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A 1984 Ford F-150 with a V-8 motor with a carburetor is just a distant relative of the expensive, fully tricked out pickup trucks on the road today, but it remains a reliable workhorse after 36 years on the road.
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Markey: Old pickup a testament to practicality, reliability

THE BLADE/MATT MARKEY

Markey: Old pickup a testament to practicality, reliability

In July of 1984, my father did something that those physicians and surgeons who were his colleagues thought was unconventional, maybe a bit eccentric, and quite possibly disturbing. He bought a pickup truck.

So parked right there in the hospital doctors’ lot, next to Dr. Sheeran’s Porsche 911, Dr. Bello’s Volvo, and that boat of a Lincoln that Dr. Yarris drove was this Ford F-150, looking very out of place.

Despite some claims to the contrary, dad didn’t buy that truck as a friendly jab aimed at his contemporaries — he had decided he needed a truck for practical purposes, and he was right. My father loved to go to auctions on the weekends, but he got tired of having to rent a truck or find someone with a trailer to bring home his often over-sized treasures.

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And owning a truck made perfect sense. Besides hauling a 250-pound butcher block, an assortment of steamer trunks, a huge armoire, an antique ice box, a queen-sized sleigh bed, a lathe, a curved glass china cabinet, a walnut credenza, and the doors off the old church on Main Street that he would masterfully turn into a kitchen table, my dad also used that truck for bringing in loads of compost for the gardens, railroad ties for landscaping, big rocks and pieces of driftwood for the backyard menagerie, and tons – yes, tons – of salvaged bricks we used to build all of the walkways around the large yard.

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He drove his leased Mercury to work most days, but he wasn’t shy about taking the truck on occasion and reminding his medical cohorts about his youth growing up in rural Indiana.

That pickup came in very handy when we were making regular summer runs to the migrant camps around Fostoria, delivering the boxes of clothes, infant items, blankets, kitchen supplies, towels, and toys my mother had collected and laundered or repaired over the year. The migrant workers recognized Doc Markey’s truck and were quick to surround the Ford when we pulled in.

By around 1991 my dad’s arthritis had made it tougher for him to make the elevated step needed to get to the driver’s seat, so he gave me the pickup with the understanding that it would remain on call to bring home any treasures he came across, haul away loads of brush, branches and other debris from our annual yard and garden cleanups, and for the deliveries to the migrant camps, or going to the post office with the boxes of medical supplies he and my mother sent to a women’s clinic in Selma, Ala., and the winter coats, hats, and gloves they sent to St. Labre Indian School in Montana each fall.

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He could have sold the truck at that point and probably gotten along just fine, but there is some intrinsic value to just having a truck in the motor pool. It becomes a de facto member of the family and is referred to as “the truck” since everyone ends up needing its services at some point.

A pickup is versatile, it is practical and multipurpose. And this Ford F-150 always started when you needed it, and it went everywhere without any fanfare or drama. It was like the draft horse that came out of the barn every morning knowing just what its role was in this world.

It is easy to understand why more than three million pickups were sold in the United States in 2019, and why pickup trucks now make up 20 percent of the vehicles on the road. We hit a milestone in the month of April this year when American consumers purchased more trucks than passenger cars for the first time in history.

No surprise here, since when you own a pickup, everyone is your friend. There are a thousand-and-one uses for a truck, and I think my dad’s pickup, which eventually developed enough rust and faded paint to earn the name “Old Blue,” probably did at least that many duties.

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It hauled home 60 arborvitaes that grew to form a windbreak around my pond. It carried countless bags of feed for the 4-H pigs and the large flock of laying hens my kids raised. It took those porkers home from the county fair after successful catch-a-pig events, and it brought crates of chickens to the fair each summer for display and competition.

With each passing month, the message was reinforced that there are certain things only a truck can do. Old Blue hauled loads of stone so heavy that they made its springs strain and its steering nearly non-functional. It could carry two cubic yards of mulch without really straining, and in several loads it brought home all of the lumber needed to build a large deck.

In its younger days, the truck went to California and back, to Utah and back in the dead of winter with 20-below chill factors in Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa, plus to Florida and back, and it made several trips to northern Ontario towing a boat and a full load of fishing gear. As it aged and the automotive market evolved into something more dependent on computers and sophisticated engines, this relic was put under the care of a great mechanic from Rudolph who seemed to enjoy the opportunity to again work on something with a carburetor.

There weren’t many highway trips over the past 20 years, just a lot of hauling firewood, moving furniture, and helping out those who had a chore that only a pickup could handle. Old Blue never had air conditioning, the AM-FM radio stopped working about 10 years ago, and the heat seemed to lose its mustard over the past couple of winters. It wore out three tailgates and then spent the last few years surviving without one.

So when the winter of 2020 appeared on the horizon, the tough decision was made to find Old Blue a new home. Its fenders had been chewed pretty hard by rust, the driver’s door didn’t close very well due to worn out hinges, and the bed was pock-marked with holes, but this truck still started every time and that five-liter V-8 could do 65 with a load of firewood and hardly work up a sweat. With just 133,000 miles on it, and essentially one owner, this rare 36-year-old workhorse went up for sale.

The first guy that looked at it bought the truck on the spot with no quibbling over the price, the rust, the dead radio, or the lack of air conditioning. Now remember that this truck was on the road and in service a full 12 years before the new owner was born, so I reminded him that you need to take good care of old things – trucks, people, hunting dogs, etc.

Old Blue was nothing fancy and hardly seemed like the distant ancestor of the $40,000 F-150s you see on the road today, but it has a pretty rich history behind it, and hopefully more years of hauling the loads, pulling trailers, and moving furniture. I think my dad would be pleased to know that his 1984 Ford pickup – the one he bought just because it was practical and useful — is still starting up every morning and still going where you point it.

First Published December 9, 2020, 3:00 p.m.

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A 1984 Ford F-150 with a V-8 motor with a carburetor is just a distant relative of the expensive, fully tricked out pickup trucks on the road today, but it remains a reliable workhorse after 36 years on the road.  (THE BLADE/MATT MARKEY)  Buy Image
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