It was a basic, metallic green, ’83 Ford F-150. A 4 speed standard shift 4×4 with a small carbureted V8. No AC, basic AM/FM radio, hand crank windows, manual locks and steel rims. The clutch spring would squeak each time it was pressed as the long steel shift lever slipped into gear. The click of the high beam foot switch was solid and deliberate. The bench seat was a dark green vinyl with an Indian blanket seat cover. Just a single cab and 8′ bed. Every time I got in the truck, the lingering smell of my dad’s pipe greeted me like a familiar hug. It was dinged and well used, but it never failed.
My earliest memories of the truck are of sitting on his lap, steering us down the beach as he handled the gas pedal. When I got a bit older and could reach the pedals myself, I would drive it up and down our dirt drive, perfecting my clutch and gas work, to shift seamlessly. No grinding, no bucking, feeling like I was so grown. When I got my learner’s permit, it became mine to drive.
The truck was boxy and big. You could almost sit inside the engine compartment to work on it or use the hood and windshield as a makeshift lounger. It was basic but it was solid.
The truck doesn’t just represent an ideal, rose colored lens of childhood though. For all the wonderful memories that get brought back thinking about that truck, it also brings back a lot of difficult memories too. A complex tapestry of often very opposite emotions, experiences and relationships. Not stemming from the truck itself but the childhood that the truck embodies. It was a quiet constant in my early life that often offered an escape from hurt. As it sat parked in the driveway, it was a vessel of imagination to transport me from that pain.
It could be a big rig driving across the country, a firetruck responding to a blaze, or a rocketship lifting off into space. Later, it would be the freedom that allowed me to get in and drive.
My dad sold the truck not long after I left for boot camp. A part of my childhood that held many complex memories. The truck has most likely been scrapped by now, perhaps sitting in a salvage yard somewhere, still silently holding my memories with it. If I could ever find the truck again, I know I would buy it back in an instant. I would use whatever time and money needed to breathe life back into it. Because it reminds me of who I am today and the journey that has brought me here. It reminds me of the people and places that are most important to me. It reminds me that there is peace and comfort in a hunk of unassuming steel.
What grounds us rarely announces itself. It just holds us — through childhood, through loss, through the years we spend looking for it somewhere else — until one day we recognize it for what it always was.
The Most Unassuming Things
Some things we carry quietly for years before we understand what they mean, waiting to be recognized. If something in this post stirred something in you, it might be worth sitting with — and you don’t have to do that alone.