One day when I dropped Caity off at school, I got to wondering how she felt about riding to school with Grandpa in his old Dodge pickup that smells like cattle. Of course, to me, it's still "the new one," the only new pickup I've ever bought. Yes, the wiper motor and the heater fan howl a little when it's cold, but it's still a pretty good pickup. One of these days I'll ask Caity if riding to school in an 18 year old pickup driven by a white haired grandpa is terribly embarrassing, but I'm not sure I want to know the answer.

This got me thinking about how we got to school when I was a small boy. I don't remember that I minded riding to school in a pickup with milk cans strapped to the running boards and smelling like it had been hauling hogs (it had), but my sisters may have had a different view. I'll have to ask them one day.

Dad bought a new Dodge pickup in 1950, the year I was born. In this precursor of automatic transmissions, Dodge used a clutch, a "three on the tree" straight transmission (as opposed to a four-on-the-floor, for you youngsters who don't know about ignition points and carburetors either) and then added a torque converter. You had to use the clutch to put it in gear and shift between gears, but you could start out in any gear and it would eventually gather itself up and get going.

Dodge went one better on Henry Ford's "any color you want, as long as it's black," and offered the '50 Dodge pickups in either red or green. Ours was green, with a black box and high sideboards. Dad used the pickup to haul hogs or grain to market, feed home from the elevator, fencing material to wherever we were fencing, silage from the silo to the sheep yards, firewood from the woodpile to the house, and many more tasks. It was also our transportation to school when it was too cold to walk to the end of our long driveway and wait for the school bus.

On those cold winter mornings, Dad would milk his three cows, putting the milk in two 10-gallon cans to go to the creamery in Ashby. He would back the pickup out of the shed and strap the milk cans onto the running boards, leaving the box free to haul feed home from town. My sisters, Jerrianne and Kathy, and I would troop out from the warmth of the house, breathing great clouds in the frosty air. The pickup would be running in front of the house, nearly obscured by its own exhaust cloud.

We would all clamber aboard, with me sitting on one or the other of the girls' laps. That pickup seat was really made for two people, so four of us were a pretty tight squeeze. Dad would let us get situated, and try to slam his door closed; usually getting it latched on the second or third try. The three-on-the-tree shift lever was a lifesaver; I doubt if we could have found a four-on-the-floor in the tightly packed cab.

The heater motor had a dry bearing, and made a fearsome howl until it warmed up, usually somewhere near the end of the driveway. There was a little rubber-bladed fan on the dashboard, intended to help defrost the windshield. Until it warmed up, it barely turned. I would keep flicking it with my finger to get it going, until it finally got up speed. Dad used the back of one of his big yellow chore gloves to wipe fog off the windshield to see where we were going. The vacuum wipers stood still when the engine was pulling, and raced wildly when the "foot feed" was released.

When we reached the highway, there was usually some discussion about whether anybody could see any vehicles coming from the passenger side. Rolling down the frosty window was a sometimes necessary, if unpopular, way of getting a view of the road.

By the time we reached the school in Ashby, a mile and a half from our farm, the heater and all the bodies scrunched together were usually just beginning to warm up the cab. All in all, it was better than having to walk to school every day, through deep snow, uphill both ways, as the country school generation before us claim they did.

After many years, the '50 Dodge was replaced by another green Dodge, this one a '52 model that had been owned by an old fellow who almost never drove it. I inherited the '50 to drive to work. By this time it had no low gear, but always managed to get going in second.

The engine was worn out, so when it needed oil (often), I skimmed leaves off the oil in the used oil barrel, dipped out a couple of quarts, and strained the oil through an old lace doily stretched over the top of a funnel. When the oil smoke threatened to drive me out of the cab, I ran a bit of flex pipe from the oil filler pipe out through a hole that had rusted through the fender and pretended I was driving a diesel. It blew perfect smoke rings when it idled.

I don't think the old Dodge ever did really quit running, I just got tired of keeping it going and parked it in the woods somewhere around its 21st birthday. Having signed a parts donor card in better times, it provided repair parts for other Dodges for several years.

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