So long, Old Paint...
Got a call from Mom. The kid who wanted to buy my old truck finally came by and drug it away.
"Reds", as he was called back then, was a '61 Ford Econoline pickup that i had bought in 1978, i think, for $600. As you can see in the picture, it was a really cool old truck in it's day. The guy i bought it from had fixed it up with fat tires and slots and the interior was covered in this yellow/orange/gold deep shag carpet (on the headliner too!!!) and had high-back red vinyl seats. Plus, since it was a 5-window, it was pretty rare, even when i had bought it, since it still had it's curved glass windows intact. Way cool!!
i was working at the bowling alley (as well as the gas station and at Six Flags) and had a little extra money. Most of my cash went to pay for college; you didn't get financial aid back then unless you were dirt poor or a minority. Sure, my old '72 Dodge Dart was still running (i think it was on its second engine by then), but this was FUN and COOL!! The Dart had been a hand-me-down from my mom, older sister and two older brothers and by the time it was given to me as my high school graduation present (since by then it was pretty worthless as a trade-in) it had been through hell...and a couple ditches.
Not too long after i got it, the engine started flopping around and we realised that the motor mounts were rusted away. My dad helped my make new ones out of (get this!) wood! Honestly!! And it held up pretty good.
There is really a lot of space in there behind the seats (a precursor to the now ubiquitous "Extra Cab" or "King Kab" trucks) and someone could always sit on the engine compartment (and often did...sometimes two or three). Seatbelts weren't that big a deal back then.
In the summer of '78, my buddy, Dave, and i got off work at Six Flags and were getting ready to come home. After starting the beast up, smoke started coming out of the engine compartment. Someone driving by said that flames were coming out the bottom. We bailed and, fortunately, i had a fire extinguisher and got the fire out. It DID singe the carpet and melted the side bolsters on the seats. As it turned out, the fuel lines had dry-rotted and were spitting gas which caught on fire. OUCH!!
Later that same summer, we were crusing with our buddy Rick and going to the Varsity theatre in the U-City Loop for a midnight showing of "Rocky Horror" which was a new thing to do back then. We got pulled over in the little, speedtrap hamlet of Marlborough. We got rousted for a good half-hour on the sidewalk and the cop kept going through the car, sure we had some pot on us. He even pulled the carpet down off of the headliner. Man, he was a dick. He finally gave me a ticket for speeding which i took to court and actually won. We told the judge all the shit he gave us and the judge just dismissed the ticket. He scowled at us as well left the court with cocky grins on our faces. They have since shut down their police department and turned all law enforcement functions over to the county.
We did a lot of partying in a short period of time in that truck. In the summer of '79, we took one last trip down to Table Rock Lake before we went into the Army. It was sputtering and we weren't sure we were going to make it home, but it hung in there. i pulled it onto a chunk of grass on the downhill side of the yard and figured that i could spend sometime fixing it up when i got out in a couple years. Well, i'm sure we all know by know how that turned out. Over the years, a small tree even sprouted up behind it and my dad had to chainsaw it down.
So now it's gone. We let him have it for $500. Heck, the glass alone it worth it. But he'll have the time to fix it, something i won't have for a long time. Mom asked when i was coming to get the money and i told her that i figure that it works out to $20/year for parking the damn thing there.
All things must pass.