I finally traded my truck Saturday. It was like putting a child up for adoption. Sure, it was a big, ugly and misshapen child, but it was mine. For those of you who might not understand, I got my truck in 1993 from my father, who decided it was too hard for him to climb in and out of a full-size four-wheel-drive Ford. It was a 1992 model, grey with an extended cab. I now suspect that he didn’t make me the owner for the reason he stated, but instead helped me get a vehicle I otherwise couldn’t afford because he could see how much I liked it.

Anyway, I started driving the truck while it still belonged to my father, taking it to get supplies at the hardware store or to fetch something at the farm store. It was purchased right after my parents purchased the small farm where they live now. It has about six or so acres of good pasture land with a nice old barn by the driveway. When I first sat in the truck, it still had plastic on the floorboard and it had only about 100 miles on it. When I last sat in it, it had better than 135,000 miles on it. That’s a lot of miles, especially to be primarily from local roads.

It survived three accidents, two of which were not reported to insurance companies, and has been declared a total loss at least once. Wait a minute, I just remembered another time that someone hit it in the driveway, and there was that time that I backed into the tree, and that other time that I slid down the hill into the stump…I don’t think I can remember how many times the truck was wrecked, to be honest. I could look at the truck and tell you where most of the dents came from and what was going one that put them there.

The first accident took place when I was leaving for work one morning and slid down the driveway and into the side of the barn. The road had iced over and I took off in my usual fashion — steering wheel in one hand, cup of hot coffee in the other. Once I realized how icy the drive was, it was too late to do anything about it. I was just along for the ride. After it stopped, there was a nice-sized dent in the front bumper and a small crack in the trim that holds in the headlight.

After that, I think I had to hook the front bumper to a telephone pole with a chain and back up to pull the bumper free of the tire. It was almost as good as new.

Before I even got it, there were a few dents here and there, like the one on the tailgate where Dad backed into the side of the storage building and the one on the back end where I hit it while trying to load pallets for firewood.

But the one that really mattered took place in 1997, at which time I was working here at the newspaper. I was on my way to work one morning along a small dirt road when I met another car and the truck got too close to the shoulder. It had been raining for several days and the fence, shoulder and all gave way, and I watched helplessly as the truck overturned on its side. The rollover broke the windshield, dented the entire side of the truck and left it all a little worse for wear. Once it was looked over by the insurance adjuster, he declared the truck a total loss.

Not to be outdone, I bought it back from the insurance company, had the windshield replaced and put it through my version of an auto body shop with a crowbar, hammer, fencing tool and other implements of destruction. By the time I was finished, the door opened and closed and the windshield supports were straight enough to hold a piece of glass. After it was all inspected by the state, I put it back on the road and had driven it ever since.

In fact, the truck became like a part of the family, hence my association of it with a child. It was with me through one of the most volatile times in my life, my late 20s. It and I both survived, if only just barely.

It has hauled incredible loads of firewood, gravel, dirt, scrap metal and sand. I have slept inside it several times, camped in the back and traveled within the confines of its cab. I have heard it said that familiarity breeds contempt and I can say that might be true given the way I treated the truck in the latter years that I owned it. I never washed the truck after it was wrecked, since I knew it wouldn’t look very good ever again. I didn’t vacuum it out or clean the windows very often and it usually was piled full, front to back, with various tools and items used to work on things. Sometimes the inside was piled up with cans or bottles, wrappers and junk mail. It was nasty, but it was comfortable.

Even up until the day I let it go, all of the accessories still worked on it, from the cigarette lighter to the parking brake. However, one important item had ceased operating — the driver’s side interior door handle. In order to get out of the truck, the electric window must be rolled down and the exterior handle button depressed. That sounds easy enough until the keys are forgotten until after the door is shut. That means you are trapped and have to climb into the passenger seat to get out.

The ‘new’ old truck that I traded for seems to be in good working shape. It is a 1990 pickup that a fellow in West Virginia bought new at the young age of 70. He died at 84 after suffering illnesses and health problems for several years, leaving the truck sitting alone in the driveway for several years. I was told that he drove the truck around his own property and occassionally to an auction sale, but otherwise didn’t go very far or very fast.

Other than the paint, faded somewhat by the sun, the truck is close enough to perfect and has fewer than 12,000 actual miles. I had to take it to a local shop for a little maintenance earlier this week and there may be a few more things to be done. It’s hard on one to sit that long. While I think it is nice, it still isn’t my old truck. I saw the fellow I sold the truck to the other day and he told me he would be willing to sell me the truck back for a very reasonable price. I almost bought it for sentimentality alone, but I’ve never really suffered from being overly sentimental. I suppose I will just let it go and work on building new memories in this truck, provided I can get it to last for the next 14 years or so. If they keep lasting that long, I likely will not survive many more trucks; if I wreck the next ones as many times as the old grey one, I know I won’t.

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