European Vacations

Monday, April 8, 2013

Brown Ford Pick Up

When my younger siblings and I were growing up, my dad liked to invite us to go with him on a "toot", aka, a ride in the pickup truck. He originally had a blue 1960's pickup, that looked exactly like the one that Redd Fox would drive on the TV show entitled, "Sanford and Son".  However, during the summer of 1972, Dad bought a brand new brown Ford pickup, that seemed to last a lifetime for us, unlike the rest of the bomber vehicles that we had.
 I have been deprived a car for a couple of years now, and the one that I shared with my mother quit as well. I have so many horror stories about the car bombers that my dad would buy, that our back 40 looked like an automobile junkyard! However, the brown Ford pickup was my favorite one of all.  Not only would my dad take us on toots to the West Side Cafe so that we could visit with my paternal grandfather, and eat a Hershey's Candy Bar , for example, but my mother would use it to drive to Minneapolis, particularly if I had an eye doctor appointment at North Memorial Hospital, and to visit with my maternal grandparents as well.
That pickup fit us just fine, thank you very much. None of us needed a car seat, and we could either sit on Mom's lap, or on top of each other, provided that we got along! (I definitely felt outnumbered 3 to 1.) It even could drive through the snow! Well, except for a snow storm in 1975. Dad, Mom, my three younger brothers, and I, took a ride to visit with the Ray and Beatrice Waldock Family on a Sunday afternoon. We stayed for supper, in spite of the snow coming down rather hard. By 9:00 pm, the truck would not start, and the roads were bad. They would eventually cancel school the next day, but in the mean time, we had a nice slumber party with the Waldock Family. We did make it home safely the next day, even though my aunt was frantically worried about where we were, as Mom was pregnant with number five.  We drove that truck until it rusted through in 1980. It was reliable and fun to ride in.