From the windshield of a truck, you can see parts of Texas you may not have imagined if you’ve never been here, like the rolling waves of Hill Country, blue skies of San Angelo, sandy beaches of Mustang Island, to start. More importantly, being in Texas has taught me that it’s not a monolith. Not everyone wears cowboy boots (although I’ve found that they’re practical on dusty paths where snakes like to slither) and not everyone thinks the same way. This New Jersey-born, Indiana-bred, Ohio-educated, and Kentucky and Georgia-residing person has come to understand why some Texans believe in what they do, even when I disagree.
I didn’t imagine myself as a truck-driving, wood-chopping (well, I just tried it for the first time this weekend, anyway), occasional boot-wearing, rattlesnake-spotting person. Yet, here I am. And the old Titan has played a big part. It has carried us all over the place to fill up deer feeders, peer into petroleum holding tanks, and load up wood for the grill and the fireplace. It carries two very important people: my husband and our son.
If you were to buy a brand-new Nissan Titan today, you’d find it’s still powered by a 5.6-liter V8, but now it’s paired to a nine-speed automatic transmission and the horsepower and torque are bumped up to 400 hp and 413 lb-ft, respectively. It’s a solid work truck. Maybe you’ll be fortunate enough to have one that becomes part of your history, too.
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