I was about 13 when my older brother got his first vehicle, 1972 F250 "Camper Special". Man it was cool and 4 spd, 460(?), loud and had a sliding back window (picturing throwing beer cans in the back)! It was coolest!

 

riding with my grandpa in his red primered 58 fridge pulling one of the dirt cars to shaheens in the late sixties when i was still a little wet behind the ears as it were ..... i'd say about 4 years old . that horse hood ornament and the big ol' blue galaxy { 63 got pictures somewhere i think }stock car made a permanent impression on me ! then there is also my great grandpa max's model t wrecker he had he puttered around in his junkyard in about the same time . route 4 here in town , the new extension , runs right through the middle of his private collection of vintage tin , including the t , and the state scrapped it all after they bought the property from my great aunt as big grandpa died a few years before . thanx for making me recall some of those wonderful old memories !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

around 2 or 3 years old (end of the eighties for you old farts...) waking up screaming in the camper sitting on my dads old 75 f250 supercab while at lake mcconaughy. I thought there was snakes up there with me. strangely enough the most of reality that i remember is jumping from the top bunk of that old overhead down onto my parents and them waking up. I was still half dreaming, and I remember that dream like it was yesterday.

next up would be riding shotgun in my grandpa's 58 1ton dump. him and my dad built it the same year i was born. but anyways it would have been a year or two later that i was riding with him, hauling manure for the garden, and he stopped to kill a snake(ironically enough) and to add even more the irony it was within an 1/8 of a mile from where i got my first ticket (77 in a 45), blew a tire on my bronco, and me and my friend ryan rolled his cavalier...

papa jim passed away 13 years ago, me and dad still have his "favorite" truck too

 

My dad had a 1976 F-150 4x4 that he bought new. In the spring 1977, we responded to a brush fire set by the train as it rolled by. The fire engine got stuck in the mud after the fire was extinguished.

A fella with a Jimmy hooked up a chain and got stuck as well.

Another fella with a old Jeep pick-up hooked up and over heated before he could make a difference.

My dad, cocky as he was and out to prove a point hooked up to the fire engine and pulled it out. Then he waded back into the mud and yanked out the Jeep and the Jimmy, separately. It was a great day to be a Ford fan but the 360 in that truck was never right from day one.

He owned 3 chevies before he went back to a Ford and they all gave him a fit.

 

I remember the guy next door was die hard FORD end to end and top to bottom.

Every time he had a problem it was fixed by the next day and when my Pop asked what it was it was usually a module...

When my Pop asked how he knew which one, he just said he looked it up.

PISSED MY DAD OFF TO TEARS!!!!

Poppa had (at one point) at least eleven cars from Honda to Cadillac and at any given time three would be running.

Hank (the guy next door) had five or so fords (mostly trucks, at least one Mark V), BUT THEY ALL RAN!

 

Back about 1967 or so, when I was 5 years old, my Uncle had a stock, 1931 AA flatbed truck. I remember him taking my brother and I for a ride out to his place in it. I remember the howl of the trans and that huge steering wheel. A few years later, my Grandpa bought a new 1969 Ford long bed with a 360 and I remember it made the exact same noise and since it had manual steering, it too had a huge steering wheel. When he died in '97 my Dad offered to give me that same '69 Ford truck, but I felt it was too far gone with rust. Looking back I wished I'd taken it, because it really wasn't that bad.

 

My early memories are getting up with Dad & working on the farm. He took me everywhere he could. We started in the dairy & went from there to what ever was next in his day. Mom has pictures of me in Dads lap on tractors & horses. I was in diapers in the earliest ones.

 

one of my other memorys as a child was taking my grandfathers 1969 mercury cougar XR7 390. we used to take it to every car show and i loved driving it.

well today we took it out of storage, we're gonna get her back in 100% shape again...it was so nice to hear that 390 crank up and rumble to life.





made me feel 5 years old again sitting in her!

 

My oldest Ford memory, though not specifically a truck, is our 58 Ford station wagon (Disneyland trip) and 59 Ranchero. We also had two 1960 or 1961 F100 trucks for my fathers business.

 

Oh my God......

STRIP THAT CRAP OFF THE ROOF AT ONCE AND PAINT IT!

 

I was four or five years old, riding in my Dads '70 Ford truck towing our camper to Key West, FL on a vacation and seeing Cubans on inner tubes and makeshift boats making the trip. The Coast Guard was trying to turn them around and whatnot. I was so scared that something was very wrong.

 

Now that is a piece of history...

What did you think at the time?
Do you remember stuff that was said by the adults around you?

 

To be honest, they were gambling on which rafts or people were going to make it to shore. I remember sitting with my mother on a side walk or board walk to rest from walking and seeing six or seven guys just pop up out of the water and run towards the shore.

I remember my dad having to sleep in the truck as it was nearly stolen once while it was hooked to our camper with us sleeping in it. I t was horrible. I rememer being so scared. We stayed only about three days out of the fourteen we were supposed to stay. The police advised us to go north to orlando or go home until the worst of it was over.

You want some history? I went to Uzbekistan back in 2003 and went into some old concrete aircraft hangars to scope them for our helicopters. I went into five hangars all of which were about 45-50 years old, had blast ducts in the rear and had automated electric doors that were concrete reinforced with steel. These hangars were made to withstand a very large explosion. I found parts to several MiG fighter jets. Mostly altimeters and other electronics that werent very reliable in planes of that era. I went into the back of one and found literally hundreds of signatures with dates and a few little drawn pictures. I found a TCN that was from Pakistan and asked him if he could read the inscriptions. He read them to us and it turns out that this hangar was a meeting point for Russian spies bound for Europe and the USA during the late '50s. They would meet in this place, sometimes for weeks and exchange information with thier superiors or a messenger. I have tons of high def pictures of this.

I also found some things in a very, very small cave near Velburg Germany. We were out rock climbing and found a very small, nearly impassible cave. I managed to slither through the caverns "hall" into a large open area within the rock hill. When I went in I found ****-era china plates, some bifocal glasses with swastika insignia on the inside of one of the bows and several empty ammo cans with papers written in German of course. I brought them back to the base and had a translator read them and the documents were payment orders for a hotel in Velburg called the "Hotel Zur Post". Turns out the place is still in operation but part of it was destroyed in the war and rebuilt. These papers were basically a promisary note for the hotel proclaiming that the German government was going to pay lodging fees for ***** that were staying there. Probably not an important part of history but its some part at least.

 

Oh I've got a couple of memories I’d like to share.

This had of been around 1989 to early 1990. I was only about a year and half old. But I remember we were living in Lake House during those years, and we had a neighbor named Lawrence who had a 1959 Ford Ranchero. Technically speaking it was a drag strip car, BUT ole Lawrence drove it on the street regardless. That thing was sooooo loud, I remember he would start it up sometimes at like 5 or 6 in the morning ''I assume to go to work'' It shook all the windows in their frames in our little Lake house. I also remember sitting out in our front yard and watching him pull out into the road. Lawrence had a really heavy foot and he would always go screeching down the road in a hail of tire smoke and big block engine roars. I actually ran into Lawrence when I was 16 years old. I had just purchased my first truck a mint condition 1990 F-150 XLT Lariat with the good old 302 V8. Lawrence commented on the truck and offered me the same amount of money I paid for it! Which was 6500$. I of course declined his offer as I was in love with that truck. I asked him if he still had that old Ranchero from all those years ago. He informed me that it had been totaled in a drag strip accident in 1995. I was sad to hear this news. But some things can't be helped.

My next memory was around the same time period. It was around hunting season 1989 to be exact. At that time my Grandpa was driving a 1986 Ford F-250 4X4 that had been converted to run on Propane. I remember that truck taking us all over our hunting lease and not once did we ever get stuck! I believe it had a 351 V8 in it. There are a few pictures of me sitting in my grandpa's lap steering while we drove around the deer lease. I can actually remember that as if it were yesterday. We had some good times in that truck. We live in west Texas ''lots of oil rigging here'' and I remember our lease at that time was on Oil riggers property. The terrain was quite rugged and in many places was actually pretty dangerous to drive with deep gullies next to the road way that you could slide off into if not carful. I remember one afternoon my grandpa and I were driving out to his deer blind and one of the Oil transport trucks had partially slid off the road and into the gully. The front half of the truck was still on the road. But his trailer ''thank god it was empty'' had slid partially down into the gully area. My grandpa hooked up to him and locked that old Ford in 4WD low and with a little effort and wheel spin we managed to pull the rig back onto the road. I remember being very impressed by this as a very young boy.

And last but not least. A few years later 1993 to exact my grandpa purchased a 500 mile fresh 1993 F-150 XLT 302 V8 and E40D Automatic Transmission. ''He Traded the 86 F-250''. This 1993 F-150 was destined to become the truck my grandpa would deem the best he'd every owned. And he was a man of MANY trucks though out his life. There are too many stories with this truck reminisce about in a reasonable sized letter. But in short...My grandpa owned this truck until the year 2003 when he traded in of a 2003 F-150 Super crew which would be the last truck he owned until his death in 2008. In 10 years...My grandpa put 704,332.6 miles on that 1993 F-150. My grandpa used his trucks for work. And between 1993 and 2002 he was working ''Semi retired'' at a scrap yard hauling car parts and junk cars all over the country hence the ultra high mileage on the truck. Despite being used for hard towing / Hunting / Fishing and any other activity that one would need a truck for. It never let us down. Not once do I ever recall being stranded on the side of the road with that truck. Through out the mid 1990s to early 2000's my dad was driving a 1984 GMC Serria Classic with a carbureted 305 V8 which was a good looking truck...But it had some major issues and got about 8mpg on average. I remember going into the dealer in 2003 with my grandpa to trade in the old 1993. For us it was sort of an end of an era kind of thing. We both were really sad and near tears to see the old 1993 go as we had both built many of our memories together in and with that truck. None the less the dealer was truly shocked to see the mileage readout on the dashboard. In the end my grandpa worked a good deal out and we went home in his new 2003 F-150 XLT Super crew. I looked back one last time to see the old Red 1993 sitting on the lot. I never saw that truck again after that. I don't know if the dealer put back out for sale or if they just scrapped due to its insane mileage figure. Hell it should have been put in the Smithsonian institute.

But none the less, it was these trucks that I most fondly remember from my childhood and these trucks most helped me become the die hard Ford man I am today. I can't imagine owning anything other than a Ford truck. My first truck was a Ford and I plan to die owning a Ford truck.

 

My dad's side of the family have been Ford fans nearly since there was a Ford Motor Company, and it continues on to this day. I remember as a toddler (less than 3 yrs old, because my great-grandma was still alive) that I would ride in my great-grandpa's 1950-something F3 stakebody, while he drove through the cornfields after they had been combined, usually on a Sunday in October or November. The men of my family - dad, grandad, and various uncles - would walk the fields picking up stray ears that the combine had missed and toss them in the truck bed, and they would later be off-loaded into a wire corn crib to be used for livestock feed. My grandma and great-grandmother would spend all day cooking and the whole family would gather at my great-grandparents later to have a big farm dinner. My grandparents anniversary was in early November, as well, so that sort of tied into the whole gathering.