Yesterday we found out that yet one more thing had broken…Den’s old truck, which we recently renamed Ol’ Blue. She is a 1989 Chevy Silverado short bed pickup truck that we bought brand spankin’ new. Oh, it was a sharp looking ride back then…deep metallic blue, with a 4 speed on the floor…very sporty. I love a manual shift vehicle…it’s what I learned on and guys thought it was cool that “a girl” could drive one (back in the day). We also had a Pontiac Bonneville, that I ended up with most of the time. I actually preferred the truck! Whenever we took a vacation, just the two of us, we took the truck. It made many trips over the years. Gradually, the paint began falling off in fairly large chunks. The joke around here was that our Silverado was “a peeling”…I know..very lame. So now poor ol’ thing is a mess, just a junker, but Dennis won’t let it go.
He has resurrected it a trillion times. And yesterday, the brake line broke…not a good thing, right? I figured this could mean the truck graveyard for Ol’ Blue, but Dennis is making it another “do it yourself” project, buying a new brake line and installing it himself. Den’s exact words…”That truck doesn’t owe us a thing!”…Sometimes I think it would be more merciful to “put it down”, but that will only happen if the wheels fall off and the engine catches fire.
We worked in the yard yesterday afternoon. When I was out there, I took a photo looking at our house from the end of the backyard. You can see the ‘Hiker waaay in the distance beside the garage..God, I miss that thing!
Den was mowing, which takes about 1 1/2 hours for our yard, and I trimmed. We enjoy having no neighbors right behind us, and our kids had many a baseball game back there.
Our neighbors to the West are a divorced gentleman, Mike, and his 2 kids. His son, Nathan, returned from Afghanistan last summer, after serving with the National Guard. Nathan writes and plays his own music. Mike’s daughter, Sarah, is 16, and is about to get her driver’s license. (Ahhhh..the memories come flooding back…and the terror!!!) These are great people, and have been our neighbors for 10 years or more. Well, yesterday was a big day for Nathan. He is leaving for California, striking out to look for work and hoping to play his music in Los Angeles, CA. His car was loaded and he was really excited….
Mike was a little sad, but very proud….I remember when our daughter Chris left to move to Indianapolis to pursue her dreams. She was 19 years naive …I cried for days. Ya just gotta let ‘em try some things on their own, bite your tongue and smile. As it turns out, she still lives there, finished college, married to a great guy and has a sweet little boy. Guess things happen for reasons.
Today I helped my oldest daughter set up for a garage sale. I loaded up some tables, clothing and LOTS of junk to that WE needed to be shed of. Dennis managed to find some stuff in our garage to contribute, and I could barely fit my own self into our truck when I left our house for Sugar Grove. When I got back, Dennis was still working on Ol’ Blue, so I decided it was time to drag out the fountain for the summer.
When this puppy comes out of the garage, and gets it’s innards working, it is officially May at our house, and summer can’t be far behind! My next big project will be cleaning the HitchHiker, inside AND out! As Al puts it, there is a winter’s worth of Southwest sand and dirt everywhere…not to mention the millions of bugs who committed suicide on the front of it as we zoomed down the road. Thanks again for checking in with us Cave People. We’re all good, and I’ll blog more Friday…
Nice to see Ole Blue is getting TLC from Dennis, we had to let our old truck go to the junkyard after it sat in the back of the barn a year and a half after our son tore the transmission up, Sam just knew he would never tear the trans and transfer case out of that truck even though with only 260.000 miles the diesel motor was still good, So it was sent to the graveyard. Spring has arrived here too, and we will get into gear now trying to purge the stuff we need to before fulltiming. Be safe out there. Sam & Donna
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