Couple in a Pickup Truck

The other day I was driving around when I was stopped at a light and looked around at some fellow drivers. To my right, up ahead, was a man driving a later model pickup truck, a big one. He had his left hand on the steering wheel and his right arm around . . . a woman. She was right up next to him.

The sight braced me. I hadn’t seen it for what seemed like decades. Once it was pretty common on the Oregon streets and roads I drove, in all areas, urban, suburban and rural. American men threw their arms around their wives and sweethearts in pickup trucks (I never saw the reverse) for two generations because trucks had bench seats and there was nothing to separate them. So she slid next to him on her own or he asked her over and they went about their driving like this until they stopped.

I was charmed by this throwback sight. I wondered if something truly wonderful has been lost between partners in pickup trucks with the introduction of bucket seats in trucks (now probably standard in every model), along with bulky consoles for cups, phones and whatnot. It was like truck manufacturers unwittingly or purposefully ended a simple and intimate way to hang out with someone while riding around.

Those bucket seats and consoles also mostly ended another extracurricular driving activity between people and I’ll leave it to your imagination to figure out what that was.

The light changed and the traffic began moving. I couldn’t determine the couple’s age from my vantage point but the truck was a mid 90s Ford F-150, two tone.

I never have put my arm around a woman while driving around. I think I missed out on something.