Another '62 Dodge half ton pickup story

It was a pretty decent spring day and I was headed someplace or maybe it was no place but either way I wasn't in much of a hurry.

I do remember I was a bit scungy and the pickup needed a good cleaning. The outside wasn't all that too awful bad, but the inside of the cab needed something. It was getting kind of funky.

I was passing by a fire station and it looked like the firemen were doing some kind of cleaning and they were fire hosing the pavement.

Now I am a person that does well when a target opportunity shows it's face and this seemed to be a pretty good one. I pulled into the fire station and asked the fireman if I could use the fire hose. He said I could.

I quickly went through the cab and put everything in the tool box. The tool box in the cab was water tight and was large enough to hold practically all of my worldly belongings. I also pulled out the army blankets I was using as a seat cover I had installed a couple of days earlier. The rest of the stuff I crammed into a duffel bag and parked it inside the fire house. I also ducked inside and took off my clothes and donned a pair of cutoffs.

I took the fire hose from the fireman and gave the outside and bottom of the dilapidated old rig a pretty good hosing down and got all of the caked mud off of it. 

I can't say it looked good because the sky blue paint was pretty faded but is sure looked a lot better.

Then to the fireman's surprise, I opened both doors and let fly with the hose and swamped the entire inside of the old work horse out.

Dirt, grit, grime and loose items came out the passenger door. After a couple of minutes I trades sides and more crap came out the driver's door.

The seats were vinyl and actually cleaned up pretty good, considering. The hose had enough pressure to knock a lot of the grease and grime off of them. Not that it really mattered because I covered them with a couple of surplus GI blankets.

The fireman looked somewhat worried. He said he was afraid it wouldn't start and it would be stuck there.

Not to worry, the rig fired right up and I moved it well out of the way and watched as water drained through the rotten floor boards. They had been patched with pieces of a thick industrial conveyor belt.

Then I hosed off the pavement and cleaned up after myself.

When I went back to the firehouse to pick up my duffel bag the fireman generously offered to let me use the washing machine. I took him up on his offer and left the doors open on the pickup to let things dry out while I took care of my laundry.

The laundry room had a shower, too so I got myself cleaned up.

When I was done I went to the pickup and fished a six pack out of the cooler and put it in the fire house refrigerator and told the fireman the beer was his. He was pretty grateful.

The inside was still pretty wet but the vinyl seats were dry enough so I could replace the army blankets so I did. The blankets were porous enough so that they wouldn't keep the seat from drying out.

It was getting near lunch time and the fireman offered to buy if I would fly. It was off to the nearby burger place on foot and I was treated to a surprisingly good burger and some great fries. We ate and washed it down with a couple of cold beers. It was pretty much a volunteer fire department and nobody back then gave a damn if a volunteer  fireman had a cold one on a hot day. 

When I got back from the burger stand I saw the fireman had propped up one of those enormous evacuation fans and it was blowing the cab dry.

I helped out a bit at the fire house and learned a little and a couple of hours the truck was pretty much dried out and I left and headed off to some girl's house.

All in all it had been a pretty good day and proved to be a pretty good evening to top it off. The following day I returned to my job of hanging siding on a condo project and spun the wheels of industry for a few days.

There was a lot to be said about how they built pickups back in the day. They could be hosed out with a fire hose and still fire right up and drive off into the sunset. If you kept the distributor and plug wires reasonably dry they would run. They were simple machines. Today I would not even consider doing such a thing because of all the electronics involved in today's machinery.

Then again, that old work horse did need repairs a lot more often that one of today's pickups. However because they were fairly simple repairs could be done with simple tools.

Sometimes I wish they could combine the two and make simple vehicles that ran as well as they do today but were as easy to take care of. After all, most of the fancy stuff they put in today's trucks I never really use, anyway. 










To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY