Wow!!! What great week!!! A great truck show, meet and talk with the guys and gal of FTE and admiring their awesome trucks!

It just doesn't get any better then this! looking forward to next year already!

Homade, that was a very neat cooler!

John

 

Scottm1, did'nt get a chance the stop and talk, but your rig was awsome! As for the show it was the best time I've had at a show in years. My hats off to Stanley (Orange Crate), Kevin (55fordtruck) and the rest of the "Not For Profit Truckers" for putting the fun back into a truck run!

homade, Truxx1956,
Thanks for letting Sharon and I hang out with you and your families all weekend. We had a great time.

It was great to meet so many of you from FTE.
brian...

 

Has anyone got any pictures from the show??

 

I took 50 some pictures with a new cheap digital camera I bought a couple of days before the show. Now I'm trying to figure out how to load the program onto my computer.My wife and I had a great time . Our truck is the red 56 that had the "swamp-cooler" hanging on it on Friday.I enjoyed meeting a few FTE'ers at the cookout Friday.Thank you to all who had a part in putting the show on.

 

Likewise Brian. We had a GREAT time with you guys. This thing just keeps getting better. I also want to thank Kevin and Stanley and the rest of the guys for doing all the hard work so the rest of us could just hang out and goof off.

See yall next year, ane YES I'll be driving one of my trucks. Just not sure which one yet.

 

YEAH YEAH sure sure............

 

I promise Bill. I came home and my truck was sitting in the garage crying. She knew that I'd been out with another truck.

 

Yeah, I'm with the rest of ya that didn't know you were talking to FTE folks, haha.

Scott, I was parked right next to ya with the black '66. Thanks for saving the spot for me with your car, haha. Your truck and the Dodge are beautiful, very nice.

 

Melissa, I just figured out that the truck next to me was indeed yours just before your last post. I knew I was saving a spot for someone, I just wasn't sure for who. Like I said when you arrived, I had been parking in that spot since I arrived Wednesday night, but I knew that once the parking lot started getting full Friday that someone was gonna need that spot. I travel with my own parking place for the ole Dodge. I'm Glad you got the spot.

 

Well, thank you. If you only knew how relieved I was when my brother found the spot... My nerves were shot, I was exhausted and I thought I had arrived too late to park with the rest of the show. So it worked out perfectly.

 

Stanley and Kevin,
I ditto Brian and Terry compliments man you all did one summer job with the show. The burgers were good and fellowship was wonderful. Maybe next year we can catch and id one another earlier and get a chance to chat more.

Homade, Mike (MT54) told me you were passing out food. That's what I get for walking around so much trying to get ideas and drooling over new and used parts. Hope you and Brian and Brian enjoyed the photos,

Brian,
I am going to hold onto my "FTE ID" card. I may get the wife to laminate and then I can stick it in the windshield when I am at a show.

 

HEY GUYS
Want to thank all you truckers for allowing Jeannine & I to include your truck in the video/dvd "Memory" we're putting together. We attend events all over the country & THANKS to Jake & Stanley & there crew the Great Smoky Mountain F-100 Run is one of the BEST we attend. The only thing that could've made this yrs event any better was another 3 days, but then I would have to hi jack somebodys cooler because by Sunday morning my feet refused to follow my body
Ok got to fire up the ol editing machines & start "Making Memorys" Talk at yall later
"Video Bob", Jeannine & Nishka

 

Bob, you are one hard working man I must say. No get back to work.

Later,Bill

 

Heck yeah, any time I was around they were trying to pump me full of donuts and pizza! Haha.


Yes, the Duck Club did a great job. Thank you Stanley for remembering me from SO many years ago, it really made my weekend.


Ok, I got all my pics uploaded....

Here's an album with all the pics I took.
http://www.supermotors.net/registry/17895/70136




I stopped on the way home and took a pic at a covered bridge I knew about. I know the truck isn't finished and still needs the aluminum trim down the side and the fender badges and the interior redone, but I can't help taking pics of the ol boy.






Ok, so this is the story of me and my truck and it's really, really long, but it covers the last 15 years, haha. But people ask me how a young girl got hooked on old Ford trucks. Seriously, I'm not kidding, its a book, get some donuts and milk before you sit down and read my story.....


I got up early Saturday morning to clean any residual rain spots off the black paint, and was pleasantly surprised that my job drying it off the night before worked pretty good and the truck was pretty clean.

So I plopped down in my chair at the back of the truck, enjoyed some biscuits and gravy and reflected on what I survived to get where I was with my little truck.

I got started in old Ford trucks by my brother in law when I was about 15. Him and my sister took me to the Supernats one year in his '66 longbed. A few years later, he found a blue '65 shortbed for sale. We wound up buying it and the passion was ignited.

It was my first truck and my first love. I learned how to drive in that Marlin Blue '65 with it's 3 on the tree and manual steering. People would stand in awe, you drive that ol thing? You? What would a girl like you want with that old thing? Dad would grumble about his little girl driving something with a stick shift and manual steering, and I would grumble right back, I like it that way!

Before I got the truck I was diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease - kidney failure. I was put on dialysis and they told me without a transplant I would die. I was 16 when I was diagnosed, that's a hard age for any teenager and I'm handed this blow out of nowhere. It's not like I had been sick or anything.

So I barely graduated high school, I basically gave up on life and just did what it took to survive. I just drove my little truck and did my dialysis and minded my own business. I also was blessed with having my very first horse during the time. I was living high with my two loves, my truck and my horse.

That truck was my identity. I had nothing else To me, I was just some sick girl that got the short end of the stick in life. But I had my little truck. [I even got to take it to Run To the Rock one year.] I didn't fit in with other people my age because I was too sick to work and too sick to care about going on to college. Like I said, I gave up, but I always had my truck.

Then my world started crumbling. Finances were rough for my parents and my horse had to find a new home. It was ok, I still had my little truck. Then my old dog got hit by a car. My truck bed would be empty without my dog [B.A. Ford] riding in the back, but at least I still had my truck. Then the truck got wrecked. It was ok, we got a parts truck and were gonna rebuild it. It got taken apart, but still is not back together.

I was lost without my truck. No more comments at the gas station, "nice truck." No more comments about, "and you drive that thing?" No more reason to get up in the morning. I didn't drive for almost 2 years.

Finally dad bought a '89 Bronco and I thought I'd get into the 4x4 thing. I picked up a rough lookin' 78 Bronco and we put a 429 in it. I went offroad, riding shotgun with folks a few times, but that beating your truck on rocks and slinging mud just isn't my thing. I tried to get into it, but my billet and chrome just didn't "fit" with their cut fenders and big tires. I wanted my Bronco shiny and straight, and they just didn't get it. Plus I wasn't too big on that being stuck on the side of a mountain wondering how you're gonna get off the mountain with broken axles or a dead fuel pump, but heck, it was better than sitting at home.

I wasted 10 years of my life just waiting to die. They pushed me for a transplant, but I was like, why should I get better? No horse, no truck, I can't concentrate and do well in school, I can't work, no boyfriend, no real friends. Who cares. Bah.

But I continued to go to the Supernats with my brother in law and sister. I longed for the day I could join that crowd. Longed for the day I could do that parade and be in the middle of those trucks coming down the parkway three wide. What a sight! Every year I went, it would just break my heart. I wanted nothing more than to be a part of something. I didn't want to be the sick girl who had parts to a truck at home in a pile, I wanted to be Melissa with that blue '65 that drove up from Georgia, how cool! But no, it was not meant to be. I was stuck on the outside looking in.

My dad built a drag car and we tried the drag racing thing. But even then, I was just pit crew, check the tire pressure, take the pictures, no real involvement. I just held the chair down and got sunburned while dad worked on it and my brother drove it. Now don't get me wrong, I love drag racing, love the smell of race fuel on a cool evening, but it still wasn't ME.

So over the years, I survived a stroke. I had a few vacations in the hospital. I looked at trucks for sale, but really didn't have the energy or help to rebuild one or even think about putting Blue back together. I hung out at my parents, playing on the internet for hours at a time and doing my dialysis. Just surviving, but not really living.

Then I woke up one morning. This being sick thing is for the birds! I got it in my head that I was gonna get myself a transplant! I got enrolled in school, made the transplant team happy, got on the recipient list and 4 weeks after being listed, I got a perfect match kidney on December 9, 2003.

I stayed in school, I struggled, it was hard to concentrate and I really didn't give two craps about what I was learning. I was bored with the "Automotive Technology" program. There were no rumbly V8s with carburetors, or chome shiny things, just brake jobs and computerized sensors, blah. But I stuck it out. I graduated with an Associates in Auto Tech. I still wasn't working, had little money and no help to build or buy a truck, so my heart ache continued.

In 2006, I was in a bad wreck. I was working for a horse drawn carriage company -- think brides and weddings. The transplant allowed me to get out and work with horses again. I met a couple old fellas that have taught me alot, one is like my other dad, the other is a Grandpa I never had. I love going to his farm.

But the wreck was pretty bad. The carriage was rear ended, I got thrown over the front, run over and dragged down the road about 20 feet. I Cowboyed Up, got out of the road and the drunk joker that hit us, ran across in front of me and I briefly contemplated chasing him, haha... but I went after the horses instead. I survived the wreck, I was pretty beat up, but nothing was broken and I was still alive. Too stubborn to die apparently.

So anyhow, yeah, insurance paid up and I had a little change jingling in my pockets and I thought, by God, I'm gonna get me another truck!!

Oh, during this time, I also landed a full time job at a Ford dealership. One day I asked my boss if he knew anybody with a 65/66 F100 for sale. He said, as a matter of fact, my son has one. So I went and looked at it. It had been wrecked and he was a body man, so he had the front clip off and was painting, priming and straightening. I was like, eh, really looks like more work than I can fool with right now. So I kept looking.

About 6 or 8 months after I first looked at it, I caved in and went to look at it again. He had the front clip back on it, it ran and drove around the yard. I noticed details a little better this time, the bed was perfect, original seat cover, original owner's manual...and he lowered the price. So I brought Little Black home.

I bought it, 10 years to the week that my first '65 was wrecked. It was wrecked November 7, 1997, I bought the '66 on November 11, 2007. Now tell me that ain't God's timing.

I found out I had heart disease and now have a stent because of a 65% blockage. I was fighting depression and family drama and moved out to live with my brother. I wound up sick in the hospital again. I got some virus that made my brain swell and they thought I had meningitis, and some blood infection...I was pretty sick. I was able to finally come home, but Little Black sat and I drove it from time to time, no real energy to do anything with it.

Then I heard about the Great Smokey Mtn Show and that it was put on by the Non-Profit Truckers and would be in Pigeon Forge! Rock on!! I gotta make it to the show! So I bugged the crap out of our body shop til they caved and painted the truck. And me and my brother [brother mostly] busted tail to get it ready in time. I rebuilt the engine I'd had in Blue. So even though the '65 is no longer with me, his heart lives on in my Little Black. I also had to use the passenger side vent window from the old truck. As I pulled it from the door I realized my old Duck Club sticker was still on the window.

And I made it. My circle came around and is complete. I'm me again. I have my passion back with my little truck. I made it to a show in Pigeon Forge. I got to park with the big dogs. People recognized me and my truck and I was somebody. I was no longer "that sick girl" with nothing to show for. I was no longer the girl enjoying the show experience from a distance with no truck of my own. I am Melissa, Melissa and her Little Black '66 F100. Truck #15 at the Great Smokey Mtn F100 Run!

I know it's silly to put such importance on material things. But while I was living at home, I was never good enough. Dad always bragged on my brother and how well off he was buying a house and working a good job. Me, I was just sitting at home too sick to do anything worthwhile. Never good enough for any attention.

But now, now I've done it. I got to do the one thing I longed and ached for, to fit in somewhere. To be a part of something really cool. I can't thank ya'll enough for including me. It tickled me pink when Brian who had never laid eyes on me, called out my name when I was walking by. I know I tried to act all shy and tried to dip out of pictures, but inside I was glowing that ya'll wanted to include me. It meant so much to me to sit around with ya'll after the show. I know I didn't hang out long, but I was exhausted, the week had really taken alot out of me, but next year will be so much better, because the truck will be ready.

If I die tomorrow, I'll die happy. Because I made it, me and my Little Black F100 made it to a Ford truck show and we fit in. I know he won't see this because he doesn't get on the internet, but I'll never be able to repay my brother. For helping me so much, for pushing on when I said I was done, it took every bit of my energy to go to work, then come home and make decisions.

When we got down to the end and I still had parts to gather up, my brain was mush. It took everything I had to get it ready, but we did it. I exhausted my savings, but I decided I'd rather die broke and happy achieving something I really wanted, than to die never experiencing the one thing that makes me truly happy.

If you've read this far, bless Ya'll. I know it was a long read, but all weekend my brother was like, does anybody know your story? Does anybody know what you survived and how long you've waited to get here? I was like, nah, its not really important, I made it and that's all that matters.

 

Hello All,
All I can say is Yall folks know how to wear my narrow butt out.Just kidding. I had a great time and it was nice meeting everyone. I just wished I had more time to spend talking with everyone.


As for next year we need some help with the staff. I have talked to a few of you about helping out. If anyone else is willing to help let me know.


Also the pictures....I have about 250 on a disk. There is suppose to be at least 1 of every truck and pics of the awards. Let me know if anyone wants a copy and I'll send one.

Thanks,
Kevin