A 'Southern Crush'

Pleasant Cook was tearing up dirt tracks in a monster truck since before she could legally drive on the highway.

Now, at 17 and a senior at Woodland High School, she looks more like the cheerleader type than the monster truck type, but her mother, Sherri, said Pleasant's commitment hasn't wavered since she was motoring around in go-karts and four-wheelers as a child.

"We tried cheerleading," Sherri said.

"It didn't work out," Pleasant concluded.

So instead of a couple hundred people at a football game, Pleasant, nicknamed "4x4 Barbie," performs in front of thousands in her pink-and-black 1/3-size monster truck "Southern Crush."

Seventeen-year-old Pleasant Cook climbs into her -size monster truck, "Southern Crush."Laura Simon

Cook performs all over the country, jumping ramps, clearing crushed cars, doing doughnuts and a host of other monster truck tricks.

"It's a five-minute freestyle show," Pleasant explained. "My favorite trick to do is the reverse doughnut."

She said it wasn't too difficult learning how to drive the monster truck initially.

"It's a lot like a car," she said. The motor inside "Southern Crush" was actually swiped from a used Honda Civic.

"The hardest part was getting used to the rear-wheel steering," she said.

But being strapped in and helmeted in a jacked-up truck means visibility can be a problem. To ensure safety, she and her father, Eddie, walk the track before each show so Pleasant has a better idea of when to, for example, accelerate for a jump.

Not all the risks can be avoided, though. She said her worst crash was about two years ago. Sherri has the incident on tape, but said she filmed it while looking away out of worry.

Pleasant said she hit the ramp going too fast, launching about 12 feet into the air and landing first on the front left-side tire. The force of the impact caused the truck to flip clockwise, damaging the chassis as well as the driver.

Most of her shows, though, go as planned, and her reputation has become such that she recently was invited to perform in an expo in front of pro drivers.

She said her ultimate goal is to join their ranks in Monster Jam, the professional monster truck circuit. But first, she's focused on becoming the world's youngest driver of a full-size monster truck.

She's still got about a year to make the leap, and her experiences so far bode well. Monster trucks inhabit a typically male-dominated arena, so Pleasant's accomplishments (featured on the cover of Diesel World magazine, multiple lucrative sponsorships, youngest female builder at a prestigious expo in Las Vegas) are all the more impressive.

But she said she's not one to be intimidated easily.

"Some drivers and tourists expect more of me," she said. "But I just have to show them what I can do."

And in the meantime, she tries to just be a normal kid. Sort of.

Her senior pictures, for example, were taken with her monster truck, and at her favorite restaurant, In-N-Out Burger in California.

She and her mother have only had about two free weekends in the past year because her schedule is so tight.

"I almost missed my senior prom," she said, but then shrugged it off. "I'd rather be with trucks, anyway."

tgraef@semissourian.com

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