Old Blue

 

Junkyard, Wannaska, October, 2015

On June 1, 1966 my father-in-law, Enar Karlsson, purchased a brand new half-ton Ford pickup. It was a no-nonsense work vehicle. No radio, no AC, no  power steering. One of the few options was the rear bumper. In fact the truck came without a rear bumper. Enar paid extra for the heavy duty option, meant to last the life of the truck.

For the next 24 years, the truck was a workhorse around the Karlsson's 240 acre farm, hauling rocks, seed and fertilizer, bales of hay or straw, freshly butchered cows, or whatever else was asked of it. All the Karlsson children, Cindy, Faith, Becky, Teresa (my favorite), Pete, and Julie, learned to drive it and used it to get to work or school. Pete took it on jaunts to Manitoba where the age of inebriation was only 18.

In 1990, Enar got a new pickup and sold the Ford to Teresa and me. We used it to haul firewood or our bikes or canoe on mini-adventures. The first thing to go on the truck was the carburetor. I tried working on it, but couldn't get it right. I brought it to a mechanic in Roseau. He said the truck was "from before my time." Never take a truck to a mechanic who's younger than the truck itself. The mechanic found another carburetor and we were good for a few more years. Our three boys, Matt, Joe, and Ned learned to drive it and a couple of them used it for prom. By this time the truck had cachet. 

By the early 2000s, the truck was getting balky. You had to pour gas into the carburetor to get it started. And there was a slow leak in the brake system so you had to top up the brake master cylinder before going anywhere. In 2004 I parked the truck behind the garage and let the registration expire. I mowed around it for several years and eventually towed it to the south edge of our land where it joined the '68 VW that had brought me to Minnesota from Boston in 1973.

So there the truck sat as the years rolled by and tall grass and small trees grew up around it. It might have been there yet, but two summers ago all three of our sons and their families came home for a visit. Of course a group photo was required and someone suggested  using the truck as a backdrop. This involved a lot of weed whacking to expose the truck. 

The photo shoot got the boys thinking that maybe they should resurrect this vehicle of their youth. At first they thought they would have the truck transported to their home area south of Boston and get it running at a shop out there. They wanted to keep the exterior of the truck as it was. That's the thing these days. Get all the mechanical stuff  renewed, but leave the patina.

There's a shop between here and Badger called Shaw Classic Auto Works. We thought it might make sense to have the repairs done locally, then transport the truck to its new home. When Matt came to visit the next summer we had Dave Shaw come over and look at the truck. He said it was a perfect candidate for renovation and wrote up an estimate. The boys agreed to split the cost.  

This spring, Dave and his sons Nate and Joe, who both work in the shop with him, winched the truck onto a trailer and took it to their shop. Over the course of the summer every mechanical area of the truck was gone through and repaired or renewed as necessary: brakes, tires, clutch, alternator, belts and hoses, etc. were all replaced. The carburetor was gone though and the old points and condenser distributor was replaced with an electronic ignition model. The truck was made road worthy.

Then there was the cab floor. There was a large hole in the floor on the passenger side. The boys wanted that patched. You never know exactly what is in a can of worms till you open the can. As Dave dug into the job, he discovered the supports that held the cab to the frame were rusting out. Some sections could be replaced with ready-made metal pieces. Other sections had to fabricated and installed by Nate, Dave's welding specialist. 

Two or three times Dave had me come to the shop before he started new work, I would relay the information to the boys along with the updated estimate. They always said "Fix it so it will last." Restoring a classic vehicle is certainly cheaper than buying new, but still, it can be an expensive game.

Dave drove the truck to our place on July 4th. The exterior looked the same, but it was fun to look under the hood at the all the new parts and to see the bright blue valve cover on the 240 hp inline six cylinder engine. Also, the hole in the floor was patched and the floor was covered with a black rubber mat. Now it was just a matter of getting the truck to its new owners. I'm someone who loves a good road trip and for a while I thought about driving the truck to Massachusetts. Dave was confident the truck would make it. But eventually I came to my senses. I'm too much a slave to the comforts of the twenty-first century. 

I sent Matt the title to the truck. Getting a 54 year old truck from a different state that hadn't been registered in 16 years changed over to his name proved to be a nightmare in the pandemic shutdown. Matt spent hours on unhelpful helplines, and when he finally got into a socially distanced DMV office, he found the bored rent-a-cop security guards were into playing intimidation games.

Eventually Matt got everything squared away and sent me the Mass. plates. He contacted a car transport company and was told he could save several hundred dollars if the truck could be picked up in the Twin Cities rather than northwest Minnesota. Matt asked how I would like to drive the truck to the metro suburb of Taylors Falls where a friend of Matt's had a shop with a big parking area.

Of course I 'd like it, I told him. By the time Teresa and I got ourselves organized it was mid-October and Indian Summer had come and gone. There was an inch of snow on the ground and all the leaves were down. Heavy snow was predicted for Tuesday, the 13th, especially in the Twin Cities, so we left home Sunday morning around nine. Matt had scheduled the transport pickup for sometime on Monday. 

It never got above freezing that Sunday and there were snow flurries off and on. The truck has a decent heater but no insulation to keep the heat in, so I dressed warmly. About thirty miles into the trip, a couple of flies came to life. Normally I would try to get rid of flies, but these two became my traveling buddies. It was reassuring to see Teresa in my rear view mirror. We stopped a few times for coffee and snacks. As I mentioned, I love a good road trip.

The truck ran perfectly. I drove around 55 mph and felt a little bad for the long caravan of people behind me trying to get their boats and campers into winter storage. But I didn't feel all that bad. They could take time to enjoy all the political signs along the road. I got lots of index finger steering wheel waves from people coming towards me in less than new pickups.

We rolled into Taylors Falls around 4:30. Seven and a half hours. Not bad for a 54 year old truck. I stuck the keys in the ash tray and wrote a note with starting tips in case the transport driver was younger than the truck. We got some supper and settled into our lodgings for the night. On Monday we drove home. Driving several hours in an old truck gives you an appreciation for all the automotive advances of the past half century.

We heard from Matt that the transport driver had picked up the truck Monday evening, just missing the nine inches of snow that hit on Tuesday. The transport arrived in Quincy, Mass. on Thursday morning. Our son Ned lives nearby so he drove the truck to his house. Later, Matt's wife Heather picked up the truck and drove it to Hull where it will be parked. Matt was away on his two-week hitch on the tug. Our middle son Joe drove over with his two kids to see the new arrival. My sister Mary-Jo, who had thought of driving cross country with me in the truck, came over for a much shorter jaunt around Hull. 

Mary-Jo sent me several pics and it was strange and gratifying to see see this great old truck out in Hull instead of moldering into the earth in our back 40. Good job boys, and Shaw Classic Auto Works as well.

Happy Days, Hull, Mass. (Photo by MJ Sunnerberg)