Bouncing Kids and Pick-up Trucks
By The Horse
@TheHorse (218927)
Walnut Creek, California
February 26, 2021 11:07am CST
What is it about kids and pick-up trucks? In the old days (especially in rural Montana, in my experience), the kids would sometimes "ride to town" in the back of a pick-up. We enjoyed the wind in our hair, the excitement of it all, being with the dog, etc.
Today, you'd get pulled over by the police pretty quickly (perhaps not in Montana) if you had kids driving around in the back of your pick-up.
Yesterday, when I got home from Guitar Center, the kids were all out playing, and Astik (he's six now) asked me if he could climb into the bed of my pick-up truck. I said yes. Of course, after that, the younger kids all wanted to do the same.
They started jumping up and down, and took great pleasure in being able to make the bed of my truck bounce up and down with them. One mom and I joked that kids don't need toys. Everything is a toy to them.
If I can find it, I'll attach a photo of a different set of kids, my Berkeley friend Anna's daughter and her playmates, climbing on board. I guess some things are universal.
12 people like this
13 responses
@DaddyEvil (137259)
• United States
26 Feb 21
I remember riding around in the back of dad's pick-up. Back then there were still eight of us kids still living at home. Mom, dad and my sister rode up front and we seven boys rode in back.
4 people like this
@DaddyEvil (137259)
• United States
26 Feb 21
@TheHorse Did you ever ride a sled behind a pick-up? When I was a kid our neighbor got an old hood off a car and dragged it behind his truck in the snow while all us kids rode on it.
4 people like this
@TheHorse (218927)
• Walnut Creek, California
27 Feb 21
@DaddyEvil I did not have that experience. But it sounds like it would have been fun. Are we still allowed to do that?
3 people like this
@TheHorse (218927)
• Walnut Creek, California
26 Feb 21
It was the same in Montana this past Summer, right after I got the truck. The kids of a family I was visiting "demanded" I drive them around Maiden MT in the back of my truck. Little joys, for both the kids and grown-ups involved. "Just don't put your fingers between the bed and the cab," just like I heard XX years ago.
3 people like this
@FourWalls (68102)
• United States
26 Feb 21
Maybe they’re not used to seeing an open space in a vehicle! City kids, y’know.....farm kids can drive a pick-up by the time they’re six.
3 people like this
@sallypup (61163)
• Centralia, Washington
26 Feb 21
You bring back Idaho days. We sometimes were brought to the main road on a tractor. Colder than toothpicks in the winter, we were delighted to get a ride in the back of a truck. Forty miles to our cabin but at least we got there.
3 people like this
@spiderdust (14760)
• San Jose, California
26 Feb 21
It's like a mobile trampoline!
3 people like this
@spiderdust (14760)
• San Jose, California
28 Feb 21
@vandana7 Yes, but then they pick themselves back up and climb in again. I don't think he'd let them bounce while the truck is moving.
2 people like this
@Tina30219 (81948)
• Onaway, Michigan
26 Feb 21
Me and my sisters use to ride in the back of our dads pickup but it had a topper on it. Where I live now people ride in back of pick up trucks but we don’t live in a big city we live in a small rural area no cops here unless the state police are driving through
2 people like this
@Tina30219 (81948)
• Onaway, Michigan
26 Feb 21
@TheHorse I enjoyed it when we got to do it
2 people like this
@TheHorse (218927)
• Walnut Creek, California
27 Feb 21
@Tina30219 Me too. I don't yet hear the kids outside. If I do I might "mysteriously" appear.
1 person likes this
@xander6464 (44250)
• Wapello, Iowa
26 Feb 21
I used to ride in pick-up beds, too...I wonder when it became dangerous.
2 people like this
@xander6464 (44250)
• Wapello, Iowa
27 Feb 21
@TheHorse That sounds like a lot of kids.
2 people like this
@TheHorse (218927)
• Walnut Creek, California
27 Feb 21
@xander6464 Tragic, isn't it? Especially when the population of those two states combined is about 2,000,000. I'm in tears. Have to go.
2 people like this
@TheHorse (218927)
• Walnut Creek, California
27 Feb 21
@xander6464 Sipping some now. Can't believe those states have been robbed of all of their beautiful children.
2 people like this
@wolfgirl569 (106397)
• Marion, Ohio
27 Feb 21
All kids seem to love trucks. Monster is easy to contain in the bed of a truck
2 people like this
@vandana7 (100303)
• India
28 Feb 21
@wolfgirl569 Do kids sit without troubling and getting bored for that long? Here, our kids are not that well behaved..many of them. I would get ulcers thinking what they are up to. LOL
1 person likes this
@wolfgirl569 (106397)
• Marion, Ohio
28 Feb 21
@vandana7 I have a pickup as my only vehicle. We have been in a truck 4 hours one way at times except stopping for gas. And then had to get back home too.
2 people like this
@LindaOHio (178877)
• United States
27 Feb 21
Great photo. It's good that kids enjoy playing creatively rather than with electronic technology.
1 person likes this