Silverado Uh Oh! -original post date 4/19/2013
Car Du Jour:
...Is actually a truck today. A couple of trucks really. The first photo is of an in tact early to mid 1990's Chevy 1500 pickup truck -the second and third photos are also -though it's quite hard to tell, isn't it? We'll get into how the 1500 pick up ended up in so many pieces in just a moment. First, some info about the Chevy 1500.
I'm going to estimate these two trucks are about 1992 models or somewhere close. There were three packages you could get for your 1500 truck in those days. The base model, the Scottsdale, and the Silverado. All came with a 4.6L V6 engine with options to upgrade to a 5.0L V8, a 5.7L V8, or a 6.2L diesel V8. For today's specs, we'll stick with the standard V6, which produced 160 HP and 235 lb ft of torque.
These days, the 1500 is just called the Silverado, and they have different designations for the trim packages. 1500 means that it's a half-ton truck, 2500 will bring you into heavy-duty work truck land, and 3500 on up gets tougher and tougher for hauling and working.
Silverado is a name that Chevy probably took from an unincorporated community in the Silverado Canyon, located in the Santa Ana mountains of California. Nowadays, the site where the community was is a historical landmark, and in the mid 1980's, there was even a Lawrence Kasdan Western named for it. The name comes from a kind of Spanglish saying that's a combination of "silver" and "El Dorado". It's supposed to designate the area as a good spot to mine for silver.... and it was just such a place.
So, the Chevy Silverado is named after a place where people used to go to scrounge about for loot -which is ironic, because the Chevy Silverado 1500 featured in the 2nd and 3rd photos here was used for exactly the same thing.
A few weeks ago, I was helping my sister with her work on the Gatsby mansion she purchased not too long ago and we noticed the bunch of debris (pictured in the 2nd photo) that had appeared overnight along the secluded road that backs up to a ravine at the edge of Wirth Park. Because it was an eyesore and it was spilling into the street, we walked over to check it out. I took some photos and sent them in to 311 using their app, which was rendered virtually useless when the administrators of the app "upgraded" it and removed the "other" designation that lets you report anything that's not graffiti or a parking problem. I just checked it off as graffiti because that was the only way I could make it work. After that, we set about picking up the littered stuff and placing it into her dumpster.
Immediately, I realized we were gathering up bits and pieces of a Chevy pick up truck (extended cab, even -as the two rear glass side panels were both out there and in tact). We assumed we were dealing with the remnants of a truck that had been stolen and stripped, the plastic bits dumped because they had little scrap value. I saw more stuff that had tumbled down the ravine, but it's tall grass, weeds, and burrs all the way downhill, so I didn't venture further to check it out. In the process of cleaning up, we did find some paperwork with a name and date of birth, along with other personal information and an expired driver's license belonging to a specific person, and we dropped that off at the police precinct afterward to let them know about it. The officer at the desk seemed less than interested in what we brought, and I suspect he probably chucked it into the trash bin as soon as we left. Oh well, we gave it the old college try.
The next day, my sister's neighbor ventured down the ravine to see what other truck parts had been dumped and discovered that there weren't just truck pieces to be found, but a stolen and looted cash machine as well. The police came out and retrieved the ATM from the ravine, and the neighbor did mention what my sister and I had found and cleaned up the day previous, but there was never any follow up with either of us, so I'm not sure those pieces ever got put together.
Most likely, what happened was the Silverado found in pieces was stolen and used in one of those ATM thefts where the thieves crash a truck through the wall of a closed convenience store and hook a tow cable to the ATM to drag it away. The whole mess of truck and cash machine was likely parked in the garage of one of any number of vacant properties and stripped of anything of value before the evidence was dumped in the ravine near Wirth park for us to discover. Who knows how much loot was had through the use and abuse of the stripped Silverado, but the "prospectors" who used it certainly belong in jail for theft of the truck, theft of the ATM, and littering. Shame that a perfectly good old truck had to get mangled so some dirt-bags could avoid having to get a job and work for their money like everybody else in the world.
...Is actually a truck today. A couple of trucks really. The first photo is of an in tact early to mid 1990's Chevy 1500 pickup truck -the second and third photos are also -though it's quite hard to tell, isn't it? We'll get into how the 1500 pick up ended up in so many pieces in just a moment. First, some info about the Chevy 1500.
I'm going to estimate these two trucks are about 1992 models or somewhere close. There were three packages you could get for your 1500 truck in those days. The base model, the Scottsdale, and the Silverado. All came with a 4.6L V6 engine with options to upgrade to a 5.0L V8, a 5.7L V8, or a 6.2L diesel V8. For today's specs, we'll stick with the standard V6, which produced 160 HP and 235 lb ft of torque.
These days, the 1500 is just called the Silverado, and they have different designations for the trim packages. 1500 means that it's a half-ton truck, 2500 will bring you into heavy-duty work truck land, and 3500 on up gets tougher and tougher for hauling and working.
Silverado is a name that Chevy probably took from an unincorporated community in the Silverado Canyon, located in the Santa Ana mountains of California. Nowadays, the site where the community was is a historical landmark, and in the mid 1980's, there was even a Lawrence Kasdan Western named for it. The name comes from a kind of Spanglish saying that's a combination of "silver" and "El Dorado". It's supposed to designate the area as a good spot to mine for silver.... and it was just such a place.
So, the Chevy Silverado is named after a place where people used to go to scrounge about for loot -which is ironic, because the Chevy Silverado 1500 featured in the 2nd and 3rd photos here was used for exactly the same thing.
A few weeks ago, I was helping my sister with her work on the Gatsby mansion she purchased not too long ago and we noticed the bunch of debris (pictured in the 2nd photo) that had appeared overnight along the secluded road that backs up to a ravine at the edge of Wirth Park. Because it was an eyesore and it was spilling into the street, we walked over to check it out. I took some photos and sent them in to 311 using their app, which was rendered virtually useless when the administrators of the app "upgraded" it and removed the "other" designation that lets you report anything that's not graffiti or a parking problem. I just checked it off as graffiti because that was the only way I could make it work. After that, we set about picking up the littered stuff and placing it into her dumpster.
Immediately, I realized we were gathering up bits and pieces of a Chevy pick up truck (extended cab, even -as the two rear glass side panels were both out there and in tact). We assumed we were dealing with the remnants of a truck that had been stolen and stripped, the plastic bits dumped because they had little scrap value. I saw more stuff that had tumbled down the ravine, but it's tall grass, weeds, and burrs all the way downhill, so I didn't venture further to check it out. In the process of cleaning up, we did find some paperwork with a name and date of birth, along with other personal information and an expired driver's license belonging to a specific person, and we dropped that off at the police precinct afterward to let them know about it. The officer at the desk seemed less than interested in what we brought, and I suspect he probably chucked it into the trash bin as soon as we left. Oh well, we gave it the old college try.
The next day, my sister's neighbor ventured down the ravine to see what other truck parts had been dumped and discovered that there weren't just truck pieces to be found, but a stolen and looted cash machine as well. The police came out and retrieved the ATM from the ravine, and the neighbor did mention what my sister and I had found and cleaned up the day previous, but there was never any follow up with either of us, so I'm not sure those pieces ever got put together.
Most likely, what happened was the Silverado found in pieces was stolen and used in one of those ATM thefts where the thieves crash a truck through the wall of a closed convenience store and hook a tow cable to the ATM to drag it away. The whole mess of truck and cash machine was likely parked in the garage of one of any number of vacant properties and stripped of anything of value before the evidence was dumped in the ravine near Wirth park for us to discover. Who knows how much loot was had through the use and abuse of the stripped Silverado, but the "prospectors" who used it certainly belong in jail for theft of the truck, theft of the ATM, and littering. Shame that a perfectly good old truck had to get mangled so some dirt-bags could avoid having to get a job and work for their money like everybody else in the world.
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