Word: ute
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Pickup Truck: bakkie (South Africa), ute (Australia), utility vehicle (New Zealand...
...time sitting outside and getting the lay of the land by scoping out passing cars. They see somebody in an old clunker and know the rider's just scraping to get by in another low-wage gig. They spot somebody in one of those jazzed-up numbers, a sport-ute or a low-riding classic, and it's a good hunch the occupant is a roller in the drug game. In the end, of course, it doesn't really matter much how passersby earn their keep. So long as they slow down a bit when they cruise Parnell and watch...
...daily. Wife and Husband have decided to buy a new family car, their last one having been rendered immobile by the accumulated weight of gum wads, empty juice boxes and broken plastic toys from McDonald's Happy Meals. Do they go with the stolid minivan or the racy sport-ute? They consult consumer guides. They compare prices. They make, if they have the stomach for it, a few desultory visits to a variety of reptilian car salesmen. And they gather promotional brochures...
...meant to defend the minivan, but I see I've only maligned the sport-ute. It's hard to avoid. A car, says the cliche, is indelibly an extension of self. With minivans the extension is straightforward and uncomplicated--a means of transportation for housewives and family men (family persons?). For the upper-middle-class American man circa 1997, the cliche is undone. The sport-utility vehicle is not an expression but a denial--a carapace, a hard shell concealing the soft center within...
...Balfour, a nearly broke Colorado machinist, had a dream one night. In vivid detail, he saw an enormous yellow truck with a green hose that sucked furry little rodents out of the ground. And wouldn't you know it, the next day he had a job at the Ute Mountain Indian reservation, where the farm's irrigation system was being overrun by prairie dogs. On the way home, he noticed an old sewage truck for sale -->