The night before this writing, I had just wrapped a fun weekend visit from my childhood friend Keri and her sister and daughter. This is the same Keri who I had been visiting in Michigan last summer when I had spotted a ’73 Mustang convertible and a first-generation Plymouth Valiant, both of which I had written about last year. Perhaps it had been the combination of us all having gone dancing at ’80s Night and eating fried plantains as part of a delicious Cuban dinner that had made me think of this Series 60 Land Cruiser I had spotted in my neighborhood about four and a half years ago. Keri’s and my childhood homes were just one intersection apart, and this remained a constant both before and after the Dennis family had spent one year in Liberia in the mid-1980s.
I’ll go on record all day long as stating how proud I am to be a first-generation Liberian American on my dad’s side. All of us have a story in terms of how we as individuals came to be citizens of wherever we live, and even if we think there’s nothing particularly interesting or special about our respective stories, perspective is everything. I grew up taking for granted that it was no big deal that I was not only biracial, but also from a multi-cultural background. I’m comfortable in my own skin as an adult, but even as a youth, I had few if any illusions about my relative blackness or whiteness compared to those around me. It undoubtedly helped that I grew up in Flint, Michigan, which at that time had a very healthy and diverse blend of people from many backgrounds, undoubtedly influenced by the presence of General Motors factory jobs that brought many people to Genesee County to live and work.
With my fellow Mende tribesmen in upcountry Liberia, c. 1983.
I was heading into the fourth grade when my father, a dual Ph.D.-holding professor of sociology and anthropology at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan, had gone on sabbatical and my family of origin had moved abroad for a year. We lived in my paternal grandfather’s ancestral village in upcountry Liberia, not far from the southern border of neighboring Sierra Leone. My dad had been doing research for a book he had planned to write about the two tribes from which he was descended, the Mende and Gbandi people. The way it had been explained to me as a kid, my parents had gone also to do so some lay missionary work as supported by an organization called Lutheran Bible Translators, or “LBT” to which it was commonly referred.
There were already legitimate missionaries, the Muellers, who had been stationed in the village for years. I was great friends with their kids, who had provided me with some form of connection to our culture of origin back in the States. That’s where this Land Cruiser comes in, as these Series 60 Land Cruisers were the vehicles that were assigned and provided by LBT to the missionaries stationed in various remote villages in Liberia, including the Muellers. All of these vehicles were dark blue and had the barn doors in the rear, unlike the horizontally bisected rear gates found on examples sold later in the U.S., including on our featured truck.
I recall a combination of profound, wide-ranging emotions from that formative year while I was still in the single digits. There was the immense pride I felt in living in the place where my father had felt the most connection and where his parents were from, even if my dad himself had grown up mostly in Europe. I had felt a beautiful sense of relief that year that it was my kind, empathic, highly educated, gregarious father, and not my mother, who was finally calling more of the shots in our family. The apparent increase in empowerment that I had felt coming from him had put me much more in touch with both him and my own sense of regular guy-ness at a time in my development when I probably really needed that.
Where my mother had seemed to approach Liberians (and even Black Americans) from a place of covertly patronizing white superiority, as if she never truly saw such individuals as her equal, my father was in his element on Liberian soil, and it showed in his level of engagement with others and with me. At the same time, I had felt isolated from my friends and familiar touchstones of being just an average American kid, like Saturday morning cartoons, going to the grocery store, riding my bike, and occasional trips to my maternal grandparents’ farm in northwest Ohio.
Not least of all, I had missed car culture. Oh, how I had missed cars and trucks, especially having grown up in a factory town like Flint and having played “count the Chevette” incessantly once I was probably barely able to completely recite my ABCs. The Muellers’ Land Cruiser, which looked very much like the subject vehicle down to the round headlamps and albeit in a different color, was one of precious few vehicles that I had visual access to or that would come rolling through what had been a very small, sparsely populated village at time. That was over forty years ago.
That Toyota was one of only a handful of connections to autodom until my family could ride the bush plane back to the capital city of Monrovia on one of our periodic trips for foodstuffs and other essentials. Seeing this orange SUV parked in the neighborhood south of mine generated the kind of visceral, knee-jerk reaction that comes only from something being so engrained in one’s psyche. One look at an example of this generation of J60 Land Cruiser, which had originally been introduced for 1980, instantly brings me back to 1983 and feeling a bizarre emotional stew of pride, nostalgia, and a little bit of Stockholm syndrome.
It was something of a shock to discover some of these Land Cruisers on U.S. roads in the ’80s after the Dennises had returned from Liberia. Granted, imports in Flint were still relatively few on the ground in that era, given the strength of the UAW and anti-import sentiment still being widely vocalized, but there was still a good number of foreign vehicles being driven around – Datsuns, Toyotas, Volkswagens, and even a few SAABs. Renaults were popular for a hot second with the introduction of the Alliance and Encore, but seeing a Land Cruiser like this at that time would have made me think it was a grey-market import, which wasn’t necessarily the case.
The fried plantains at Havana restaurant in Chicago’s River North district reminded me of the same popular snack that we used to munch on in Liberia. I’m sure Keri and her family had heard some of my Liberia stories on at least a few occasions, but everyone seemed engaged as I shared a little bit about what that experience had been like for me. Many of the songs and their accompanying music videos to which we danced at ’80s Night at the Holiday Club were tunes I had remembered first experiencing in that exciting time when MTV was a toddler. Both music and vehicles have the power to transport, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally. I’m glad that the concurrence of several unrelated events had helped me remember this very formative year of my life spent abroad among my father’s people.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Saturday, April 24, 2021.
Great article Joe; and one that reminds that for many of us, the car is simply the key that unlocks a room of memories that are the real reward of writing such as yours.
Your perceptions of how the year in Liberia positively affected your father’s relationship in your family is really keen. Every family of course is different in its own way, but I think it must be particularly difficult to migrate from one vastly different culture to another as an adult and then to integrate into that different culture as thoroughly as by marrying into it. Albeit that your dad had spent time growing up in Europe, I still imagine that it was difficult to be in his position at times. I know that you’ve reflected on this in other writing, but you’re richer for having experienced his experiences, and fortunately being able to process that.
And thanks for that Land Cruiser. It makes me smile to think of someone driving that around the streets of Chicago (in good shape)…all set up to leave a city parking space and head out to the wilderness…or an advertising photo shoot. Or both.
Thank you, Jeff. I honestly think that (like me) my dad has found a way to be comfortable in any space in which he found himself. We create out own happiness and contentment, and I saw him as being almost eternally optimistic.
I think that part of what had made him so effective as a professor (besides his deep knowledge and insights on the subject matter) was that he always seemed to find some common ground on which to meet others where they were. I saw this in his interactions with other adults and wanted that so much for myself. I give him grace because I’m sure there were some things about me to which he couldn’t fully relate.
The famous FJ 60 is well sought after for the trendroid in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I often see one in very good condition parked in Brooklyn Heights neighborhood when I take a walk during lunch break.
The joke for FJ 60 is 60 means it could not run beyond 60 mph.
Now that you mention it, I can’t remember even having ridden in one of these past only a handful of miles per hour! So while I have no frame of reference as to how slow or fast they were (I can speak only to their apparent capabilities as 4WD vehicles, as a passenger), I like the 60 mph joke. I can’t remember having seen this Toyota since.
When I first met my brother-in-law in the early 80s he was driving one of these, but not in a bright colour. He was from Trinidad and moved to Montreal as a teenager and I guessed that Land Cruisers had a certain aura in Trinidad, as the did in Liberia. I don’t remember ever having a ride in it, as if you are in downtown Montreal you don’t get you car out for a sort trip, you take the Metro.
Major cities with good public transportation mean, for many of us, that we don’t ride in private passenger vehicles. The only times I ever do is when I need to take a ride share when in a hurry, which is very rarely. I remember my family having looked at purchasing a Ford Bronco 4WD for a move to Liberia that never happened. I don’t know much about Ford truck quality from the late ’70s, but given Toyota’s generally bulletproof nature by that point (aside from rust issues), it might have been a toss-up in terms of whether the Bronco or a Land Cruiser might have served us better.
A magnificent, no-nonsense car. There is no clearer evidence how superfluous and hypocritical SUV ideology is.
I love the apparent functionality of this Land Cruiser. It seems like the Swiss Army knife of SUVs. No muss, no fuss. Everything one needs, and nothing one doesn’t.
Well, I would’nt classify it as a SUV. More a MUV – Multiple Utility Vehicle.
These were & are great vehicles, reflected by current prices also arising from scarcity due to proclivity to rust. My son-in-law grew up mostly in Saudi Arabia due to his father’s job as a geologist at Aramco, and they always owned Land Cruisers or Nissan Patrols (wish we had those here!). He gleefully relates how he and a friend once went out in the desert for an expedition, the friend in a brand-new Land Rover, he in the family LC. When the friend’s new LR promptly broke down he took him back to Riyadh to arrange for a tow. Their older LC never had a problem in all the years that they owned it. Back in CO now they own a Tundra and an xTerra, and would never co sider a Land Rover.
I wonder when corrosion protection became more of a priority at Toyota. It seems the automaker had really nailed the engineering aspects of its products by the time these Land Cruisers were new, if not before.
One would assume that given their nature and the environments in which some of these would be used, and that paint chips and the like would ensue, a greater focus on rust protection might have been a priority.
That’s a cool story about your SIL’s experience. For what a Land Rover generally costs (at least here in the U.S.), one would have thought there would have been way fewer problems with the ones you described.
Nice ;
So much loving information here .
One of my Nephews spent decades in Liberia building libraries .
-Nate
Thanks, Nate. And it’s a small world.
The memories a vehicle can bring back!
Those used to be so common on the roads here. I don’t really feel these are an SUV, they’re a much more serious piece of kit. This generation especially were not to be regarded as a city plaything, they were too crude for that. Take them off road, to the environment they were designed for, and there’s almost no stopping them.
Although the Nissan Patrol was equally well regarded at the time (according to some, even tougher!), if you travel in the real outback – South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territory – Land Cruisers seem to be pretty much the default vehicle. I can well understand why the LBT provided the Muellers with one.
Thanks, Peter. About the Nissan Patrol, I honestly don’t remember seeing any other brands of (serious) SUVs in Liberia that year that weren’t either Toyota Land Cruisers of various kinds (including the Jeep-like FJ40 models) or a handful of old-school Land Rovers. You and Midsommar (above) seem to agree that the term “SUV” doesn’t quite fit here, but what I think that speaks more to is what the idea of an SUV has become in modern terms.
In many cases, an SUV is mostly a more capable family hauler – a minivan with muscle and traction / AWD capability. I don’t know what else to call the featured Land Cruiser; That’s an acronym I can’t come up with yet.
I also don’t remember the Muellers’ Land Cruiser ever being down for the count for any significant length of time. Either Rev. Mueller was really handy with repairs or the machine was pretty solid. Or both.