It was the first vehicle our family had that ran on Unleaded. It killed Dad to have to play close to a nickle more per gallon, so, he talked with Denny at the garage, and Denny did a few little illegal fixes that made the truck unsellable. I watched as the small, wiry master mechanic took a sand point well tip and drove it into the filler pipe, making it big enough to to accept the nozzle of the Regular pump. I can't remember what else he did, but, Dad drove out two hours later and never put Unleaded in the beast again.
Six months after Dad brought the truck home, we were doing some field work. When Dad bought the farm, it was split into sections--one area for cattle, one for pigs, another for sheep, and about 10 acres of field. The first thing Dad did was sell off the sheep and refenced their pastures for cattle. Some of the cattle pasture then became fields, and by the time I was four, we were completely livestock free. Well, we didn't have any livestock on our own, but we rented out the pasture land for almost ten more years. But, then, Dad decided that he didn't want livestock anymore--he just wanted fields. So, we started pulling up fences.
Sheep fence, at least around where I'm from, looks like a mesh made of galvanized wire, the holes four inches by four inches. If sheep aren't grazing around the fencelines, the canary grass grows into it, twineing it into the ground. By the time we started rolling that stuff, we hadn't had sheep for almost fifteen years. I asked Dad once about how much of that shit was on the farm, and he estimated close to six miles.
I think he guessed low.
Anyway, after pulling the staples from the posts and yanking the posts from the ground, Dad and I would take the truck or tractor along the line and pick up the posts before rolling the fence. I was 10 at the time that April afternoon, and Dad looked at me.
"Think you can drive?"
"Huh?," I replied, shocked that Dad asked.
"Think you can drive?"
"I....I...I...think...I can. Yeah!"
The adrenalin was pumping hard and fast as he motioned me to scoot across the seat. He reached down, pulled the seat forward so I could reach the pedals and steer (and see over the dash board through the steering wheel). It wasn't like I'd never driven before. Hell, I'd been driving the tractor since I was old enough to sit on the seat. Granted, to push the clutch in, I needed to stand on it, but, I could still drive. I got settled in and Dad gave me a quick set of instructions.
"Keep it down here in D1. Don't shift at all. That's the gas, that's the brake. Now, you don't have a radiator cap to steer by, but, if you basially track down the left side of the driveway, you'll do okay. If I lift my hand like this..." Dad lifted his hand like a cop directing traffic..."I want you to stop as fast as you can. Think you can do this?"
"Yeah!" I was excited, and scared, and soaked up everything Dad told me.
Dad went to the left side of the truck and picked up the cedar post lying on the edge of the ditch, dropping it in the bed. After picking up two more and tossing them in as well, he pounded on the back corner of the truck and yelled, "okay. Pull ahead. And GO SLOW!" My foot eased off the pedal and I let the engine ease the truck ahead. It rumbled along like a giant bug, and Dad kept walking alongside. It wasn't hard for him to keep up, reaching down and picking up, tossing them in. Finally, we got to the end of the driveway, and I hit the brake. Dad turned and looked at me, pulled out his pack of Pall Malls, lit up and then opened the passanger door.
"Why'd ya stop?"
"I can't drive on the road. Can I?"
Dad looked at me for a moment, then stood, and looked down the road to the south, then back up to the north. No one was on the gravel road, and he pulled the cigarette from his mouth, using it as a pointer. "Just give it a slow turn, and when you think the truck has gone far enough, let the wheel go until it's going straight again. Just keep going like you are and it'll be alright."
"You sure?"
"Jesus. Yes, dammit. Do it."
He closed the door and motioned for me to start again. I took a deep breath, then, eased my foot off the brake. The truck rolled around the corner and until the township road that lead to our farm, and we continued to harvest those posts. A quarter mile to the County Corner (the northwest corner of our farm was where three counties all came together), then turned east onto the Swamp Road. When we got to the gravel pit entrance, Dad motioned for me to pull in. I turned onto the narrow road bordered by a fairly heavy stand of hardwoods, and I had to give the motor a bit of gas to make it up the hill. Over the crest and into the pit, and Dad called for me to stop.
"Okay, I'll take it from here." I moved back to the passanger side and Dad took the road that skirted the pit and then went through the woods, eventually ending back up in the back yard next to the post pile. "We'll take care of this after supper. C'mon." And after supper, we unloaded and went back out and picked up another load of posts.
After that, I'd ask Dad if I could drive quite a bit. Depending where we were and what the weather was like, he'd agree. The second time I drove was home from the neighbor's, and when I got to the end of our driveway, I oversteered, paniced, and drove right into the ditch. Once I got the truck stopped, Dad looked at me, pulled out a cigarette, and then, in a very calm voice, asked..."What happened?"
"I paniced?" Inside, I was dying. Dad was never that calm. Why wasn't he yelling? Why didn't he just reach over and rip off my...
"Yeah. I can tell." He took a long pull on the cigarette. "Well. Just don't sit there. Go get the tractor."
"Okay!" I jumped out of the truck, got up on the driveway, and ran up that hill as fast as I could--ran the entire quarter mile up that steep hill, got the tractor, and made sure there was a chain on the platform.
When Mom asked Dad what happened, he laughed and said, "the kid paniced."
Over the years, that truck went through a hell of a lot of abuse. For a long time, the speedometer cable was broken. The radio died. Did a Lazarus. Died again and stayed dead. The weatherstripping around the passanger door continously came loose and had to be pushed back into place. The rear leaf springs had to be replaced (Dad put in springs from a 3/4 ton pickup instead). The key broke off in the ignition, so, all you needed was the door key to get it rolling. And like many Chevy trucks of that era, it developed a bad case of cancer.
Put, it kept running.
Towards the end, it got a bit harder to start. It sometimes was tempermental. But, regardless of how cold it was outside, given enough time and following the ritual of perpectual ignition, it'd cough and spit and roar into life.
Sister troll #1 was going to till Gram's garden one day early in the summer of '93, but she needed to get the Troy-bilt from her place to town. I joked that since the tiller was self-powered, all she really needed to do was start it and go. Finally, I agreed to grab the maroon beast and help her out. It started with a bit of hesitation and a blast of oil smoke, and took off. About halfway there, I turned from one road to another, stepped on the gas...
...and nothing...
The truck coasted to its death right there at the corner of County Roads 4 and 12. The worst part of that was that I was going uphill, and ended up coasting backwards trying to steer without power anything. I walked to one of the places up the road a piece, called Dad, and told him where I was. He showed up a bit later, and after checking all the fuses and the battery and everything else, we still couldn't get the truck to start. We hooked the tow strap to the Suburban and the truck, and Dad towed me home.
That was the beasts last ride until one of the neighbors bought it from Dad. He dropped a different moter in, drove it less than a 100 miles before the rearend dropped out. It went to the crusher not long after that.
Haven't thought about that truck for a long time. For some reason, though, this morning, I had a long, long dream that I now owned and drove the old Maroon Beast. Yeah. It's all good.
