Nellie

How many events or things can I claim as integral and watershed to our children growing up? I do not know but for a space of ten years, from 1988 to 1998, an old 1930 Chevrolet truck loomed large and often in the events of their lives. Driving Daniel and Becca to and from Elmira school; 4H parades with kids sitting on hay bales in the back; driving down country roads to pick up Katie on her long-range bike rides; driving to Putah Creek with Jumper (dog) or going off to the Old Truck Museum in Woodland to scrounge parts, Nellie carried us all. Cece even took a turn learning to double clutch and drive the truck but thereafter eschewed it for the easier and more socially acceptable Suburban.

My love affair with Nellie began in 1976, as an answer to a want ad in the Mountain Democrat in Placerville. Sitting in a driveway in Shingle Springs, and making me only $800.00, poorer, she became mine and established herself as my iron mistress; in later years Kate’s only rival. I did get the engine to run, in the year I tinkered with it as Nellie rested beside the stairs to my over-garage apartment. But I never drove the truck, a broken clutch throw-out bearing the culprit. Then, in 1977, my 1967 Mustang having been totaled after hitting a deer (It hit me!) I needed a car. My friend Carl Larsen had a 1974 BMW Bavaria that was languishing in his garage…a trade was made…and Nellie passed out of my life for 11 years. During that time, I often visited Carl and watched the frame-up restoration that he did on the truck, drooling at his expertise and wishing Nellie was mine again. I was busy however with a new marriage and growing family and there was no place in our lives, let alone our finances for her.

My shock and amazement can be imagined when in 1998, answering the phone at our house on L Street in Davis, Carl offered to GIVE me back the truck. He had turned his interest to Jeeps. For the price of a rental car trailer and several tanks of gas in our Chevy van, Nellie came to reside in Davis on the front lawn. Kate immediately became a widow and the kids and I were always currying the streets of Davis, giving rides to their friends on Alice Street, taking the dog to UCD (while Katie biked there), driving to school in Elmira, where I taught, going to get biker Katie in Winters when she had run out of light and it was too dark and lonely to bike back. On one of those trips, in the glow of the old 6 volt headlights, an owl swooped down at us, almost hitting the truck cab. Its eyes and face seemed so gigantic in the reflected light.

On one memorable trip to “go work in the classroom” at Elmira Dan and I got caught in a downpour. Having no glass in the door windows, the plastic bags we stretched over them kept little rain out…we were drenched.

The old 48 star American flag we had on a pole behind the cab (it must have been some holiday) bled in the rain and ended up pink, lighter pink and blue!

Becca’s 4H club sat in the back of Nellie on a parade at the opening of the West Valley fair in Yakima. What a sight it must have made to see all those happy, wide-eyed children in white 4H uniforms stacked in back! I can only imagine how grimy and grubby they were on the return home that night! That truck truly made a show in Washington, bringing the light to neighbor Kermit Gothberg’s eyes and encouraging him to drive his old, unrestored 1937 Packard sedan to our place to “let the two vehicles visit.”

Nellie is ours no more but she resides in friend and neighbor Keene Brewer’s barn with his other collectable cars. She is resting in good company.