I am planning to submit this story to Reminisce Magazine. Their
editors will of course, heavily edit it for length. You, my beloved fans, are
getting the whole account here before it is (hopefully) published! Some of my best fans have been urging me to
publish these stories for quite sometime, so this will be my first attempt to
do so. I doubt I could find an established publisher to publish all of the
stories; as a result, I’ve been entertaining the thought of publishing them
myself at my cost. The title of the book would be something like Reflections
of a Baby Boomer. Actually, I’m sure
I could come up with a more creative title than that. In reality, I doubt I
could afford the cost, and doubt there would be a large enough market for it to
be profitable, but it’s something to fantasize about now and then when I forget
to take my medication.
I have previously
written several accounts of my first car, a 1955 Ford. This was purchased in
early 1964 several months before I turned 16 that December and finally
acquired my coveted driver’s license. However, it just occurred to me that
wasn’t my first car. My first vehicle was actually purchased by my grandmother
for me circa 1954 when I was 5 or so.
It was a yellow “pickup truck” with black lettering. Even at this young age, I
was ahead of my time by having a pickup truck used for general transportation
as they popularly are today. As I’ve so often declared, “I don’t follow trends, I start them”!
The “truck” was a pedal-type that was “driven” by
alternately pushing down on the pedals. It was made entirely of metal with real
rubber tires. Of course, these days, the whole thing would be made of 98.814%
plastic and imported from Taiwan or from some other oriental sweatshop. I
constantly “drove” that truck all over the house. I would have preferred to
drive it outside, but it proved to be too difficult on the grass, so I spent
most of the time driving it in the house. That was probably the ONLY (very
brief) time in my life, that I wished I lived in town where there were
sidewalks to drive on. One of the cool things was that the truck bed actually
dumped and I would load it with anything within reach and haul it around then
dump it. The dumped load was anywhere I felt like dumping it, which usually was
right in everyone’s way. As a result, I usually had to get out of the truck and
put the load back where I first loaded it on the insistence of my parents who
were the “foremen” for my “trucking company”. It was my first attempt to
accomplish my life long dream of being self-employed, but it was thwarted by my
unelected “foremen”. Most of my hauling trips were loads of imaginary corn and
grain to Shinrock Elevator. At times when I drove my truck outside, I would haul
loads of real corn and grain and dump the loads all over the place. I’m sure my
other “foremen”, being my father and/or Uncle Ned, didn’t appreciate the little
piles of corn and grain all over the farm. Another thing I hauled was sand from
our red sandbox, which resulted in little piles of sand all over the place. Most
of the sand piles were relatively close to the sand box area since it was very
difficult to pedal the truck on the grass with the weight of the sand in the
bed. It’s a wonder with all that added weight that I didn’t bend or break
something in the “transmission”. In those days things were made to last! I’ve
just about exhaustively searched the Internet and I have yet to find any
information about my yellow truck! Now my obsessive compulsiveness is kicking
in and I’m determined to find out about that particular model! I’ve reserved a
number of books on the subject from CLEVNET
and am hoping to find out something when they arrive at the Berlin Heights
Library!
…A few days later…
I just received a book on Pedal Cars at my library
from CLEVNET. Believe it or not, when I just opened the book at random at the
counter, THERE WAS A PICTURE OF MY VERY TRUCK!!!! How’s that for “dumb luck”!
The truck pictured is rather old and the yellow paint has faded some, but nonetheless,
it is exactly the same model and color I had! I have a scanned pic of it
below!
Be that as it may, I’ve had many “big real trucks”
since then, but none have ever been as exciting and fun to drive as my first
one!
