For a few hours last week, my copper-colored Ram pickup cruised the plains of North Texas like some overdressed Duke of Dallas.

Tall, broad and powerful, the Ram Longhorn Edition offered every option a truck-loving Texan would want: a Hemi V-8, crew cab, etched leather seats, 20-inch wheels, and eight-speed automatic and four-wheel-drive.

Need a hill? The proud, polished Ram could drag one in.

And at about 7 p.m. last Wednesday, it all disappeared in a thick column of acrid brown smoke on the side of the Dallas North Tollway — $54,335 worth of truck gone in about three minutes.

I was the old hillbilly-looking guy who hopped out of the Ram just south of the Trinity Mills exit and limped away from the truck.