I’m sure you felt, as I did, that today was a surprisingly fine day to be out in the Pine Barrens. The weather was sunny and warm, a rarity for February even in this mild state. The roads were very wet. That’s probably because there is still a layer of frozen soil a foot or so down that is preventing drainage, and creating the deep mud holes you and your buddies look for on days like this. Most people, myself included, don’t mind that you enjoy “mudding” in the Barrens. Despite the fact that you chew up the roads and make passage harder for everyone, we recognize that these woods belong to you too, and that you deserve to enjoy them. There’s a certain amount of cameraderie, however miniscule. We didn’t buy 4WD vehicles to drive on pavement either. So we wave and smile when we see you and your posse coming, mud dripping from every exterior surface, eyes bloodshoot and heavy-lidded, beer cans rattling around in the bed. Just some boys having some fun, is what I imagine most of us think.

And then you go and do something like this. I wonder if you know, or would care if told, that the road in front of the hole you were playing in was once the route of the Tuckerton Stage, which for many decades in the late 18th through middle 19th centuries was the fastest way from Camden to the shore; that the bricks your wheels were churning up (I doubt you noticed them) were hand made from Jersey clay, and once formed the foundation of Cranmer’s Tavern, a major stop on the stage road; that the depression you were spinning your wheels in is an unexcavated archaeological site dating to the colonial era, when the Pine Barrens hummed with industry, and towns like Mount, Washington, Harrisville, Martha, Hampton, and many others formed a web of life throughout the now-empty woods. If you haven’t heard of these places, you can be forgiven; not that many people have. But Mount, at least, you should know, because it’s the place you were trying to plow with your Gumbo Mudders.

You probably don’t know this, but many of the state forests in New Jersey do not allow much vehicle traffic at all. If, in the future, it happens that all of us are locked out of the Pine Barrens, we’ll have you to thank for it. Unlike you, the State knows that Mount was once there, and that Cranmer’s Tavern was once there, and the good people whose charge it is to see that neanderthals like you do not rob future generations of their heritage for an afternoon’s thrills don’t like to see people driving their trucks through archaeological sites. That’s why there’s a fence at Martha, and ten feet of earth over everything of interest. That’s why there’s a fence at Harrisville, or at least that’s why there was one, before people I imagine to be very much like you started ripping it down. In the end, it will be a lot cheaper to just ban vehicles than to fence off everything you try to destroy.

Do us all a favor: stick to the roads from now on. There is plenty of deep stuff for you on marked ways. If you can’t manage to stop acting like the entire forest was placed there for the sole purpose of your thrill-seeking enjoyment, then none of us are going to have access to it at all. And that would be a shame.

When I was a kid we went out at certain times of the year and knocked on people’s doors and sold stuff. Mostly it was wrapping paper and greeting cards, or perhaps Girl Scout Cookies if you were a girl. There were pretty much just two kinds of children’s organizations that did this back then: Scouts of either gender, and Little League teams. It was a way to augment the amounts that parents paid, with the rationale that as a purchaser you were supporting good things being done in the community by these organizations (such as keeping a bunch of kids occupied on weekends).

When something works, it gets adopted. Over the years more and more organizations started pushing their littlest members out onto the sidewalks of America. Few people resent the GSA for peddling cookies, but they are the original masters of door-to-door heartstring tugging. What about everyone else? This year my three daughters were asked to sell pies, magazines, wrapping paper and greeting cards, nuts and chocolates, cookies, and fruit door-to-door. The basketball and soccer teams wanted in. The chorus wanted in. The PTA wanted in. The schools themselves wanted in. Wait… what’s that? Aren’t our schools supported by property taxes, which in this area are damned high, along with state and Federal contributions? Why yes, they are, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want more! Everybody wants more money and a bigger budget, so the schools now send kids out selling, and the organizations inside the schools send them out, and the school even holds a yearly Christmas Store where my kids can use dollars that they extracted from me by crying piteously to buy (for me!) little plastic Chinese-made products of zero utility or value.

It’s getting ridiculous, don’t you think? My daughters are kids, not little Tin Men in the grass-roots marketing division of China Inc. I don’t mind a little exposure to this sort of thing. I do think it teaches some important lessons about interacting with people, doing business, and the essentials of the customer relationship. But enough is enough, folks. If my kid belongs to an organization and they need the $25 or $30 in profit share that they will receive for the parcel of cheap goods she sells to her neighbors, then I will happily write a check. If what they want to do costs more than I am currently paying, then tell me that, and I will raise my contribution. But don’t assume that our whole family will hit the street to sell junk so you can pad out the budget. It ain’t happening anymore. I don’t want the stuff they’re selling, and I am pretty damn sure none of my neighbors want the stuff they’re selling. With money tight and the economy missing on a few cylinders, now is a good time to question the wisdom of this approach to fundraising.

I have a family. We live in a frame house in the suburbs. What we do here on our acre is process Chinese appliances. I’m not sure how we got the job, or when, but it’s not that big of a deal because it isn’t that big of a job. In fact all we have to do is use the appliances until they break, and then throw them out. It takes very little time from when a new applicance is unpacked until it fails, so we are able to do quite a few per year. We use one, break it, then look at each other and say “What a cheap piece of crap!” Then we bin it and head down to Walmart for another assignment. Over the last ten years we have processed approximately 124 hair dryers, 76 curling irons, 40 coffee makers, 32 motorized dental appliances, 21 toaster ovens, 15 vacuum cleaners, 7 electrically powered devices of unknown purpose, and 3 dishwashers. So I think we’re doing our part.

There are also the things we buy that break at some point, but which actually cost more than the gas + time to go get another one at Home Depot, and so some of these we have had repaired, like the $450 clothes dryer that burned out a circuit board after three years, or the “Schwinn” elliptical exercise machine constructed of welded steel that just broke in two. Okay, I am pretty heavy, but it was steel, and it broke. Just a cheap piece of crap. At certain times I can’t help thinking back to my Mom and Dad and their household. Sure, it cost a month’s pay to buy a new washer or dryer back then, but once you had one it lasted twenty years instead of ending up rusting in some landfill within the decade. Like my percolators. All 12 of them. I happen to like percolated coffee. Keep your $20,000 six-cylinder Japanese steampunk brewer and give me a pot with a basket and a bubble on top.

Thankfully you can still find percolators amidst the barren waste of drip machines. They cost $59 and last about six months. A friend of mine received a 25 year-old percolator from one of his relatives, and it works like a champ. As it should, since there is very little in our technology-fueled world that is as dumbass-simple as a percolator. For that matter there isn’t anything all that complicated about toaster ovens, or vacuum cleaners, or dishwashers. I’m a programmer, and what I do is the most complicated thing there is in time and space, so I laugh loudly at the crude simplicity of these greasy electromechanical devices. The only excuse for not building a percolator that lasts longer than a political news cycle is that you can’t afford to, because nobody will pay you for it. And why should they when they can grab a cheap piece of crap at some big retail outlet, use it until it collapses from shame, then toss it to the curb where it will magically disappear?

I used to be a staunch free-trader. I sincerely believed that free-flowing trade would increase the prosperity of the entire world. All it seems to have done instead is fuel the growth of big-box retailers as the US-side logistics and fulfillment arm of China Inc. I’m rapidly becoming a protectionist, because I can’t see one positive thing that has come out of it. Yes, everyone can afford a new vacuum cleaner now, because it costs less than spit. But if they can afford to buy a new one every two years because the old one broke when the cat looked at it, then they can save up and buy a good one that will last ten years. Free trade hasn’t made vacuum cleaners affordable: modern production methods have. U.S. manufacturers can make good products that are much more affordable than their equivalents were 40 years ago, but nobody will buy them as long as companies like Walmart can flood the market with throw-away crap.

Companies don’t have to operate this way. Walmart doesn’t exist because cheap goods are available overseas and readily importable into our economy. That trade has made them larger, but they would be successful even a world where everything had to be made here. Scale matters, and so does efficiency. Walmart sells cheap Asian goods because they can, and because they can people have come to expect these things to be cheap, and because people have come to expect these things to be cheap all the old-line American names like Magnavox, and Raytheon, and Westinghouse, and Schwinn have been sold off to Asian manufacturers, and their U.S. businesses are nothing more than marketing front-ends. Can you really be a world-class power when you don’t remember how to make anything? We need trade, but we need trade to be put in its proper perspective. We need a level playing field, so that Americans have jobs building things that Americans use. We need to relearn how to complete on quality, rather than price. Economic security is still security, and it’s time U.S. politicians remembered that.

I don’t write often about things I own. I don’t, for that matter, own all that many things. Well, that’s a lie, sort of. I “own” a lot of stuff, but most of it is household crap, or actually belongs to my kids, or my wife. I’m talking about things that are mine, and that for the most part nobody else cares about. I have a Martin D-18, and a couple of good computers, a few hundred books, my Canon A650-IS, and a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. Pretty much everything that isn’t clothing or tools fits in my small office off the kitchen. Except the FJ.

When I bought my truck (from Muller Toyota in Glen Gardner, which dealership I heartily recommend to prospective Toyota buyers) gas prices were just starting to head north again. Sales had fallen off. A lot of people had bought one when it was the coolest new thing, only to encounter its true character and trade it in. Inventories were building on the new and used sides of lots across the country. I was able to get a good deal. That was a little over a year ago, and in the last fourteen months I have had a chance to put the FJ through just about every kind of terrain that it will ever encounter under my hand. That covers just about everything except rock-hopping, which I have no interest in unless the rocks stand between me and something neat. I have collected a few pictures of the truck in various places. Hope you have a chance to check them out.

I’m not quite a motorhead. I don’t have time to get greasy very often. But I am a motorheart. I love my vehicles, and I love to be nuts about them. By the time I buy something I have spent six months, minimum, researching every angle of it. Success, to me, is when I get into the thing a year after taking delivery and still get a charge out of driving it. The FJ does that for me, and more. It ain’t the perfect vehicle, about which more below, but it is hands down the best 4WD truck I’ve ever owned, and one of the best vehicles of any type that has ever graced my driveway. It’s funny-looking from some angles, pugnacious from others, but tough as nails and more capable in stock trim than any 4WD to come down the pike in a long time. The first time I test-drove one I broke into a spontaneous grin that lasted an hour and cramped my cheek muscles, and I swear to God that still happens, even if I’m just heading to the deli for cigars.

Let’s face it, very few people really need a truck like this. If the ones who do were the only market they’d have to pay $80k to get a base model. Truck manufacturers have long been selling these rigs to the armchair suburban adventurer, and many of those units never see anything more challenging than some snow in the winter time. Over time the realities of this market have pushed SUV’s, as we now call them, from simple, tough utility vehicles to AWD-equipped crossovers with leather seats and all the acoutrements of luxury. Many of the people who buy these things rushed to get the FJ when it was new and interesting, only to discover that it is a throwback: it’s a simple, tough vehicle. Note that I didn’t say “utility” because even I couldn’t keep a straight face while typing that. The FJ has about as much practical utility as a Harley Soft-tail.

Not that it matters. What you get with the FJ is a combination of a few things that make it shine: the welded body on a heavily-gusseted 4Runner frame; the nearly 10 inches of clearance under the differentials; the torquey 4.0 liter V6; the old-fashioned tough-as-titanium part-time 4WD drive train; active traction control and rear lockers; the generous amount of suspension travel; sharp approach angles; the truly excellent road manners and driveability. The truth is that it’s the closest thing to my 1980 Ford Bronco that you can get today: it’s just a truck. If that’s what you’re looking for, and pickups are out, then what else are you going to buy? A Jeep? Please. We FJ guys occasionally get a little good-natured attitude from Jeep guys. I tell them there are only two words needed to explain the wisdom of my choice: “Chrysler,” and “Toyota.” Jeeps are good vehicles, but you have to get a Rubi to have the capabilities of a stock FJ, and as far as road manners and handling go… it’s not even close. Like I said… Chrysler… Toyota… just repeat that a few times. We’re not comparing apples and oranges here.

As for capability in the terrain the vehicle was built for, I’ll line my stock FJ up behind any Jeep and go where it goes, as long as we aren’t hopping rocks. People who hop rocks break stuff, and the ones who are good at it will admit they break stuff. They’ll even joyfully relate exciting tales of breaking stuff. I’m into not breaking stuff. Beyond that, if you’re laughing at the FJs offroad abilities then you haven’t driven one. Ask the guy who had to stop his Wrangler and air down his 35’s on Cape Hatteras the other day, while I scooted past him on 32 PSI stock Bridgestones. The FJ pretty much goes where you point it. A couple of days later and not far from there I used my strap to yank a 3/4 ton Home Depot utility truck out of the sand. Didn’t even bother getting into low and locking up the rear. A good-looking blonde girl standing nearby pronounced herself surprised that the FJ could do it. She shouldn’t be, but I guess it’s that whole funny-looking California surf beach vibe thing that the Yota marketers were shooting for. Underneath the retro-cute exterior this is a ballsy damn truck.

So what’s not good about the FJ? A lot, actually. Enough that, if you are the ordinary American truck buyer and you’re perusing this site, I can say confidently that you don’t want one. The gas mileage is abysmal for a small 4WD. If I can get 18 mpg on the open highway I’ll write a ballad about it. The truck is boxy, the windshield is nearly verticle, and it just shoves its way through the air at great cost in naptha. The suicide doors are stupid. The rear seat is barely usable. There are no windows that roll down behind the front seat, and the rear is like being stuck in coach class on a packed flight with no ventilation. The windshield is so narrow and forward that you have to lean in to see stoplights. Rear visibility is not worth discussing. There is a lack of interior storage. The plastics scratch too easily. The factory roof rack is ridiculous. The bumper wouldn’t stop a trotting poodle. In fact the only thing standing between Toyota and having a truly legendary utility vehicle is that it has so little true utility. It’s a two-seat adventure machine that sucks on gas. Oh yeah, you need to be an optimist to own one of these.

As for me, I’m an optimist, and I’m optimistic that when another twelve or fourteen months have passed I will still be getting a thrill from driving my FJ to new places, or old ones for that matter. If you think you’re like me, then you might want to give this truck a try. If not, then please don’t buy one. If I want to sell mine and get a ’09 sandstone I don’t want to be competing with your trade-in. You’d be better off with almost anything else short of an Excursion.