Every farmer didn’t have a four-wheel-drive pickup when I was a boy. Some didn’t have a truck of any sort in those days of one-car families. They made do with the family sedan. Amazing how many bags of feed or how much wood you could haul in the trunk of an early Fifties Ford or Chevy.
Dad could have used one of today’s pickups as a “cow breeder.” He wore out a series of regular cars bouncing down the farm roads of the era. It wasn’t until after we moved to the farm in Dallas County in 1957 that he got a pickup, and then it was an old Dodge my grandpa had already worn out.
I was in my early teens when Dad began painting truck signs on Saturdays at Marshfield Motors. In those day every pickup needed one.
It was there he found what proved to be the best farm truck ever – a 1948 Ford. A chalky olive green with the roof caved in, it wasn’t much to look at when I first saw it, but Dad said it was a real bargain at $100 cash. That was the first thing that made it the “best.”
As a boy with visions of someday driving that old truck, I got to work on it before Dad even got it licensed.
The first thing I did was get in the cab and pop the roof out. Just a little push and it snapped back like it had never been smashed.
The next thing I did was dig out Mom’s Johnson paste floor wax. After a few hours with that and elbow grease the once-chalky paint shined like new. Even Dad was a bit amazed how good his $100-dollar truck looked.
The old truck proved its worth right away, hauling 100-pound bags of dairy feed right to the barn door and bringing loads of firewood to the house.
The shine on the paint, though, didn’t do much to make it more road-worthy. Powered by a flathead six-cylinder engine connected to a three-speed floor shift, it was definitely designed to be a work truck. It was fine for trips to the store in Elkland or running down to the river. The play in the steering, however, made it a challenge to keep on the road at more than 50 miles per hour. Marshfield and Buffalo were about the farthest Dad drove it.
Dad alleviated much of the steering issue by letting Dolan Dill install booster shocks on the front end, he still didn’t drive it much over 50.
That old truck came along just as I was learning to drive, and like most farm kids I got most of my practice between the hayfield and the barn. Dad was a stickler for following rules, so I never got on the road until I had a learner’s permit. Dodging stumps, big rocks and fence posts, then backing loads of loose hay through a narrow entry to the barn, I learned exactly where the wheels were headed at any time.
Long before actually driving the truck I was “improving” it by installing a horn off of an old car my uncle had, and replacing the factory shift knob with solid marble one from that same uncle.
I also became a pro at repairing a leaky exhaust pipe with a tin can and baling wire, and loosening the starter when it locked up .
The old truck was not without its faults, but it could always be fixed – usually in the driveway or barn lot. Not only did I learn to drive in that old truck, I learned how to keep a vehicle going – a valuable lesson in those days.
More than just a farm truck, that sturdy old Ford also made countless trips to the river and woods. My grandpa had formerly owned a similar Ford with a sort of wooden camper shell. Dad took that old shell, chopped it down to serve as topper, and used it to haul our coon dogs to the timber – long before many folks had such a thing.
I’m not sure what became of that $100 truck. Dad was still driving it when I got my first car – a 1956 Chevy – and shifted my focus to keeping it shiny and road-worthy.
As I recall it just kind of disappeared about the time I moved away to college, and Dad picked up an early 60s Chevy. I was never behind the wheel or under the hood of that or any of Dad’s subsequent old trucks. In my eyes, none really replaced that $100 Ford, though all served Dad’s purposes on the farm.
In later years I owned four-wheel-drive pickups capable of pulling a trailer-load of hay through his muddy barn lot; so Dad never needed one. He just called me.
But for all of their utility, my 4 x4 Fords and Dodge Rams never earned the title of “best farm truck ever.” They had more horsepower, but not an ounce more character or history, and I couldn’t do a lick of good under the hood or chassis.
I loved them all, but never got to know any like I did Dad’s $100 Ford.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
