The Unacted Upon Childhood Obsession

   It may well be a good thing that some childhood desires are never acted upon.

   For example, my childhood obsession with buying a pick-up truck with a roll bar.

   There was a time when pick-up trucks throughout North America sported roll bars, as if there was a desperate need to have them - despite the incident of a pick-up truck rolling over being less than that of being struck by lightning.

   Roll bars started out simple enough - a single (usually 3" or 4" diameter) steel pipe that had either been manufactured out of three pieces of steel welded together or a single steel pipe heated and bent into a "U" shape that could be bolted to the bed of a pick-up behind the driver/passenger cab. 

   Roll bars built for pick-up trucks were rarely functional - they were almost always highly polished chromium finished steel, bolted to the floor of the pick-up bed, and would provide the most minimal amount of protection should one rollover, and in fact could become a cause of injury should they break free of their mounting and go flying wily-nily.

   But they looked cool, as in f**kin' A bad-a** cool.

   Roll bars evolved from roll cages made for race cars, which in turn had evolved from roll cages made for farm equipment (three wheel tractors and high centered harvesters that were prone to falling or rolling over).

   Those roll cages and roll bars were actually functional and saved many from injury or worse. Roll bars for pick-ups, especially small pick-ups, did nothing but look cool.

   But looking cool was all most kids in their late teens wanted.

   The design of roll bars eventually got stupid. a single bar became a double, then a triple, them quadruple. Braces were added to further the illusion that roll bars would actually serve a purpose, the pipe diameter grew and grew and grew - I've seen 10' diameter roll bars.

   The first truck I ever owned was a used 1977 Toyota pick-up well past it's due date. However, by the time I was able to actually buy that truck, roll bars were out and so was my desire to install them.

   I've owned a lot of trucks since that first '77 Toyota. Never even thought about adding a roll bar to any of them.

   I did add some sweet Cragar white mag rims with the blue & white pinstripes on the outer lip of the rim to that first Toyota though.

   Looked cool as hell.