When I was 12, I got my first driving lesson in the old black Ford. The truck has a NP-435 four-speed with a granny gear, so it was a very forgiving teacher. As time went on and our family grew, we bought a van for traveling, and the old black Ford became a work truck on the farm. I spent many hours feeding cattle, hauling wood, and pulling trailers with that old truck. Somewhere along the line, dad drove over some rough ground, and scraped most of the exhaust away.
My dad, brothers, and I mowed lawns in the summer, and we used the truck to move mowers from place to place. We always kept two five-gallon cans of gasoline in the back. I wasn’t old enough to drive legally, so when it was time to quit for the day, dad would bring the truck to town, pick up whomever was working, and take us home.
Dad had a little bit of a lead foot, so he often punched the throttle on his way out of town. When he let off, the home made exhaust would let out a ringing chorus of backfires. One day, leaving town, dad punched the pedal and, unbeknownst to us, a gas can overturned and ruptured. When dad let off the throttle, a backfire ignited the spilled gasoline and the camper shell and bed became a raging inferno. Dad drove down main street at 70 miles an hour, straight to the fire station (he was a volunteer fireman) where he grabbed a hose and extinguished the flames. That incident melted the plastic windows, but we kept the camper shell in place, paint bubbled and windows sagging.
The next year, when I was 16, I had a hay crew. We had two big trucks and when we were going to be working for the same farmer for a few days, parked the big trucks at the farm and I drove the Ford back and forth to the field. Two boys rode up front with me, and two more rode in the back under the ruined camper shell, with tool boxes, spare tires, and water jugs. Every time we went out, my friends encouraged me to ‘see just how fast this old truck will go.’ One day, I relented.
I expect we were going somewhere north of 100 miles an hour when the right rear tire blew. The Ford rolled over on the dead tire, fishtailing like mad, and I worked the steering wheel frantically. In my mind, a drumbeat: “I just killed us-I just killed us-I just killed us.” By some miracle I managed to keep the truck between the ditches and we rolled into the nearest driveway. I don’t know who was more frightened: my friends, me, or my dad. That made two near misses. Two times when this truck might very well have been destroyed. Two times when a little bit of skill, and a whole lot of luck, kept this truck in one piece.
But the old Ford couldn’t outrun time, and in 1985 something under the hood broke. Dad parked the truck, and bought a used four-wheel drive.
In 2015, I sought out the Director of the Automotive Refinishing Program at the Northwest Technical School in Maryville, Missouri. I had heard from a co-worker that the Program tried to do one restoration every year. I went to the old home place and took as many photos of the truck as I could. I showed them to Ron, and his eyes lit up at the challenge.
That June, my son, brother, and I used a dozer to push over the trees and pulled the truck out of the brush. My son and I spent days clearing out dozens of mice nests, mud dauber brood nests, and shoveling 30 years of accumulated leaves out of the bed. We cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned.
Ron and his students at Northwest Tech did all the paint and body work, stripping the truck to bare metal and starting new. My son and I rebuilt the driveline, brakes, and ran all the wiring. Ron and I installed the interior. What we couldn’t repair or refinish, we found at LMC Truck.
On March 2, 2016, I took this truck out for a drive, the first time in almost 31 years that she’d seen the highway. The memories came flooding back, and for a moment I was 16 again.
In June, on my dad’s 80th birthday, I plan to take the truck back down to our family farm and watch as he and mom go for a ride.
https://lmctrucklife.com/2016/04/1966-ford-f100-aaron-j/
That's a great story. I love seeing the old being restored and used again. There's so many stories out there like this one.
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