MT- Hey Bruce, you got a few minutes to chat with me?
Bruce: I'm kinda busy right now. What up?
MT- Uh, nothin' bro. I just wanted to talk to you about your truck. I got the film from Joe Greeves today from the cover shoot. I think we have a winner here.
Bruce: You mean I don't have to drive all the way to the other side of this friggin' continent to get my truck shot? All right!
MT- Yeah, bro, the stuff looks really good. You're going to be sporting wood for a long, long time, even without a mega dose of Viagra. So, you got a few minutes to talk now?
Bruce: Hell yeah! Whatcha' wanna know?
MT- Well, since I've known you for a few years now, let's trip on down memory lane for the sake of our readers, shall we? Let's talk about when you sold this truck and got it back again. Hello? Is the swelling off your brain yet?
Bruce: Dude, it's Monday, give me a break. OK, I sold the truck to a friend of mine who got it featured the first time in Mini Truckin' and took all the credit for it. Later, this special person decided not to pay me for the truck. Before the truck could be repossessed by the finance company for nonpayment, I repossessed it my damn self. I found it in a parking lot with the paint and graphics slashed to bare steel, the interior all cut up, all of the stereo components thrashed, the batteries dead, laying frame without the means to get off the ground, and it had a pair of bent wheels.
MT- Oh man! Was there any bloodshed?
Bruce: No there wasn't, even though there probably should have been. I got into my bike accident shortly thereafter, so I wasn't exactly in any position to be bustin' out the whoop ass, you know?
MT- So, when you healed up enough, what did you do first to get the truck going back in the right direction?
Bruce: It was a good year and a half before I was able to work on my truck again, but I guess the first thing I did was to swap out the old suspension (some crappy trailing arms that the interim lucky-to-be-alive owner had installed) for a triangulated four-link. After that, I had a 3-1/2-inch body drop done by Art of Noise in Lake Worth, Florida.
MT- I bet that when you saw your ride laying body that you really started to feel as though you were getting somewhere, right? I know that when I saw my Dakota laid out on its pinches the first time, I nearly crapped my pants.
Bruce: I never thought of my truck like it looked. It was like...whoa!
MT- Damn, dude, you're a friggin' wordsmith, aren't you? Do you usually use sign language? Sign me some more information, bro, our readers are getting lost.
Bruce: Alright, I'm going to lay it down for you right now pal. You'll be telling me to shut up if I start flowin' everything about my ride. You ready?
MT- At last. OK, I'm waiting...
Bruce: Along with the body drop, Art of Noise put an all-sheetmetal bed floor in my truck bed, shaved my door handles, hood squirters, cowl, third brake light, taillights, cab and bed seams, tailgate handle, gas door, antenna, frenched in the tag box through to where the taillight was, added Cadillac taillights, and added a Hagen gas filler door in the floor of the bed.
MT- Wow! Were there no mods on your truck before you rebuilt it? Sounds like you did everything at once.
Bruce: The only mods it had before were shaved taillights, tailgate handle, and the Caddy lights in the roll pan. And it was Viridian Green Mica, the factory color I bought it with.
MT- Since we have a specific information column at the end of this, we'll hold the rest of your monstrous list of mods for that area, cool?
Bruce: Cool. What other warped questions do you have for me?
MT- How long did it take you to rebuild your truck after you were all healed up and began to redo it?
Bruce: It took five long weeks of sleepless nights to get it back to something I even wanted to look at again.
MT- Really? That's pretty quick.
Bruce: Yeah, but that was also five weeks without my stereo. It sucked pretty bad listening to myself sing the greatest hits of the '90s.
MT- And we've been trying to get your ride on film for most of the time since then. What did you think of the model we found for ya', bro? She's pretty slammin', huh?
Bruce: Hell yeah. And if my fiancee/other half Kathy's reading this -- hon', she's nowhere near as hit-able as you, OK?
MT- Always good to cover yo azzzz! Check you out, with the relationship diaper on.
Bruce: Dude, when does the verbal abuse end? I'll have to see my shrink after all this.
MT- Let's see now, what was the most trying part of your whoppin' five-week-long buildup? Besides missing your stereo system?
Bruce: Actually, it was the anticipation of getting back into the show scene, since I'd been out of action for so long. I couldn't wait to see how my newly revised truck would do against all of the trucks that were in the show scene these days. At the first show I went to, a couple of people who remembered the truck came to me and said, "Damn, dude!". That made me feel like the man, almost like Big John. I felt as though at least some of the pain and suffering I'd dealt with had been for a good reason.
MT- Bruce, I can honestly say that for all of the crap I've given you today, it's been great talking to you over the past four years. Someday, we gotta' meet for the first time. I'll buy you a beer...and a steak.
Bruce: Yeah, dude, we'll hook up. Might be your jaw that gets hooked with a right, though! I'm not sure that the abuse is worth a steak. You better not cheap out and try buying me with a Mickey D's Value Meal.
MT- Nah, I'm all about some steak, bro! Just tell me when. Thanks for talking with me and letting the mini-truckin' world know just how cool you and your ride really are. Good thing most people won't meet you and actually find out for themselves, eh? Just kidding.
Bruce: (Laughs) It has been really cool chatting with you, Lance, and I'm hoping to make it out to the show in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to chill. I will definitely be taking you up on that dinner offer then.