The Truck: In Conclusion

When I was born, my dad had a truck. It was a red truck. It had leather seats that were very hot to sit on after an afternoon at the pool. And I can remember camping in the back of it. Aside from that, I don’t have any clue what year it was, or what model, or how many miles it had on it. But I do know from stories it was a stick shift and did not have power steering.

I think my dad got his truck when he was eighteen. I don’t know how much he paid for it, but I do know it was less that he paid for the lawn mower he presently owns. He sold it when I was eight years old because there was no way it was going to make it all the way from Tennessee to New Hampshire. I will always remember that truck.

Last week, we officially said good-bye to Ed’s truck. He’s had his 2000 Ford Ranger for as long as I have known him. All told, he had it for twelve years and 214,000 miles. I never did drive it. (It was too special for that…namely, just getting it in gear took a special touch very few had.) But I did ride in it and so did Emry. So, we made sure we took a picture of it so Emry will know what the truck Papa had when she was born looked like.

Getting rid of it has been a long process. I can’t even remember when it started – a couple of months ago? We took it to the shop to see what it would take to get it fixed. The mechanics only managed to make it worse. So, after a long evening of going to get it, it not starting, giving up and going home…Ed decided we were done with it. Our best bet? We’d salvage it. We thought we’d get nearly $150 for that, which is better than nothing. But Ed had misplaced the title. That took a couple of weeks and $51, so we thought we’d get a $100 for it. Then a guy Ed works with said he could do better than that because it is registered through March and not in real bad shape. We actually got quite a few bites posting it on Craigslist, but we needed to get it towed back to the house. One afternoon, Ed went across town (which, in Pittsburgh is no easy feat – you might as well drive to Ohio which takes about the same amount of time) to meet the tow truck to get it back to our house where we then had one week to get rid of it before it would need to be moved for the weekly street cleaners in order to avoid a parking ticket. (When you park on the street, your cars have to be moved to the other side one day a week for a few hours so the street cleaners can – or cannot since they don’t clean every week – get by. Otherwise, you get a nice parking ticket.) But when Ed went to get it, a guy at the shop offered him $450 for it. Ed knew he might be able to do better than that, but if he took this offer he wouldn’t have to worry about tow trucks, street cleaners or parking tickets. So, he took it.

It’s taken a few weeks for the guy to get the money and all parties to get back from vacations, but this past week we officially signed over the title, dropped the insurance and collected the payment. And feel very blessed to have gotten much more from it than we expected. God is good.