Peter Behrens's Blog, page 569

BLUE HILL JEEP

MGB

MGB                                   Mine was red of a kind                                    burnt orange by the sun, each day paler                                     than the day before.                                    No one’s turned over on demand. There was no reason,no predicting. May afternoons,
left at the Wash N’ Fold, past Cow Shit Corner,  where the manure was warmed, mixed by late-morning,  with the ocean air. Or right,down Maine Street, past the fishermen who were drunk by noon, refusing
to shift from second to third for fear of losing the familiar hold-back rumble between acceleration and exhale, past the girls at Frosty’s, across the bridge by the mill, not yet 4, the time when the factories let out,when the weekend began
in earnest, and everything worth waiting for was just ahead,around the bend,within cruising range,the alluring paleness of the sky so whiteyou could almost feelthe night, moonriseover the growing fields
and farms with their junk yards of discarded dream vehicles in barns and culverts, behind the house graduate shadows removing color from the impossible finish.                                            --Bruce Willard

1956 Dodge

Non-buyer's report from our man in Banff:
"The new owner has possession of the Dodge. I stopped by today and the seller's Dad told me that a liitle nudge over the phone got the dude to get over. I'm a little bummed. To make it seem like a bigger fish story ...the truck came with 3 milk crates full of new parts and 5 old but brand new Michelin tires  Art had, in reserve, a new spare fuel pump , water pump plugs etc etc. It was originally used by a Parks Canada plumber and he sold it to Art and it only had 63,000 miles in almost as many years. I could cry. I can only hope that , especially if I put the word out, in Ponteix (Sakatchewan, some old farmer might have a cherry in a shed. They are definitely out there and this near miss might be a prelude for something better.  The new rubber was worth a grand, and all the parts another grand ... the truck was free. SHIT."---A.E. 

Southbound Nevada 447 towards the Smoke Creek Desert

                                                                                     ©2012 Michael S. Moore 

299 Westbound Over Cedar Pass

                                                           photo©2012 Michael S. Moore

1954 Dodge truck & Robert Goulet & Grizzly

This from Alex Emond in Banff, today. I hope he gets the truck.



 I'm in love. Giddy as a schoolgirl. I know this old Dodge...it belonged to my deceased (by about 8 years)neighbour, Art Homer. Art was an Englishman, a bachelor, who worked as a painter for Parks Canada. Kind of an introverted curmudgeon unless you knew him and then he was the salt of the earth. Anyway this truck outlasted him and then somebody inherited it and did a few little things to it to get it safety-checked and now I see it is for sale. So, I'm going to have to look into this... I'll get on it tomorrow. Despite my abject poverty I have to find out the price. It's a sweet truck even if it is a little long in the tooth. Not that far gone. I mean, it's freakin' Job-Rated!---AE
P.S. Found this Robert Goulet record yesterday.... a good Canadian boy with disturbingly perfect hair.
A grizzly sighting from Alex earlier this week "It's not a truck but almost as big. The dogs and I walked smack into this easygoing grizzly yesterday evening on the trail to the Cascade River from the Norquay Ski Hill. Threw it into reverse and after a half kilometer retreat we went up and around his holiness to get past it and back on the trail.  Really cool in a sick sort of way."-AE

1954 Dodge truck, & Robert Goulet

This from Alex Emond in Banff, today. I hope he gets the truck.



 I'm in love. Giddy as a schoolgirl. I know this old Dodge...it belonged to my deceased (by about 8 years)neighbour, Art Homer. Art was an Englishman, a bachelor, who worked as a painter for Parks Canada. Kind of an introverted curmudgeon unless you knew him and then he was the salt of the earth. Anyway this truck outlasted him and then somebody inherited it and did a few little things to it to get it safety-checked and now I see it is for sale. So, I'm going to have to look into this... I'll get on it tomorrow. Despite my abject poverty I have to find out the price. It's a sweet truck even if it is a little long in the tooth. Not that far gone. I mean, it's freakin' Job-Rated!---AE
P.S. Found this Robert Goulet record yesterday.... a good Canadian boy with disturbingly perfect hair.

1960 International Harvester truck: Idle Economy Danger

I'm teaching in Vancouver this week and staying in a hotel in the West End and staring at freighters on the nod, out on English Bay.   Then I came across this 1960 International B100. Yikes. Sweetest truck I've seen in weeks.

 Completely solid and mostly original, though repainted sometime...perhaps in the Seventies. Spent most of its life on a grain farm in Saskatchewan, a province which seems to be a Unesco World Heritage Site for old iron.


The owner was selling her for $2500. Been in his family since around 1962: his father,  a farmer, bought the truck, slightly used, from an IH dealer in Saskatchewan.

                                        Watch those RPM: "Idle" "Economy" and "Danger"                                                          Radio, mounted on the roof of the cab
                                                                    Not sure if it was 3 on the tree, or 4.                                               Owner a BC Lions fan (Grey Cup Champs, 2011)I live 3000 miles away but, men, I wanted to buy this truck. Hate to tell you, but it's gone, it sold... to a fellow who came down from Hope, BC with a trailer. He's involved with an I-H Supershow happening this summer in Chilliwack, BC. This truck didn't need a trailer---everything was solid, everything works. Original paint was red. $2500! That's--what, 1/8 the price of a new Kia?
My Brilliant Careerism note: I was interviewed by the brilliant Michael Enright on CBC Radio's Sunday Edition. The show broadcasts across Canada tomorrow but the podcast in already up here.

Okay.

Banff Diamond T

These from Alex Emond, in Banff. That's Mount Norquay in the background.

Maura O'Connell "Western Highway" & that Nevada Road

Years ago I spent some time at a cattle ranch in the Surprise Valley, which is a narrow slice of irrigated, alfalfa-growing flatland tucked up there on the northeast edge of California. Most of the ranch's grazing sprawled out into BLM land in the adjacent Nevada desert. Just received these photos from our Nevada correspondent of that wonderful wide open road, Hwy 447 that runs up to the Surprise Valley from I-80 just west of Reno. Remind me and sometime I 'll tell you the story of my only gunfight, which happened in the parking lot of a Denny's in Reno in 1976. I wasn't the gun. Meanwhile, try the Irish singer Maura O'Connell's wonderful "Western Highway"

"This being 447 heading north to Cedarville, which probably hadn't been paved back when you were around here...in this iteration a major inspiration for my '45 Chevy, though lacking storage I still haven't brought it up [the woodrats are a major disincentive].  We do this most every week we're on the desert, going for groceries in Alturas..." --MSM