The Bride Wore Crimson and Other Stories (8 page)

He has no special feeling for the GMC, he said. It's just a tool, just one of a long line of pickups that have served him over the years, not particularly better or worse than the rest. “But I couldn't run my place without it,” he said.

Listening to Mr. McFail and Mr. Allen stirred long memories in my mind, of bouncing along rough ranch roads in a battered old pickup, jumping out to open the gates for the battered old cowboy driving it, hauling horses or hay or blocks of salt, or checking the tanks after a big rain. In my pickup memories, it's always sundown, and the air is redolent with sage in bloom. Sometimes I got to drive and somebody else had to open the gates. That was glory.

Texas was a rural state then. Most of us lived in the country or in the little farm and ranch and oil and sawmill towns. Pickups were for the work of those places, as Mr. McFail and Mr. Allen use theirs now. They rarely were driven for pleasure. “If I was just going for a ride,” Mr. McFail said, “I'd rather go in a car.”

Now nearly all of us live in cities. We no longer have daily dealings with horses and cattle minerals and hay or anything else that needs hauling or pulling. Yet Impact Resources, a research firm that keeps track of such things, says Dallas-Fort Worth is tied with Sacramento, Calif., for second place in the percentage of residents whose primary car is a pickup. And in first place? San Antonio.

Add in the number of urban Texas families who own a pickup as a second or third or fourth car, and you've got… well, you've got a lot of trucks. You see them on every street, in the parking lots of shopping malls and office buildings, even racing the Bentzes and BMWs and Porsches up the Dallas North Tollway.

Why?

Mr. Allen shrugged and kind of smiled. “I don't know,” he said. “Maybe everybody wants to be a cowboy. Also, everybody likes to have something to haul things in.”

Ray Adler is a business executive, the head of a Dallas public relations firm that he founded. He didn't grow up on a farm or ranch. He has never worked with horses or cattle. He isn't even the son of a truck-owning family. But he had just bought a 1991 extended-cab, four-wheel-drive Chevrolet Silverado 1500. He thinks it's the sixth or seventh truck he has owned.

“I'm not real sure why I have to have a pickup,” he said. “I don't haul anything. I do a little hunting and camping and I sort of tell myself that's what the truck is for. But it isn't really. My wife says it's a throwback to little boys wanting a wagon. She not only won't drive it, she won't ride in it.”

Mr. Adler's truck isn't like the pickups I used to know. Those had worn-out seats with busted springs covered with pieces of old quilts or saddle blankets. Their cabs were full of wrenches, hammers, wire-cutters, a rifle or two, boxes of .22 and .30-.30 cartridges, wadded up empty cigarette packs, old feed store receipts and other bits of paper covered with pencil-written numbers, coils of rope, hanks of baling wire, and nuts and bolts that rolled about the floor and banged against the door. Their beds carried pieces of windmills, shovels, crowbars, posthole diggers, little piles of old hay and cottonseed cake, more hanks of baling wire, a couple of empty tow sacks, the excrement of sick calves and sometimes a dog. Their windows were cracked. Their fenders were torn and dented. No one had ever thought of washing, much less of waxing them.

There isn't a speck of dirt on Mr. Adler's brightly polished truck. The seats are of red velour. Red carpet covers the floorboard. It's air-conditioned. It's equipped with power steering, power brakes, a tilt steering wheel, cruise control, a stereo, a telephone, and a ham radio. The bed is protected by a bed liner, which is so clean that surgery could be performed on it.

“You should have seen the one I just got rid of,” Mr. Adler said. “It was a four-door crew cab. You could haul six huge oilfield workers in it if you wanted to. It was so long it looked like Moby Dick parked in the driveway. My wife kept saying, ‘When are you going to sell that truck?' One day this young man rang my doorbell and said, ‘You have a truck in the driveway, and I'd like to buy it.' I said, ‘Son, that truck is my pride and joy. Go away and leave me alone.' He came back two or three times. Finally he persuaded me to let him take it away.

“Why I ever got that truck, I don't know,” he said. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

He sighed. “The thing about having a pickup,” he said, “is that all your friends remember you when they've got something to haul.”

Lynn Hearn and his son Kyle saw the raggedy 1951 Chevrolet at a swap meet in February 1988. It belonged to a farmer from near Duncan, Okla. The Hearns bought it for $1,000 and brought it home to Bedford and began to restore it.

Now it's bright blue and shiny enough to make you squint. It has every authentic accessory that the Hearns could find at their swap meets—chrome spotlight, chrome hood guide, chrome bumper guard, deluxe heater, windshield washer, even one of those outside sun visors that sticks out over the windshield like the bill of a cap, and a traffic light finder that helps the driver see out from under that visor. The original 1951 Texas state inspection sticker is still on the windshield. A genuine 1951 Texas license plate is on the front bumper.

The Hearns' pickup is the same vintage as those I used to bounce across the ranches in, but none of them ever was as beautiful as theirs, even when it was new. Whenever Kyle takes it out for a spin other drivers call to him: “Trade you!”

“It's very satisfying to take would-be junk and bring it back to where it's dependable and still usable and people admire it,” Lynn Hearn said. “To me that truck is a testimony that at one time the people of the United States built something that was worthwhile, with integrity, that lasted. It didn't just disappear. You could rebuild it. But you can't take a modem car apart and rebuild it even if you want to. This truck is simple. If it quits on you, it can't be anything but the electrical or the gas. If a modem car quits on you, it's the computer or the mass air flow sensor or the crank sensor, and without the right equipment you can't find out what it is.”

“It's a neat old truck to drive,” Kyle Hearn said.

Unfortunately, a modem city isn't a safe place to drive a masterfully restored antique in which a year of time and labor and thousands of dollars have been invested. “I can't drive it much anymore because people open their car doors and bang them into it,” Kyle Hearn said. “I've already got two or three little dings on the fender. So I just drive it to car shows now.”

“People just don't respect other people's property and other people's sweat,” Lynn Hearn said.

David Owens of Pleasant Grove has to be careful with his truck, too. He can't keep it where he lives because he fears it might be stolen.

It's a 1950 Ford. He paid $750 for it and says he has put $10,000 into it during the 15 years he has owned it. Unlike the Hearns, who restored their truck to what it originally was, only better, Mr. Owens has spent his time and money making his pickup into something new and unique. It has become his life work.

“I've owned many cars,” he said, “but I always wanted an old truck. When I started looking, I ran into this old Ford in South Dallas. I didn't even know the guy. I went up to his door and asked him, ‘Is that old truck out there for sale?' And he says, ‘Yeah, it's for sale.' And I says, ‘How much you want for it?' And he says, ‘Seven and a half.' And I says, ‘You got a title for it? Go get it.' And he says, ‘Don't you want to see how it runs?' And I says, ‘I don't care how it runs. I'm ready to buy it right now, and I have the money right here in my pocket.'”

He took the grille off and chromed it. He painted it a beautiful red. He put a Mustang engine in it, then changed his mind and put another engine in it, then changed his mind…. “I've had this thing in pieces so many times,” he said.

He spoke of all the work he has done on it over the years. The memory of every engine, every transmission, every differential, every modification of the chassis is vivid in his mind. “I've never had nothing that draws the attention that this old pickup does,” he said. “People keep flagging me down, wanting to stop so they can look at it. The old truck drives, man. It's got power steering, power brakes, tilt wheel, electric seat. It's got everything, boy.”

He has vowed never to sell it. “When I die, my brother is going to get it,” he said, “and when he dies, my daughter will get it.” His daughter is nine now.

“You've got to keep something in life,” he said. “I couldn't keep a wife, and I couldn't keep my money, and I couldn't keep a lot of other things. But I'm going to keep my truck.”

I asked him if he ever hauls anything in it. He looked at me as if I had shot his dog. “Haul anything!” he said. “Naw!”

Plato wrote that each of us is born with only half a soul. We spend our lives searching for the other half, which is housed in the body of another person. Only when we find our soul mates can we be truly happy.

John Davis found Ernie in 1979 and bought him for $300. Over the years their relationship has become, well, mystical. “One day Ernie wouldn't start,” Mr. Davis said. “I couldn't figure out why. Finally, I walked over and looked at the right front tire, something I wouldn't ordinarily do. It was flat. So I put some air in the tire and got back in and cranked it again, and Ernie fired right up. He was trying to tell me something was wrong. He has ways of communicating with me.”

Mr. Davis is an Oak Cliff artist who makes designs to be printed on T-shirts. Ernie is a 1960 Ford F100. Ernie Ford. Get it?

“I bought Ernie primarily to haul two broken motorcycles around in,” Mr. Davis said, “but I have used him for everything. I used him to haul away an entire fence that went around my granddad's house. Ernie got it all to the dump in one trip. I've used him to pull trees down. I put a Volkswagen in the back of him one time. I guess the biggest task he ever performed was retrieving my wife's big old Olds-mobile from Salado, Texas, a couple of years ago. Ernie's rear end caught fire near Waxahachie. Since then, when I get him up to about 45 miles an hour, his rear end starts going: ‘OOOOoooooOOOOOooo, huhuhuhuhuhu HUHU HUHU huhu, ooooooOOOOOooooo.' I've camped out in Ernie. I've lined his bed with plastic and filled it with water for a makeshift hot tub.”

Ernie was sitting in Mr. Davis' driveway alongside a 1973 Ford 360 that Mr. Davis also owns. The newer truck had a dead battery, but Mr. Davis didn't care. “That one isn't half the truck Ernie is,” he said. “I haven't even bothered to name it. I haven't even figured out what gender it is.”

He patted Ernie on the hood. “Doesn't this truck kind of have an aura about him?” he said proudly. “A lady in the fashion business saw Ernie once and said, ‘Oh, how darling! It has a patina!'”

“Patina” is a kind word for Ernie's complexion, which is mostly dark green—apparently his original color—with splotches of blue, black and a pinkish tint that may be his undercoat. His windshield and windows are cracked. His junk-filled bed is covered with a topper of a different green, borrowed from Ernie's 1973 companion. A DANGER sign attached to Ernie's grille doesn't seem a joke.

“Ernie offends people,” Mr. Davis said. “My dad hates him. The first time he ever saw Ernie, he said, ‘Anybody hurt in that wreck?' Ernie and I have been in trouble many times. He's such a bad beast.”

Mr. Davis told of an incident in his earlier days when he was dating a girl who lived in Highland Park. He and Ernie were helping her move. “I parked in front of her place and unloaded her stuff,” Mr. Davis said. “The neighbors were peeking through their blinds at Ernie. Others came out of their houses on the pretext of checking their mailboxes. I said in a real loud voice, ‘Thank you, ma'am. I'll call you tomorrow.' Then I grabbed my girl and gave her a big old kiss, then jumped in Ernie and burned off. The neighbors just stood there with their mail in their hands. My girlfriend never got to know them.”

Another time, the Highland Park police stopped Mr. Davis and Ernie just to see what they were up to. In an attempt to make Ernie less conspicuous in the neighborhood, Mr. Davis painted “Izod” on his tailgate. When Izod shirts went out of style in Highland Park, he painted the word over and substituted with “Polo.”

“Come on,” Mr. Davis said. “Ernie and I will give you a ride.”

We crawled in, and Mr. Davis cranked the engine. It made a noise like ball bearings rolling down a stovepipe, then belched to life. “Hurray! Ernie lives!” Mr. Davis cried.

Ernie lurched down the driveway and veered into the street. He coughed, groaned, whined, like an old man awakened from his nap before he's ready.

As he gained speed, the ghostly singing that Mr. Davis had described issued from the differential. “Ernie's not running too good,” Mr. Davis said. “His carburetor is screwed up.” Ernie smelled like Texas City blowing up. When we returned to his house, Mr. Davis shifted into reverse and drove up the driveway backward. Ernie sounded like an armored personnel carrier revving. When we stopped, smoke was drifting from under his hood.

“Why do you love Ernie so much?” I asked.

“It's something about the amount of work we've accomplished together,” Mr. Davis said. “It's like having a pal. When I think of all the man hours of work that Ernie and I have done together, all the things we've hauled and pulled… I have a ridiculous attachment to Ernie. I don't really know why. I just do. Every day I've driven Ernie has been an adventure.”

I hadn't driven a pickup in many years. I wondered if it would be as much fun on the Dallas North Tollway and the LBJ as on the rough, winding ranch roads of my sundown-and-sage memories. On a scorching summer day I phoned Rent-A-Jalopy and asked the lady what kind of trucks they had for rent.

“They're just plain-Jane trucks,” she said.