Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Today's pickup appears to be a late-90s political time capsule.
Usually, when a vehicle owner's political beliefs- be they of the strident Left or the enraged Right- are sufficiently powerful to make painting messages on the vehicle's body seem like a good idea, that person keeps the messages up to date. Not so with this '70 Chevy; after the mid-to-late 1990s, it appears that no cause fired the truck's owner up like his or her loathing for Bill Clinton.
Proposition 209, which abolished ethnic preferences in California schools, dates from 1996. You'd think there'd be at least one recent right-wing talk-radio bumper sticker on the thing, but it's all totally vintage. Now I need to find the lefty counterpart to this truck; perhaps a VW Transporter with big "EL SALVADOR IS SPANISH FOR VIETNAM" signs on the flanks in peeling, faded house paint.
Since we don't see any 307, 350, or 400 emblems on this truck, we can assume it shipped from the factory with a 250- or 292-cube inline six. Since replacement engines tend to have a revolving door into and out of the engine compartments of old Chevrolets, there's no telling what powers this truck today.
