BROOKINGS — If you don’t have earplugs, use your fingers. That was advisable for a few minutes Friday afternoon at Bobcat Garage in the Brookings High School Career & Technical Education Center: a pair of big-wheeled behemoth monster trucks flashed their lights and roared in a fashion that would have made the king of the jungle sound puny.
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BROOKINGS — If you don’t have earplugs, use your fingers. That was advisable for a few minutes Friday afternoon at Bobcat Garage in the Brookings High School Career & Technical Education Center: a pair of big-wheeled behemoth monster trucks flashed their lights and roared in a fashion that would have made the king of the jungle sound puny.
It was just a hint of the Monster Truck Nitro Tour that took place during a pair of shows at the Dakotah Bank Center in Brookings on Saturday. Apparently this is the first time monster trucks have performed at the Center.
Accompanying the trucks were three members of the Tweedy family team: father Rodney, 53, and sons Austin, 31, and Cameron, 22. Another son, Logan, was at the Dacotah Bank Center readying things for the Saturday competition.
Rodney has been driving monster trucks for about 22 years. “This is a job, just like any other job,” he explained. “I get paid a salary. We drive for a gentleman who owns these trucks. That’s how we make our living.” And monster truck drivers are “very competitive.”
And what’s the draw, the thrill that brings people out to see and hear the trucks? “The monster trucks entertain the kids with all the neat tricks: doing some wild donuts or stopping and standing right on its nose,” Rodney explained. “It’s the thrill and the rush of the kids and the parents to see something in person where they’ve watched it on TV so many times.
“My biggest thing that’s kept me in this all these years is seeing the kids get so excited, so happy. They’re grinning from ear to ear. My goal is to try to make as many people happy as I can. … There’s so much bad stuff going on in the world, so if I put a smile on a kid’s face, or an adult’s, I’ve done my job.”
Something impressive for automotive instructor Rick Grimsley was that, under his watchful direction, his student-mechanics changed the monster tires on one of the monster trucks. The students had to change tires from regular to monster and back again, because with the monster tires on the truck couldn’t get through the Bobcat Garage doors.
Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.
