While I cannot quantify what it truly is, there is enough of a certain hook within John Jerome’s book Truck to have compelled a book review.
Was it subject matter? Yes, but no.
Was it his writing style? No, but maybe.
It’s hard to say but that hook exists nonetheless.
Purchasing this book was an act of expediency. My wife was purchasing a rather specialized book from a non-Amazonian bookselling website. The shipping costs were exorbitant, although she was within a few dollars of free shipping. Perusing subjects for about three minutes, I quickly found this book, a book I cannot recall ever hearing about.
Culled from the web.
The hook was set with the online description. Jerome has a goal of rebuilding a 1950 Dodge pickup (Hook #1?), he is at a point in life where he has become more introspective (Hook #2?), and he has a strained relationship with technology (Hook #3?). The premise is highly relatable.
Perhaps another hook is Jerome’s book being vastly different from the last two I’ve read. This follows my having read Andy Rooney’s My War and William L. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Palate cleanser? Not really, but I sought something far different from the last two.
Truck succeeds on that front.
Admittedly, I am not a voracious book reader. Part of my non-voracious reading is due to displeasure in sitting still for long. Also, I prefer to experience life first-hand. Long ago my mother kept extolling the virtues of books and one can do anything or go anywhere with one. My response was asking why would I care to do that when I could take that same time and have my own adventure.
That last sentiment has softened somewhat over the years.
Jerome’s book appears to have been written in 1974 or 1975 and was first published in 1977. The rebuild of his truck was in late 1972 and early 1973 as he makes reference to the death of President Truman in December 1972 as being in the midst of his rebuilding efforts; Jerome even names his pickup The Harry S Truman. Early in the book Jerome discusses his thoughts about how pickups for personal, non-business use are simply a fad and how a new one could cost as much as $6,000. It is obvious the latter has changed and he was misreading the former.
It would be interesting to know Jerome’s assessment of how the Big 3 truck makers of Dodge/Ram, Ford, and General Motors have evolved over the years. This is the closest to Jerome’s blue, short-bed Dodge one can purchase as of 2024. Ford and GM still produce a regular cab, short bed pickup. At least for now.
Yet, in describing his yearning and zeal to rehabilitate what was then a $200 pickup, Jerome appears to somewhat defeat, or at least defang, his own arguments about faddishness. With obvious enthusiasm, he explains his daydream about how his rebuilt truck will infuse positivity into all aspects of his life. Not only would his truck allow him to haul at will whatever needs hauling but having a truck will be so great it will even eliminate the rock in the soil of his New Hampshire homestead.
Another Dodge culled from the web.
Throughout his internal debate, and even during the process of rebuilding his Dodge, Jerome fights with the increasing invasion of technology into everyday life. His quandary is about when technology changed from benign to malignancy, what amount of technology is personally acceptable, and how much is simply there for technology’s sake?
It’s a prescient question that is likely even more relevant in 2024 than it was in the mid-1970s. Have we, as a society, incorporated too much technology?
His struggle prompted thought, particularly when thinking of it in terms of interpersonal communication, with a recent event having helped stimulate thought in that direction.
Consider…once upon a time, if you needed to contact a person, you went to see them. This methodology then expanded to writing a letter. Choices then expanded to telegrams. Then phone calls. Later, emails. Now, to exacerbate the clutter, there are text messages and online videoconferences plus other methods I am undoubtedly overlooking. Despite all these advances are we as a society truly better communicating with each other now than at any prior point in history?
Expanding this technological struggle in terms of Jerome’s 1950 Dodge, have we truly bettered ourselves in the realm of transportation? Jerome’s Dodge had a carbureted, flat-head, gas powered straight-six and a three-speed manual transmission. As Jerome observed, automotive technology had transitioned greatly from 1950 to the time he wrote this book in the mid-1970s.
Think about it; to extend his observation, since 1950 the automotive landscape has evolved into having overhead valve engines, automatic transmissions, high performance V8s, overhead cams, fuel injection, turbochargers, variable valve timing, cylinder deactivation, computerized engine management…the list is long.
The dilemma is all this technology has succeeded in what? More complex machines that still do what a 1950 Dodge pickup does…haul your load of cow shit from Point A to Point B. The end result is still the same.
Jerome’s book is ostensibly about a 1950 Dodge although he successfully explores an abundance of other subjects along the way. That is the true hook of Jerome’s book. It is one of the best confirmations yet that life is all about the journey and all the tangential voyages that happen during the journey; the destination is quite secondary.
Truck is a truly worthwhile read.
I haven’t read TRUCK, but I’m guessing it’s a good book based on my reading another of John Jerome’s books, DEATH OF THE AUTOMOBILE (1972). It covers many of the topics of the oft-cited INSOLENT CHARIOTS (John Keats), but Jerome’s work is nicer to read, with a lot of humor thrown in.
Recommend. I have it on my shop bookshelf, and need to pull it for a re-read sometime.
So a book that is more than a hands on how to restore a truck.Sounds like a book that combines that along with his journey combined. I may have to check it out but first I need to finish a trilogy, by Peter Caddick-Adams, that I just started and will take most of this year.
Might have to read this. The place of technology is interesting. In January we went to Disney for the obligatory middle-class big mouse based vacation. I had not been there since I was about 11, but we went on the carousel of progress, which is one of the few rides Walt designed and it was originally a Worlds fair display. Walt designed it because he was afraid a backlash against tech would stall human progress. Which considered when it was designed is interesting. The ride is designed to remind people how much simple tasks have become easier thanks to technology.
While I do like this argument I think there may be some room to distinguish between what we needed help with and what we didn’t.
I remember this book very well as when it came out I had a dark blue 1949 Dodge B-1-B pickup originally bought by Barlow’s Hudson in (?) San Gabriel, Ca. it was fully loaded with radio, heater/defroster, fluid drive and a spot light .
Back then the average price of old pickups was $250 almost anywhere in America .
I don’t understand why the publisher never put the correct old Dodge truck image on the cover .
I also wondered why the author never did explain how the Fontana, Ca. junk yard stored so many cars ot standing them on end .
The book, much like “Zen And The Art Of Motocycle Maintenance” delves deeply into how one looks at life not just the hands on of bringing an old beat to crap truck back to life .
Very good reading IMO .
-Nate
Read this sometime in the early 1980’s. I seem to remember the Dodge’s seller saying ” What we have here is your basic truck.” I’ve thought about that statement many times regarding my stripper 1988 S-10 EL, Tech 4, and 6 cylinder 2008 F150 XL, even though they represented technological “progress” over the book’s subject.
I read it when it came out, and several times after. Somehow, there is no longer a copy in my personal collection. I think I’ll get another one.
The fact that there’s a Chevy truck on the cover is an unfortunate choice and a definite turn-off for old truck buffs (like me). Really?
This does seem to be rather in the mold of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, and reflecting the 1970s’ spirit of back to the land and anti-technology.
I wonder what the author currently drives?
Jerome didn’t say much about his other rides within the book, which is too bad. In looking for the lead picture, there were other covers over the years but I used the cover from my copy of the book. If memory serves, none were Dodges of any variety.
The book certainly has the back to the land and anti-tech feel, as you mention.
Jerome passed away in 2002; he would have been 92 this year.
This sounds like a great read!
This reminds me of a question that has bothered me for a long time – we all know that modern vehicles use engines that are far more efficient and put out far less pollution than the old flathead in the author’s Dodge pickup. But I have never seen a serious analysis that includes all of the ancillary mining, construction, manufacturing and transportation required to make and incorporate all of the extra pieces that make the higher efficiency and lower pollution possible. Have we really made net improvements in energy use and minimized the creation of wastes, or have we only improved some areas but offset them by the processes required to make the improvements happen?
Your question would be very difficult to answer because there are so many variables. Just a few of them:
If you lived in LA or many other cities that had severe smog and air quality issues back then with the resulting hundreds of thousand (millions, more likely) of early deaths and/or disabilities, or in the many cities and towns that had tremendous water, ground and other types of pollution that also caused innumerable deaths and disabilities, then that alone would seem to me to make your question highly irrelevant. What is the price of millions of human lives or disabilities? Cleaning up industrial processes and their products was driven by a social concern for the welfare of our fellow human beings, and not by a financial metric.
Getting beyond that huge and overarching issue, the other factors are very difficult to answer simplistically because the world has changed so much in the last 75 years. Are you suggesting that we would all be happy driving 1950 Dodge pickups (or sedans) with flathead sixes? And given the huge increase in the size of our population and income, would it be logical and cost-efficient to quadruple the number of 1920s technology factories in order to build them? As in quadruple the amount of pollution from the factories as well as the vehicles?
And of course the huge investments to increase efficiency and reduce the use of fossil fuels is similarly driven by an overwhelming social issue: global warming, which is already causing untold deaths and destruction. But I realize not everyone is on board with AGW.
I could go on, but the key factor is this: the human experience (and experiment) is always moving forward, even if that progress isn’t always perfectly linear, smooth or without collateral damage. The huge investment made in drastically overhauling our industrial operations to clean them up has of course also been a huge driver in our economic growth.
In 1909 it took 303 man hours to build one car. By 1929 it was down to 92. The ’50 Dodge was probably a bit less than that. Today the average is 20 man hours to build a car.
Never mind the huge investment and payback that the tech industry has played in all of this.
In essence, the cleaning up of our industries and their product (and making them drastically more efficient in the process) is precisely what has allowed our economy to keep growing. That’s the history of econ 101.
Why not just go back to horses and buggies?
The answer is: our country (and the developed world) is enjoying a drastically cleaner environment as well as a drastically increased economy due to the various huge changes that have been driven by the desire to make things cleaner, more efficient and productive.
A Ford F150 hybrid gets 25 mpg; a 1950 Dodge pickup maybe 15. Now think of the difference in their capabilities. And think of the beautiful, clean, bright completely rebuilt Rouge plant that F150 was built in where robots do so much of the heavy work. Then go watch an old Youtube video of the Rouge in 1950 where (among other things) Blacks were forced to do the incredibly difficult work in the foundries. If that doesn’t answer your question, I certainly can’t.
Well, it’s been mentioned in these pages at least once.
Fine book. Fine review.