Great Grandpa Benson's Truck

I remember the smell almost as much as I remember the sight. The truck used to sit almost directly in the middle of our property. About one hundred feet from our house, underneath an olive tree. The back wheels rested on asphalt, and the front stalemating a hold on the dirt in front of it. My Grandpa Willard would sit on the torn bench seat, rolling cigarettes and smoking them, out of sight of my grandma. That smell is what I remember as much as the perch for my grandfathers bad habit. At his age his motor skills had already diminished some, leaving rolling of his own cigarettes very difficult. The majority of the tobacco would fall out of the papers and leave a mess with the olive pits on the ground.



The truck had never ran while I was alive, I think. It had been my great grandpa Benson's truck. The family lore is that he drove it out to California from Colorado, and did so in his old age. He accumulated traffic ticket after traffic ticket as he followed the center line of the road from Colorado Springs to Los Angeles. The truck went under the care of my grandfather, and much like the majority of the five or six 'old' cars that were under my grandfathers care, sat in the backyard of his property only a few turns of a wrench and ounces of elbow grease away from being operational.

The truck sat in it's one or two locations for the majority of my life. Only moving every so often as to never even notice that it had moved. It wasn't the only car in the graveyard of Frandson cars, but to me it was certainly the most nostalgic. It was the platform where my grandpa would explain to me the way a bicycle tire worked. Or what this wrench was called, or that screw driver. Many of the manly conversations that exuded the wisdom of grandpa Willard, who had made a living, raised a family, and was more mechanically inclined then anyone I knew were staged at the drivers side door of that very truck.

After my grandparents passed away, the Frandson "Junkyard" which had been a dangerous and yet fun playground of my childhood, was finally to be organized by way of eliminating the 'clutter.' My grandparents had been through the great depression, and subsequently held onto everything. I mean everything. The cleaning out of my grandparents house was quite a task, as we found news papers in order from around 1950 to the present stacked up in box after box, of used wrapping paper from 1973. You can only imagine what the half acre backyard was filled with.



Many of the things that weren't junk were of course distributed throughout the family in that sad exhibition of maintaining someone in death through using the good stuff they owned. The 1958 Ford F-100 was not the only salvageable car, but the only one I think that we cared to salvage. We got rid of the VW Bus along with the old 1940's Mob looking car, and Ford Rambler.

The truck was not in horrible shape. Parked and forgotten about, with it's tires old and rot off from years of no use. The paint had faded in the Southern California sun, and the oxidation had left a coat over the top of it that could annoying ruin your clothes with even the slightest brush. My dad and I had put a little money into the truck while my grandmother was still alive while I was still in High School. And finally, it at least had good tires. We had the engine block rebuilt to repair it's decay and then much like the Frandson inside of me, the truck went back to sitting in it's one spot, but without a smoker sitting out of the drivers side door.

It wasn't until the economy allowed it that my Dad and I have been able to put any more money into the project of rebuilding Grandpa Benson's, Willard's truck. With a pro hot rod builder offering half price for the project, and with an extra amount of untaxed income streaming into my pocket, my dad and I are financially prepared and able to rebuild the F-100, a tribute of my ancestors.

Despite the financial liability being a non issue, the truck rebuilding process has been slow. As I arrived home on leave two months ago, the finishing steps were going into the body work of the now taken apart Willard truck, and before my departure back here to the sand, I was able to watch it go off into paint. After a few mishaps at the paint shop and some minor delays, the truck arrived back at the house painted, and sitting nearly in the same spot as it had years ago. The paint was the original greenish blue that Ford decided was hip in the 50's, and wanting to keep it somewhat old school, reminding and 'in the footsteps' of my grand kin, I wanted it repainted the same color. The new school side of me, the ocean goer and surfer of me, did want to make it somewhat my own, which was the inspiration for the white two tone from the line of the hood up.



It should be done with being put back together and reconstructed, and running by the time I get back home in December of this year. Just in time for a camping trip at the beach in the back Benson's truck. The idea of not only having a cool retro 50's truck, but it also being a third generation truck is something I find amazing and am certainly awestruck by it. I don't know if I'll pick up rolling and smoking my own cigarettes out of the drivers side door. Or whether I'll drive down the center line of the highway so that I don't drive off the road. But I do know one thing, I'll be driving the same car as my grandpa, and great grandpa, and looking cool while doing it.

This 'Rock Around The Clock' thing is nothing but racket!