CC Capsule: 1958 Ford F-100: Separating the Men From the Boys.

Ecco Homo!

 

(first posted 1/20/2018)      You, my friend, and I, are plinkers.  Mere armchair quarterbacks in the game of cars and life.  We putter about in our modern automobiles, enjoying absurd luxuries like heat, brakes, and drivers door armrests.  We get all twitterpated when we see the old car of our swollen adolescent dreams, we oogle and google it, we drone on and on to our bored family, friends and strangers, all of whom are looking desperately for an out, about how great it would be if only we had THAT car!  We’d love it.  We’d drive it.  We’d be worthy.

Bah.  All we would do is park it 99.4% of the time.

May I introduce you to “J”.  I’ve known J, his full name shall remain discrete, for 24 years.  J’s accent is hard to place, mid-western US, uh, wait is that East Coast via the South?  Hard to tell.  Tall, perpetually skinny, always seeming to have a bent Winston smoldering, he’s professionally unkept, large aviator glasses always needing a polish, hair wild.  J reminds me of the Men my father hung out with, and that’s Men with a Capital M, the modern world with its reformed, pampered, genteel, and carefully crafted inoffensiveness is not the home of these Men.

And this is his truck.

This is not the much coveted “patina” so in demand today, but just pure old truck.

 

His daily driver truck.  Not his weekend truck because he has a Mercedes E 400 wagon that he REALLY daily drives.  Nope, J has no other car, this is his whip.  Never has had another car in the time I’ve known him, he drives his F-100 everywhere we mortals need to go in our daily travels and travails.

As near as I can recall, J bought this rig in the mid 1970’s.  It’s a base model, with the 223 CID “Mileage Maker” 6 cylinder and the 3 on the tree trans.  Nut’n fancy.  I seem to recall it was more green when I first laid eyes on it.  For wild and crazy options it has the driver’s side sun-visor and heater, which didn’t work last I heard.  No idea how that JC Whitney hood scoop landed there.  That’s it for options.

 

 

Take a close look.  Notice the lack of windshield wipers.  You need windshield wipers.  I need windshield wipers.  Real Men don’t.  Point of fact I never recall J having wipers on this rig.

He’s also missing a front bumper.  Bah.  Men don’t need such things, and for proof of that, I present this truck.  In 40 years of daily use J has never run into anything, nor has anyone dared to run into him.  See how this works?

 

This is NOT the interior of J’s truck. Not in a million, gazillion years is this the inside of his rig.

 

I didn’t take a snap, but I can assure you that there are no seatbelts inside.  When you don’t run into things and people are afraid to run into you such things are a waste.  Unless a miracle has occurred I’m pretty sure the heater remains defunct.  You need heat.  I need heat.  J does not.

Most days I hear the charming drone of this rig as it putters by my house, for J works right down the street from me and lives just a few blocks over.  I snapped these couple of pics the other day out for a walk with my son’s dog, the parking lot of the establishment J works at is empty six days a week so it’s good for a dog walking.

The son’s aforementioned dog I was walking when I saw J’s rig. Frisket be his name.

 

J remains deeply committed to this rig, real Men don’t break their commitments, and will shuffle off this mortal coil one day with it still parked in his driveway.  Me?  My ADHD with cars is the mark of my eternal rank of boy not Man, but I guess I’m okay with that.  Many of the modern boys of today talk of how they want cars that “handle”, they speak of “performance”, of “Nurburgring times”, “cooled intake air”, and “power combined with luxury”.

J just smiles, shrugs, and putts away into the sunset.