Dad's Baby Blue '55 Step Side Chevy

When I was a ‘kid’ dad had a baby blue ’55 Chevy step side pick-up.  Dad took a lot of kidding about his baby blue pick up.  It was the last real pick-up we ever had.  Oh we had other pick-ups after that but they were well new and modern.   I so wish I had the old '55 today.  Of course it was a gas rig, with a carburetor and a distributor.    It had a four speed transmission and you and it drove like a truck.  It was not a easy riding hybrid of today.  It was a real pick-up truck.  There were of course no lap belts or seat belts or shoulder harness.    The dashboard was metal and the gauges were simple, heater controls ran from wire cables.  Heck there was even a throttle knob if your foot got tired.  The spare tire mounted on the side, the rear fender was let in to allow for the tire.  It had a bracket from the factory that way.  They quit making real pick-ups in the mid-sixties I guess.   Pick-ups were a Spartan utilitarian vehicle back then.  Tastefully appointed with a single bench seat, with the gas tank located in the cab and behind the seat.  Back then pick ups had their own aroma in the cab.  They all seemed to smell a little like gasoline, and little aromatic from oil and grease.

Dad smoked cigars back then so that as well was mixed in to the potpourri aroma of pick-up.  I knew a lot of cigar smokers back then.  Not the fancy cigars of now but the Roi Tans, Ben Franklins, or my dad’s favorite “What America needs is a good 5 cent cigar …William Penn.”  I even suspect ‘alot’ of good old church goin’ Mormons and Nazarenes pickup’s smelled of that from time to time, along with Luckies, Cools and Camels.  None back then seemed to come with filters much.  I have to admit I smoked my share of Camels and lots with out filters before I quit.

Old pickups, had a tail gate latched with hooks on chains that rattled and shook and knocked the paint off back there after the factory chain covering weathered away and they went unprotected.  The tailgates had three positions then.   Four if you counted gone or the removed position.  That was from when as now you were not paying attention and backed in to something.  You could latch it up, you could hook the tail gate out straight like todays models.  But then there was also let it down.  Down was used when you were unloading bulk feed or gravel or sand.  Straight out as when you were hauling something like lumber or fence posts.  Up was for when you needed to keep something inside like milk cans going to and from the creamery, rolls of barb wire, drums of oil or the burnin’ barrel when you went to the dump.  Yes once upon a time people had these burning barrels that you burned your trash in.  And once in a while you drove to the dump and emptied them.

Dad’s pickups had a stock rack or sheep rack on the back.  Seems as if that was the last pickup we had with such.  He built a lot of them for sheep owners and their herders.  The stakes or posts went down into the stake pockets in the bed.  They were mainly made from 8 quarter oak.  The sides were made from four inch 4 quarter plained fir boards.  They were spaced at four or five inches and the stock rack reached to the top of the cab.  The front bulkhead was solid with a small window cut in to it.  It slid into place in a slot in the side boards with a tie chain in the top front to keep them all snugged up.  The rear gate was one piece swinging gate and not the best design.  Dad made all the hardware for the closures and the pipe hinge on the back.  The boards and hardware were all held on to the stakes with carriage bolts.  Dad never had any power tools to speak of.  Holes were all drilled with a brace and bit.  Ever stake or post was hand fit with a plane and a rasp to a jig he had.  That was where I guess learned to use a ratchet, tightening down the nuts on carriage bolts.  And dad’s wonderful instructions of, “No you don’t use a damn lock washer there!”  To this day I still do not understand where you use a damn lock washer.  But when I am feeling unsure I will slip one on, or if I am feeling mischievous. 

I made many rides to the Prairie and the the ranch in the old blue Chevy pick-up.  Sometimes Dad would let me ride back there.  I would stand there, up on the stock rack and looking out, wind in my face and blowing my hair.  The road was a lot different then and the road was slower.  There was a lot of single track road, you had to pull over when you met someone.  But that was okay because you knew everyone and then you had a chance to talk.  So today when I travel up and down that same old road; yet hardly the same old road because it is now wider and faster.  I think back at that little old blue Chevy skimming along that dirt road.  Especially near the back waters of Arrowrock Reservoir.  Some mornings it was so still the water was a mirror.  The canyon walls reflected in the water and you were amazed.  Here I am fifty years latter doing the same thing.  Still traveling along that same road.  Only back then there was only a handful of rigs over that road in a day.  Now I think of that old blue Chevy pick up in the wilds of Idaho.  And it was…. we were thirty or forty miles of road like that.  If it were a Glenn Ford Panavision movie the camera would have panned back.  The blue step side pick-up would become a little blue dot on a hill side, a small rooster tail of dust behind.  Not really a soul around for miles and miles back then.  Well outside of a rancher riding for cattle or sheepherder moving sheep, and grazing on permit, you really were alone.   Maybe there might a real adventurous fisherman, or a lost family on a drive.

  That was how my wife first got up there.  I took her up the summer after we met in 1969, to show her my private Idaho.  She laughed and giggled, she had been there before.  She had wondered where she had been and this was it.  Her dad got off on a drive and ended up up there with the family when she was a little girl.  The sheer cliffs of the canyon and steep hills had made a impression and some of that impression was sort of scary bad.  

I wish back when our kids were small I would have had a blue ’55 Chevy step side pick-up with a white stock rack and our two kids in the back.  Amazed at the scenery, skimming along a single track road in the wilds of Idaho.  The cool of the shade and the warmth of the sun as the melt together as we skim along that dirt road.  Now I yearn for a blue ’55 Chevy step side pick-up with a white stock rack with the grandkids.  Drink deeply kids, drink deeply as this is your heritage.  A heritage that was began before your forefathers left Illinois in the mid 1800, yes before that.  Maybe it begins before they left England or Scotland and the promise of a new world.  Someday you might understand but it can never be understood fully, for this world evolves and changes. Drink and breathe deep kids.  For this is a flavor you may never taste again.  Yet chase freedom and the right to drink and breathe deep.  May you never loose the taste of your heritage and your idea of freedom.  But your heritage shall grow....... drink deep and sew carefully