The Mighty Max

In January my brother mentioned that I was to be a new contributor to the blog. ten months later I am over my writer's block and can share a childhood story about my good old Mighty Max. That name sounds kind of like a Tonka toy truck. The subject of this piece is indeed quite similar in stature and power to the Tonka trucks, but what I am referring to is the aptly named 1987 Mitsubishi Mighty Max pick-up truck that I had the privilege to drive as a high school student. The truck was a hand-me down: my father drove it when it was new, and my brother and sister each did their time in it before my turn came. This car didn’t have all the frivolous accessories modern cars have. Power locks, bah; how hard is it to push a lock up and down with your finger? Same thing goes for windows. Power steering just robs the driver of their workout when parallel parking. A car alarm was unnecessary for reason which should be obvious.

When my sister complained about driving the truck I would tease her that though she had to drive it, it would surely brake down and be replaced by a newer vehicle by the time I turned 16. I started to get more and more nervous that my taunt would prove to be incorrect as the years went by and my brother became the next driver of the truck. But I kept up the teasing. However, the Mitsubishi, like all good Japanese-made cars, deteriorated over the many years, but flatly refused to die. And in the end it was passed on to me, who was a few months its junior.

Over the years this vehicle gained character, one defect at a time. The first came when my father expected the vehicle to live up to its name and tow a stalled K-car. Unfortunately the Mighty Max did not have a trailer hitch or anything of the sort, so the next best thing to tie a rope between the car and the truck’s tailgate. This incident resulted in the Mighty Max having a severely convex tailgate. I am not sure how the antenna died, but super glue was only able to delay the inevitable for so long. Antennaless cars receive poor radio reception. The truck’s 1987 birthyear precluded any chance of CD player. Indeed, by the time I drove it the cassette player was dead as well. Since the truck couldn’t play any music through the normal channels, it developed its own unique rhythm for the enjoyment of the driver. The whole frame developed a vibration. Perhaps the shaking was the death throes of the engine, but I only knew that it had resonance frequencies at 15 and 55 mph at which its vibrations would become deafeningly loud.

One fateful day, the Mighty Max finally died and it was not of natural causes. I was guiltless, having a clean driving record to this day. With a fate fit for a decrepit little car, my Mighty Max was rundown by a monster truck in the high school parking lot. Ok, so it didn’t actually run over it, but it did run in to it at a high enough speed to spin it 45 degrees from it’s initially parking spot and it was a monster truck, you know, the kinds of trucks with raised frames and 4ft tall tires that are abundantly distributed in that portion of the Hoosier state. When I came out of school, in the lightly falling snow, I saw the crippled remains of my truck. It was a better-sweet feeling to outlast the vehicle that equaled me in age. Previously I had begun to wonder if it might outlive me. Instead, it was the victim of a senseless hit-and-run accident. Ok, this isn’t a sob story, there was a witness, the culprit was tracked down, and fortunately, in the end I was able to start driving a vehicle that didn’t have quite so much character. But maybe if I go through with car shopping at the end of Christmas break I will be lucky enough to stumble upon another Mighty Max just like it.