Almost 18 years ago, my dad bought his first brand new Toyota pick-up truck. He used year’s worth of his hours of overtime, saved archaically by hiding twenties in the pages of two thick photo albums he kept under his side of the bed. I stumbled upon it once when I was snooping for Christmas presents and asked my mom about it. She said that was my Dad’s new truck fund, and when he filled up the last page of the second book he could buy a one. It was a few years after discovering the book to fill it, because raising a family with 2 kids on a truck driver’s salary didn’t get leave him much to squirrel away.
The truck in question was 4WD four cylinder stick, jet black with silver trim, tow & plow package, but was missing all the luxuries like power windows and air conditioning. It wasn’t because it he didn’t want it, but he didn’t think it was a necessity. It was to be a work truck for a working man.
I remember the day we went to go pick it up. He was so happy because he haggled the salesman down pretty low, and then got him to include the plow package at no extra charge by insinuating that because it was the middle of spring, and it wasn’t loaded, it wasn’t going to move off their lot for months. Once he got the plow included, he managed to get them to toss in free mud flaps and floor mats (a few of you may now know where I get it from). As the dealership was preparing the documents and such, my Mom, Dad and I sat in my Mom’s car robbing the pages of the photo albums of their riches to put the hefty down payment on the truck. It was so surreal to be surrounded by all that money and the look of accomplishment and pride in my father’s eyes was amazing.
Once off the lot, he never treated it like it was new. The first thing he did was load the bed with gravel to line the driveway. Then it was used to pull pieces of shale out of the earth to help with my mom’s love of rock gardens. He would take my dog Casey with him to plow snow and end up doing the neighbors driveways for free because he had so much fun doing it. It also took him back and forth to work for 15 years until it was so beat up and ram shackled that it wouldn’t pass inspection one day. My dad then decided to make it just a plow/yard truck and get himself a new one, which sadly, he only got to enjoy for a few months before he died.
When my dad passed away, I had always assumed that I would get the truck. I attempted to bring it up one day to my Mom a few months after he passed by asking her what she wanted to do with it. She stated that she loved the truck, and was not planning on getting rid of it. I was ok with it, as and I wasn’t about say anything to a woman who had just lost her husband. But I secretly thought of the truck as mine.
I was talking to my Mom the other day and she nonchalantly told me that she’s decided to sell the pick-up. She doesn’t need it anymore and its taking up space at her new house. It’s not that I expected her to keep it forever, or to even give it to me . I don’t need the truck. We don’t have a place for it and we don’t have the extra money to fix it up. We're also hoping everything falls into place at the end of the year so we can move, so we’ll definitely not have room for it then.
My problem? When I think of the truck I get a clear picture of my father and who he was. They both started out tough and shiny, and then over time life and duty began to wear them down in the way of dents, rust, missing tailgates, flaking paint, flat tires, and then eventual disrepair. I can’t help but feel this immense strong connection to this rusty, beat up, pick-up truck. I feel like by letting go of the truck, I'm letting more of my father's memory go with it. But, it's just a bunch of metal, rubber and plastic, right?
I was thinking of running out to my Mom’s and taking a bunch of photos of it this weekend. But, a photo isn’t the same, you know…
Fuck. I really miss my Dad.
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