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Finding Betsy
I’m sure you are asking, “Who is Betsy?”
Betsy, as I called her, was a little half-ton “shorty” pickup that my dad had given me when I was a young man of 20 way back in 1975. It was one of those times much like now when the economy was bad and lots of people were out of work, including myself. My dad bought this little pickup for $225 from the car lot where he worked. He handed me the keys and said, “If you have a truck you can make your own job.”
I had that truck for many years, chasing around all over the Sierra high country with my buddies. Ultimately that little truck carried my wife, my baby daughter and me north to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State in 1977. If you’ve ever been on the peninsula you know how much it rains there. There’s a reason why it’s the only temperate rain forest in the northern hemisphere. It was a drastic change from the arid Central Valley of California.
After a few months of packing all three of us, the groceries and the clean laundry in the cab to stay dry, we realized we needed something with more “inside” space. A friend of mine had a Suburban he offered to trade. He’d had a Dodge pickup when he was younger and really wanted another one. They were moving out to North Dakota and the truck would help with their move. It seemed like a trade would be a win-win.
Shortly after I traded Betsy I ended up back in California. It was one of those reconciliation stories. We had been going through some hard times and my wife had moved back down to her parents. After she had done so she had second thoughts and wanted to patch things up. Unfortunately, the only way we could do that is if I were to take a job in California. I worked that job for a couple of years and by then we were both so homesick for the Pacific Northwest that I transferred up north with the company. We actually ended up back at the beach community where we had lived before. Of course being back in the area where I had traded away my little pick m' up just made me wish I hadn’t given her up that much more. I decided I wanted another truck, had been looking around for a little Chevy pickup. I had already accepted the fact I would probably never find another D100-108 Sweptline. My shorty Sweptline was the only one I had ever seen except for one time on the movie screen. They were just too far and few between. At least that’s what I thought.
One day, I had been out running errands with a buddy and got a message from an acquaintance at our local general store to go home right away. I had received an emergency call regarding my dad. I got back home and my landlady informed me he had passed away. That was on a Tuesday afternoon. Ironically, the next morning I was headed into town to check out an abandoned car sale at one of the tow yards. I was running late and wanted a chance to see the trucks before they went on the auction block.
Entirely out of impulse, I hung a right onto a side road that I had never been on. I remembered seeing the name of the road on the main highway a few miles over and was hoping it was a short cut. I was flying through the county at over 50mph and unbelievable as it seems I glanced down an easement and spotted the front end of a little Dodge stuffed back into some blackberry bushes. I hit the brakes and turned back to check it out. As I looked the truck over I noticed a couple “spooky similarities" but passed it off as only coincidence. It was even the same color as my truck except for some black primer. As far as I knew my truck was in North Dakota so I dismissed it as a fluke.
I didn’t want to get shot at so I went to the door. The guy at the house told me his roommate just moved out and wanted to sell the truck so he wouldn't have to move it. He let me take a closer look and as I looked around inside the cab I got this spooky feeling of familiarity. The same Arctic Blue paint. The hole in the driver’s spot on the bench seat, revealing decades of wear through 3-4 layers of seat covers, eerily the same colors/patterns mine had been. I looked up at the dash and realized the ashtray had been painted crinkle-finish black. I suddenly flashed back on the day I took my ashtray out and painted it... Yes, crinkle-finish black.
I began to search through the truck for any documents that might tell me about its history but could not find anything. Then, as I looked up to check out the condition of the headliner I saw the phone number of a girl I dated that I had written on the hardboard headliner in grease pen. I was actually setting in my truck... the truck that my dad originally bought me... the truck that was supposed to be in North Dakota... the truck that I found on a county side road I had never been on. The county road that I suddenly and impulsively turned down on my way to an auction to buy a truck... I had "stumbled" onto my beloved little Dodge that my dad originally bought me... NOT EVEN 24-HOURS AFTER HE PASSED AWAY THE PREVIOUS DAY! A phone call later and I bartered an old boat trailer and a c-note and got it back!
Then I replaced the expired 6 with a 318 LA V8 out of a `72 Plymouth Duster. With the NP 4-speed the guy I got it from put in it, that little truck turned into a screaming stump puller! I've now owned my little Dodge for going on 48 years! She's seen better days... but I have, too!
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