I got introduced to the car bizz early. I was probably seven, maybe eight years old, and my dad got me up me one Saturday morning early. We had breakfast and then he and I went in the car. We only had one car. It was a 57 Plymouth Fury. We needed another vehicle and Daddy told me we were going to look at an old International pick up. And it was in Colorado Springs which was sixty miles or so south of Denver at a dealership.

I remember he had the ad from the newspaper folded up on the front seat where I was sitting. The ad looked at me and it showed a drawing of an old pickup in a square with a frame and stars all over the whole ad and it said “$100 and  International Pick Up.” Daddy told me that was a deal and we wanted to be there waiting for the dealership to open so we could be the first to see this hundred dollar pick up.

He told me the truck was probably worth at least $125. And he was excited about going to see it. He told me all about how International trucks were easy to work on, and you could still get parts for them, and they were sturdy.

We got to the dealership and waited for them to open. A man came out and talked to us. My dad was a Tech Sergeant and I thought he was like the boss of the world except for the General. But this man was cool. He looked like Ed Byrnes playing Kookie in 77 Sunset Strip. He had shiny cool shoes and a silky shirt with a tie and he had slicked back hair, (I remember him taking a comb out of his pocket and combing it back on the side like Kookie used to do…or maybe I imagined that part). But as cool as he was, I knew he was no match for my old man.

We went out to the boneyard and there the truck sat. It wasn’t shiny, a pale green, and it was old but my dad, I could tell, liked it a lot. I can identify with that from years of selling cars. My dad was on the hook and he’d not spit it out. We drove the truck and then we went inside to buy it.

The Kookie look-a-like told him they could sell us the pickup for a hundred and twenty-five dollars. I knew that was wrong and so did my dad. He pulled out the ad and showed it to Kookie. Kookie told him the ad was wrong, the price was $125 and everybody knew that truck was worth at least that. The arguing commenced in earnest. Kookie kept going away, then he’d come back with his paper and show my dad the numbers. They were always $125.

I don’t know how long we kept it up, but the whole time I was surprised that Kookie wasn’t just doing what Daddy was telling him to do. And he was telling him hard! He was as mad as I’d ever seen him, he was cussing like he did when our dog crapped in the basement. Every time Kookie would come back it was the same thing. Daddy wasn’t budging and Kookie kept telling us they would sell it to someone for $125. And I was just flabbergasted that Kookie and whoever else he was talking about when he said “we” was still arguing with my dad.

We were there for a long time. We bought the truck and I think we paid $120 for it. And we drove home in the Plymouth. They had to clean the truck up so they told my dad he could come get it Monday.

We had that truck for quite a while. Parts must have been available because my dad worked on it a lot. He always got it running and working. He drove it to work every day, went to the dump on the weekends, and we used it to pick up lawn supplies, wood, and bricks for house projects. One night he and I were going to a Denver Bears baseball game and we had a crash with a newer model T-Bird. The T-Bird was messed up pretty bad and the truck had a dent on the fender. We missed the ball game. I didn’t ever remember hearing about the T-Bird or the T-Bird man, but my dad went to the junkyard and got a red fender for the green truck. It was faded about the same as the green on the rest of the truck, so it fit perfectly. Well, almost perfectly. You still have to cuss to get things to fit.