There were, I saw here, some vehicles with ported spark before it became an emissions requirement. Some people get pretty vociferous about their interpretation of the truth, is my take.
I'm running manifold vacuum to my distributor. The engine has always run hot, and I made many incremental changes to get it to run "normally". I've used different temp gauges to verify the results, so it's not a gauge problem. The biggest help was using a high-flow thermostat.
BoT, your truck came with ported spark, and yes it was connected to the vacuum nipple on the driver's side front of the carburetor. My truck was originally ported spark, but like I said, I routed full manifold vacuum to it.