Wednesday, June 23, 2021

some cool vehicles just remain out of sight for decades, like this Powerwagon that was used to haul wood from the forest to a monastery in Vermont


A forest fire warden bought this 1956 Dodge Power Wagon from monks on a Vermont mountain. 

Deep in the woods on Mt. Equinox, the tallest mountain in southern Vermont, a group of about 15 men have joined in a life of extreme isolation and religious devotion. 

The members of the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration have taken vows of almost total silence and separation from the outside world, and made it their mission to spend their days praying for the rest of the outside world.

They live in separate cells, mostly meditating and praying alone. They eat once a day, alone in their room — save for a once-a-week group meal. They each have a wood-burning stove that they use for heat in their individual quarters, and some tools to cut and split their own wood.

That’s where the Power Wagon comes in. 

Several members of the group work to keep the monastery running, doing chores such as cooking, cleaning and gathering fire wood. It shouldn’t be surprising then that when a group living such a hard, Spartan existence needed a truck, they chose the most basic, strong-willed machine available. It only had one option available, the drivers side armrest. 

The Power Wagon is as tough and rugged as it looks. The monks only put 27,000 miles on the Dodge in all those years, serving as a lumber wagon and ATV.

A few years back, the brothers decided that it was time to move on to a more modern iron horse, and  ‘It would be nice if someone could give it a new home,’” chuckled Mattison. “So I said, ‘Well, OK.’ And I bought it. It was all original and all garage kept, but it wound up sitting at my house

It is now helping the Vermont State Forest Fire warden for the town of Glastenbury.

“I think the only blacktop it ever saw was from the dealership to the monastery,” says Mattison. “The same brother had it since ’56 when it was new. They used it to bring in about 100 cord of wood a year and it pretty much just lived out in the woods."

https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/features/car-of-the-week-1956-dodge-power-wagon  posted about this in March 2021, and a year and a half later, Hagerty posted about it https://www.hemmings.com/stories/restoration-1956-dodge-power-wagon/

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