The top third of 16-year-old Steven Hill is buried in a wheel. He's taking out lug nuts, but you can't actually see him doing it. What you can see are his recently strapped-on kneepads, the drooping waistline of his pants and, if you're lucky, an elbow as it reaches back to pull the nut from the bolt. It's not that Steven Hill is a small guy — he's not. It's that he's working on a very big truck. A monster truck.
It took the Hills — Steven and his parents Orville and Gale — six months to even come up with the right name for their truck. After spying a monkey in the stuffed-animal aisle at Toys R Us, Gale knew she'd found her theme. And after discarding Monkey Business and Grease Monkey as possibilities, the family settled on Monkey N' Around. Taking six months to name your truck may seem like a luxury, but it was a luxury the Hills could afford. Building a monster truck from scratch, even when you own a mechanic shop, takes a while. Sixteen months, to be exact.
"All we started with," Gale says, "were a couple sticks of steel."
After two years of tinkering, those sticks have morphed into a giant purple and blue truck built to do donuts, drive on two wheels and roll effortlessly over defenseless cars pulled from the junkyard. And on Saturday night, the Hills and their creation made it down from their home in Ocala to the St. Pete Times Forum for the Rolling Thunder Monster Truck Challenge. In front of a crowd of 10,200, Monkey N' Around competed in two events against seven other trucks — but not for cash or a title. The winners are decided by audience applause, and according to Orville the only real prize is a hefty dose of satisfaction. "If the truck is able to drive in to the trailer at the end of the night," he says, "you done good."
It's not just the lack of a trophy that makes monster truck events a little different. What other sport lets fans in an hour early to walk around on the field getting autographs and playing with equipment? Can you imagine a bunch of kids running around the field at Raymond James an hour before game time, trying on guys' helmets?
Once the fans have taken their seats and been led in a quick shout-out to the lord and savior (apparently the organizers assume that all 10,000 fans have the same one), the trucks start to rev their engines. They're introduced like boxers before a fight: In this corner, a 2001 Ford with 2,000 horsepower, hailing from St. Louis, it's Biiiiiiiig Foooooooot! The list goes on. The Terminator. God, Guts and Glory. And, straight out of Ocala, Monkey N' Around.
With all the trucks pulled out on the floor during the autograph session, nobody notices the 10 poor cars quietly awaiting their death in neat rows of five. Each of the monster truck events, in some way, involves driving over a line of cars. And as the freestyle competition is about to begin, it's tough not to feel for them. Yeah, they look OK right now. But once that first wheel hits, the cars will be about 3 feet shorter and missing several vital organs.
Orville climbs up the undercarriage of the truck and slides gracefully into the racing seat the Hills bought off a retiring Indy car. He straps the 6-inch wide purple seatbelt across his chest, throws on his helmet and pulls Monkey N' Around out of its spot on the edge of the floor.
The truck takes a turn around the stadium, and then addresses the waiting cars. The engine revs a few more times — the roar is almost deafening — and then it's off, barreling toward the line. The truck's front wheels fly up upon impact — picture a rearing elephant — and the momentum pulls it forward so that when it finally does land, the wheels come down with a devastating crash on the fourth car in line, blowing out its windows and crumpling its frame like an empty beer can in a frat boy's hands.
Steve got his first taste of this type of carnage at a monster truck show in Ocala when he was 12. "It was pretty much the coolest thing I ever did," he remembers. He was hooked from the start.
Most 12-year-olds try to get their parents to buy them a bike. Craftier ones may try to stop Mom from selling her Oldsmobile so they can have some wheels when their license finally arrives.
But Steven Hill wasn't your average 12-year-old. He was thinking big. Really big.
It helped that his parents were car folks already. Orville had been driving 4x4s since he was a teenager. And Gale, who Steven says needed some convincing at first, was sold after the family worked as a pit crew for another team's monster truck for three years. "Then we really knew we wanted to do this," she says.
Though it's a family project, the truck is in Steven's name. And while Orville does the driving now, the job will be Steven's once he's 18. Until then, he's relegated to driving the truck around their place in Ocala. That might seem like an eternity to most 16-year-olds, but Steven's got his head on straight. He knows that most kids his age aren't going to be crushing cars anytime soon.
"It's worth the wait," he says as he checks the engine before the show. "It's fun just being here."
Perhaps Steven's nonchalance is aided by the presence of his girlfriend, 15-year-old Brandi Turner. The two have been together for a year, and Brandi joined the Monkey N' Around team just two weeks after they started dating. Everybody plays a role on the crew. Orville drives. Gale works the pits. Steve takes care of the truck. And Brandi? She's in charge of keeping the thing looking good.
"I'm the windshield chick," she says smiling.
The Hills — and Brandi — aren't in it for the money. It took $125,000 to build the truck, and even though they buy most of the parts second hand, parts for a monster truck aren't cheap. Used tires alone can cost as much as $4,000. The truck has a few sponsors, but they tend to donate sparkplugs and oil rather than cash. And the appearance fee the Hills get for a show like the one at The Forum covers little more than their expenses. And that's if nothing breaks. If something does go wrong with the truck, they are way in the hole.
Saturday night wasn't much of a success for Monkey N' Around. Orville lost third gear in the freestyle competition, and when it came to the races he could barely get over the cars.
But monster trucking isn't about winning. It's about the noise, the power and the pride. And it's about the Hills. "It keeps the family together," says Orville. "Instead of just dropping everyone off at the mall."
This article appears in Dec 8-14, 2004.