If Paris was indeed a Moveable Feast, Texas is currently a pickup truck, referring of course to the ultimate pickup and not the passing croissant. Accepted in the beginning for its serviceability and practicality, the 1949 through 1953 General Minors half-ton pickup truck is now somewhere between a monument to mechanized society and a true work of art. Perhaps it’s both.
Today’s owners seem to have very little in common with one another with the exception of a monolithic reverence for the truck.
None of these trucks seems appreciably altered from the original design of ballooned fenders, cozy cockpit, and a nosy grin for a grill. Conspicuous in their absence are CB radio aerials, gun racks, and bumper stickers, and as if to punctuate their worthiness almost every truck is in some stage of restoration. A product of the assembly line has become an object of affection. Why? Well, as Louis Armstrong used to say about his music. “If you have to ask what jazz, is, you’ll never know .”
— Harry Porter
