- About 2 months
before my 16th birthday, my father awoke me on a Saturday
morning and said "Lets go get you a vehicle"
kind of caught me by surpise but I was excited! I grew up
in a small farm town in north central Wyoming so I knew I
wouldn't have a lot to chose from. First stop was a 68
Chevelle that was a total basket case!! I didn't even
want to look at it, so we immediatly left. We drove past
the Ford and Dodge dealerships straight the the Chevy
dealer. They had 3 vehicles in my price range, a Dodge D-50,
a Mercury Bobcat and a Chevy LUV. I was leaning toward
the D50 as it had a sunroof (I am easily amused!), my
father insisted I look at the LUV. Well it was kind of
beat and rusty as it was a farmers truck he used to get
around in his fields. After my doing a little bargaining
with the salesman, we drove home in the LUV for
- $2600 (the truck
was only 6 years old at the time).
-
- After getting it
home, I had to learn how to drive it. It was a stick and
I had only driven automatics prior. I had rode
motorcycles frequently so I knew the basics of clutching
and shifting, just couldn't get use to doing both with
the opposite parts of my body. I drove the truck all
through high school. I didn't get to drive it to high
school as I lived right across the street. All I could
afford to do to the truck while in school was, getting
some of the 4x4 white spoke rims from a friend, putting
on tape pinstripe, a fiberglass topper and getting a
sunroof for graduation, scary cutting up the roof of the
truck! After graduating High School, I packed up all of
my belongings in the back of my truck and headed to the
big city of Denver (for fame and fortune, LOL!). While
living in Denver in the mid 80's the custom truck scene
really started taking off and I caught the bug. My first
purchase was some new wheels, after that, I realized that
everytime it rained, my feet got wet due to the rocker
panels having baseball size holes in them (like the
majority of LUVs have had) my roomates brother at the
time happened to be a very talented painter, so after
having most of the body panels replaced and a new paint
job on the truck, it just went off from there. Working a
job making just a little more than minimum wage, my
trucks transformation continued. Borrowing money from my
bank for each part of the truck to customize and then
having to wait to pay off each loan before the next
seemed like a very long process.
-
- So what you see
here is about $15,000 of my money, 27 years of my life
and many truck shows entered, some lost, but many more
won. The truck is currently in retirement at my fathers
house but someday my truck will be back with more
modifications than you could think would be possible!!! A
few that have never been tried before (that I know of),
but I am going to keep those a secret!!! Thanks for
looking!
