory—dried up at the same time their daughters and wives increasingly went to school, got jobs, and gained social and political power. The pickup truck has become the physical manifestation of the spirit of dissent against this “new normal.” Long before Trump rallied multitudes behind “Make America Great Again,” Americans had already voted with their feet, and they did so by climbing into their trucks.
Bio-note
Mark Metzler Sawin is a professor of history and director of the University Honors Program at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA where he has taught since 2001. He earned his BA from Goshen College (Indiana) and his MA & PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has served as president of the Eastern American Studies Association, as the chair of the Regional Chapters Committee and as a member of the Turpie Prize Committee for the American Studies Association. H was a Fulbright Scholar to the University of Zagreb, Croatia in 2008-09 and returned to teach there again for the spring semester of 2017. His primary research field is antebellum popular culture: he published the monograph Elisha Kent Kane & The Culture of Fame in Antebellum America (American Philosophical Society, 2008) and he is currently editing a series of novels by the popular 19th century writer and political rabble-rouser, Ned Buntline. As the only Americanist at his small university, Sawin’s academic interests are by necessity very broad, and he recently worked with Howard Zehr to publish Pickups: A Love Story (GoodBooks, 2013). The current proposal has its roots in his essay from this book: “Pickups, The History of a Love Story: A Cultural Study of Pickup Trucks in America.” A full CV and biography are available at: https://www.emu.edu/personnel/people/show/mms326