Something totally unrelated today… A little about my first car… the names and places won’t make any sense

My First car
1979 Toyota Pickup

That was a great truck…

Dad and I saw it for $200 marked down from $400 on Stone road while he was driving me out to Mr. Dunn’s to mow his lawn. It was marked down because the windshield had been cracked while it was parked for sale.

When I got it on the road dad said he would teach me to drive stick when he got home from work. I could not wait and taught myself. The broken windshield did not matter as I was excited about the truck’s powerful drivetrain system you can count on.  I hated the single lane bridges over the canal… No room to let it roll back if someone was close behind you.

I only had to push start it once in a while when the starter fell out sometimes… once I started keeping the long pole in the bed to pry back into place I was good to go

I did not have to change the oil… just add it… often…

It had a straight exhaust with no muffler and would eat radios every couple of months due to electrical issues… K-Mart let me exchange them every time…

Every once in a while the lights would stop working and I would have to find the wire that shorted out and replace it with more speaker wire (multiple strands for larger wires )

The local police stop by the house (thank God mom and dad were not home) once because I use to spin the tires at the Rodgers Street Park, where we played basketball, with kids in the bed of the truck… They had multiple reports and threatened to have me arrested if I was reported again… It was easy to spin the tires with how little it weighed and being a stick…

I had to replace the shocks all around after I jumped it in the sandpits one time to many… I replaced them over at Cam’s house and found the rear shocks had no internals anymore… There was just a bunch of fluid in the lower half.

Andy once put a half case of beer in the bed box. He called me at home and told me and the whole thing was recorded on the answering machine. It was father’s day 1994 and dad heard it that morning. Andy and I both lost our cars for a couple of weeks after that. Dad handed out that beer to his friends for a while after that and told them it was on me.

I taught lots of people to drive stick with it… It was easy to learn on because the clutch was weak and you could be a bit sloppy… When I started at Buffalo State it could go highway speeds but with the clutch slipping it would barely do 55 when I sold it (the next owner put a new clutch in it and I saw it around Lockport with a ladder rack for years afterward)

I once got pulled over for going through a stop sign, doing a 360 with the tires spinning in the intersection, speeding and reckless endangerment by an unmarked police car at the corner of Euclid and Harding near the High School. They told me that if they gave me all the tickets I deserved I would lose my license and gave me a warning…

I ripped the exhaust pipe out on it once driving in the pits when I ran over a 55-gallon drum hidden in the tall grass…

The bed only had one bolt holding it on at the end and would move when I hit a pothole.

I was caught by the police once under the Day Road bridge, on the tow path, in it with someone who shall remain nameless. I could not see out the windows and did not notice them pull up… I remember the police asking her if she was there of her own free will and needed any help… After that he just told us to get out of there…

The missing parts of the bed flew off at highway speeds a couple of times…

Doug, Andy and Sean would pick up the bed and move it… They were caught by security doing it while I was working at Paper Cutter. Sometimes I would get out of school and find the rear end on the sidewalk after they lifted it up and put it there.

Gaglaridi’s probably hated seeing me pull up in need of some help on it sometimes

I look on eBay every once in a while for the 4×4 version of the truck. I would love to find a really nice one someday… One of my dads trucks was an early 80’s Toyota 4×4 so I have always had a soft spot for those early pickups…

I put around 30k miles on it during the three years I owned it. It had around 190k miles when I sold it…

I loved that truck…