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986 of 996 DOCUMENTS
Newsweek
February 24, 1986, UNITED STATES EDITION
The Monster Mash
BYLINE: JERRY ADLER with KAREN SPRINGEN in Philadelphia
SECTION: LIFESTYLE; Entertainment; Pg. 68
LENGTH: 644 words
HIGHLIGHT: Little trucks with big tires have a strong pull
Like demolition derbies before them, monster trucks pose the troubling question: what is it about the violent de-struction of motor vehicles that Americans find so enchanting? Why do people pack stadiums to watch elephantine pickup trucks drive over the roofs of parked sedans, when events of comparable interest, such as throwing appliances out of high windows, have virtually no following at all? The explanation of monster-truck promoter Bob George, who believes that the event reminds the customers "of the time they were stuck in traffic and wanted to run over every-body," may be too pat. After all, if that were the case, one would expect the cars being crushed to have drivers in them.
They are grotesque, ungainly vehicles, ordinary pickup trucks absurdly perched atop four immenses tractor tires. They are all collateral descendants of the first monster truck, Bigfoot, built in 1976 by Bob Chandler and Jim Kramer of St. Louis to promote their off-road-vehicle business. Three years later Bigfoot appeared in the blue-collar film comedy "Take This Job and Shove It." But the phenomenon of monster-truck shows filling large urban arenas -- the Philadelphia Spectrum recently sold out two shows and added a third -- is even newer. At last count, there were per-haps 100 monster trucks in varying states of mechanical collapse around the country, up from only 25 a year ago. A typical weight is around eight tons; typical cost -- including more than $10,000 for the five-foot-high tires -- is around $100,000; a typical driver is a mechanic from a place no bigger than Moore, Okla., home of the national champion, Paula Geuin, who most untypically is a woman. (Her husband, Ken, also drives monster trucks, and their other main interest can perhaps be guessed from the name of Paula's truck, Black Gold.)
A national championship implies, perhaps, a more formal system of competition than actually exists. Car-crushing contests are decided on the basis of spectator applause. The usual objective is neither speed nor destructiveness per se, but style, a quality that nonenthusiasts may not always recognize. The fans at one of the recent Spectrum shows, for instance, gave some of their loudest cheers to Quadzilla, whose driver, Rocky Varacola, flipped it over onto its roof, failing to crush any cars at all, but luckily failing to squash Varacola. That, in turn, led to one of those virtuoso displays of towing that brings monster-truck fans to their feet: a full half hour of tugging and hauling by a pair of wreckers to right the 11-foot 8-inch-high overgrown jeep.
Bog race: To be sure, there is more to a monster-trucking show than car crushing. One increasingly popular fea-ture is drag-racing through an artificial bog, sending exuberant sprays of mud 50 feet in the air. At the Spectrum, the car crushing was preceded by nearly two hours of truck and tractor pulls, in which vehicles competed to see how far they could tow a 25-ton sled. This gave rise to one of the day's most exciting episodes of metal fatigues, when Butch Shultz's 2,500-horsepower "funny car" did a wheelie and the whole front end dropped out of the body. "A $10,000 mishap," the announcer told the delighted crowd.
Well, who wouldn't pay 14 bucks to see that? It is interesting that -- despite an abortive attempt to have a monster truck crush refrigerators at Madison Square Garden (the truck couldn't get inside the arena) -- there appears to be little interest in destroying objects other than cars. Unlike the demolition derby, which has a crude, smash-or-be-smashed element of sport to it, monster trucking is about power pure and unopposed. It appeals to something basic in all of us, the pure, childlike joy of seeing things break -- sweetened by the guilty adult pleasure of knowing that someone else is going to have to pay for it.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Picture 1, Squashed sedans: The childlike joy of seeing things break apart, LUKE FRAZZA -- NEWS-WEEK; Picture 2, Bigfoot: Power pure and unopposed, LARRY DOWNING -- NEWSWEEK
Copyright 1986 Newsweek
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