When I was a kid growing up on my grandfather's farm in rural West Virginia, he had all the cool toys: tractors, bulldozers, a dump truck, two "farm use" pickup trucks, and old Jeep, four wheelers, an old street & trail dirt bike, a 1957 Chevy Bel-Air and a 1931 Ford Model A.
My pap taught me how to drive on a Ford 8N tractor, and the summer I turned 15, he gave me that old street & trail bike for baling hay (it was a 1979 Suzuki TS185).
But years before that, when I was 5 or 6 years old, he let me wash and wax his two prize cars for parades in the summer. I'd ride shotgun, throw candy out the window and wave at kids I went to school with. Man, did I fee cool.
Pap and his toys are the reason I love cars. And bikes. And just about anything that revs and hums.
As I got older I gradually got into other pursuits. Girls, mostly. And eventually I went off to college; the first in my family to do so. My brothers were older and had already left the farm, so when I finally left it meant Pap had even more work to do. The cars -- shimmering beacons among the filth and rust of farm life and once-glorious reminders of the old man's youth -- began to age, as he did.
Fast forward many years and my mother comes to visit me for a long weekend. She tells me that Pap (everyone calls him Pap) has decided to give up farming full time at the age of 83. His plan is to get those old cars running and enjoy them again. The thought of it puts a smile on my face.
A few weeks later, I ask her how Pap's doing. She tells me he's discovered that two knee replacements won't let him squeeze into the cockpit of the Model A anymore. Aside from that, he doesn't have the money to re-restore both cars, even after selling off the cattle.
He's decided to trade the Model A to a guy for the bodywork needed for the '57 Chevy.
"Trade the Model A!?" I ask in horror. I knew I had to intervene.
I tell her she can't let him do it; she has to stop him. "I'll buy the Model A from him, just ask him what he wants for it."
She relays the question to the old man (you have to scream for him to hear you). The thought puts a smile on his face.
A few weeks later, I'm at the kitchen table with my Pap filling out the title transfer and learning things about the car I'd never thought to ask when I was younger -- where he bought it and when, how long it had taken him to restore it, how crazy my grandmother thought he was for doing it all in the first place.
He bought the car from -- oddly enough -- an old farmer in 1964. At the time, it was a neglected pile of parts sitting out in a field.
He accumulated more parts, pieced it back together and eventually fully restored it.
The day I bought it from him, it had been sitting for about 15 years. I'd often thought when I came home for holidays, "I wish someone would get that car going again." I always thought that someone would be Pap -- I couldn't picture anyone else behind the wheel.
I never thought that someone would be me.
The Model A's been in my possession for about three weeks now. There have been a few setbacks, but slowly she and I are becoming great friends. The day I get her running, I plan to send a video to my mother to show Pap. The sight (and sound, if he can hear it) will no doubt put another smile on his face.
