$85 Tire pressure thingy -free to a good home (magrinal homes will be considered too)

[dusty3030]

This here is what on other forums called a karma. I am going to give something away for the heck of it, no catches, no hidden agenda other than I am bored at work.

I'll set the time period - this one will end Friday July 19th at 7PM Central time.
One entry per member, must have been a member before today - Friday July 11, 2013
To enter just reply to this post -
Secret bonus prize for whoever has the best "Me and my Dad" (Grandad, your Mom or Grandma accepted as well) story involving a truck or a trailer.

Winner for the tire pressure thingy and for the bonus prize will be drawn at random.

You get super deluxe free shipping (read, whatever the cheapest way to send it).

Disclaimer - I have never used this tire thingy - may work, may not. May cause cancer, may not. Probably not a good idea to stare at the sun or to walk up and punch a MMA fighter in the throat just to see what he will do. I claim no responsibility ever, for anything, especially pouring about 20 bottles of cheap, pink, dollar store dish soap in the fountain in front of a particular public building one night in the late 80's - including any alleged urination in said fountain or any beer cans floating in it.

I believe it is a tire pressure monitor kit - stock photo attached.

OK - here is a "Me and my Dad" story -

When I was probably 11 or 12 me and my Dad were fishing off the bank of the Mississippi river between Memphis and Helena on the Arkansas side about this time in July. Hot, hot day. River typically is lower and big cats would come up to the shady side of the bank (West side / Arkansas side) late in the afternoon to feed on shad and whatever else the current was chugging up anywhere there is a point or break. We used to do that often when I was little. Stiff rod, big old Abu bait casting reel. 4 or 5 ounce weight - you read that right, and 4/0 stainless hook tied on a loop to float right off the bottom. Bait was whatever the fish liked that day. Big Canadian flat tail worms were always good for channel or blues. Live crawfish or big rice slicks (think mega minnow) were the ticket for big flatheads. It was a coming of age moment in your life to be able to cast a bait caster without a birds nest. Those old ones your thumb was your backlash control, much less do it while trying to chunk what felt like a brick tied to the end with that big weight - and try to get it out there a far piece to catch the edge of the current. OF course you were trying to chunk it at least as far as the old man, if not further.

This style of fishing was and still is tons of fun. The current of the mighty Mississippi pulls and tugs on your line all the time. The fish may pick it up and your line goes slack, you must reel it taunt without pulling it out of its mouth, get yourself set, then jerk the rod with all of your might to set that big hook in a big cats mouth. Other times that old cat might out of nowhere jerk the pole clean out of your hand or its holder. Either way, when that hook set that sucker heads for the current and heads for the bottom. You got to go catch you one of them blue marlins or something similar to get a bigger fight than a 20 plus pound flathead cat trying to pull your skinny 12 your old self towards the Gulf of Mexico in that kind of current.

Well that day was like any July day in the Mississippi river delta region of East Arkansas, hot as blue blazing ****. I grew up fishing with one ice chest in the boat or on the bank, fish, bait, drinks, whatever you wanted to keep cool all resided in the one ice chest. Big cats we didn't have no ice chest big enough so they were always tied on a yellow rope for a stringer, regular fish stringer would break. My Daddy had him a six pack of tall boy Budweiser beers in that cooler. Me a few can Cokes. Daylight was coming towards the end, soon would be the mosquitoes turn to rule that part of the world so we reeled in and started carrying up our gear and loading it into the back of my Daddy's old Chevy "Big 10" truck. It was red and white. Steel dash, the AM radio had those big chrome looking push button presets. The dial a red vertical line you moved with the knob to the approximate location of the station. My Dad's wasn't really needed, it stayed on the country station WMC 79 out of Memphis all the time. If it got static, he turned it off. No cell phones on the farm back then, the latest and greatest was the Motorola two way radio. It what looked like at the time about a 10 foot wire whip antenna on a spring mount deal on the bed rail right behind the cab on the passenger side. The speaker with the knobs was huge and mounted right in the center under the dash. The mike was huge as well, hung in a chrome metal clip screwed to the metal dash between the radio and steering wheel.

Fish and gear loaded in the truck, I grabbed my last Coke and my Dad his last Bud and we climbed in that magnificent truck. It was my Dad's office, his way to make a living, all my memories of my Dad are broken into era's and filed into my memory of what truck he had at that time - even to this day. Each different, but each the same in that they were always dirty, dirtier inside it seemed than out from the dirt off of Daddy's boots. Always the little stick on calendar on the dash. Little pocket spiral notebooks everywhere - full of notes about what he found in each field and what to spray or do. Dad cranked up, windows rolled down, each with our arm resting on the window opening, his a little more natural than mine. I wasn't quite tall enough for it to feel comfortable, but you had too try. He popped the top on his beer, me on my Coke and were on our way. Easing out the dirt road that would lead us back over the levee and back to the highway for the little jaunt home.

Daddy did and still smokes, except when we were fishing or hunting. Then he chewed Red Man. So this day Daddy had a big plug of it in his jaw. As we were easing up the side of the levee, facing West mind you so the angle of cresting the levee, right at the apex, we were staring directly at the sun. Then it happened. Daddy was taking in a big slug of that Budweiser beer, I happened to look over at him, a reaction I am sure to turn my face away from the glaring sun, when Daddy kind of choked / sneezed at the same time. He got all bug eyed, and make a God awful sound as the amber beer and brown tobacco leaf / spit / snot combination spewed at high speed from his mouth and nose directly into the windshield, which was already dirty and dusty, covered in bugs in a concentration unknown to anyone who has not driven through the delta at night in the summer time. As he cussed to gain his breath he instinctively I suppose had slammed the brakes on and we slid on the gravel a little, the long wheelbase heavy half Chevy always goes sideways on gravel if you even look at the brakes sternly. It was if the world had stopped as the dust cloud from the road dissipated and my Dad got his composure. I remained silent, staring in awe and disbelief at what was oozing down the windshield. He slid it into park, got out and dug around behind the seat for a rag, wiped away a hole to somewhat see through and we got back on our way. Then we laughed, hard, the kind of laugh that hurts.

OK folks, that's my story. Let's hear yours. Good luck and a toast to all of your respective Dad's.

View attachment 327127

 

[adirondackmtnman]

I'll take it! Unfortunately I have no 'me and my dad' stories, he died before I was 10, but if it means I get something free I may go break into my step-mother's apartment, steal his urn, and spread his ashes down his favorite stretch of road...PS: Prize must be in hand before I will commit said misdemeanor....lol

Sent from my LGL35G using TractorByNet

 

[k0ua]

Dusty please don't put me in the drawing, my vehicles have factory TPMS, but I have to say, holy cow man, you could write story's for a living. I thoroughly enjoyed your story, and nothing I could come up with would hold a candle to that one. I am serious, I think you could sell them to an outdoor magazine, if you could come up with one like that every month.. Petzel or Heavey don't have anything on you..

James K0UA

 

[HHR]

They say that anything free is worth saving up for, so here is my "Dad Story":
About 15 years ago My dad and I were scouting out a stand of timber that he was thinking of purchasing for house logs. It was February and all the ditches were drifted full of snow. We were driving a 1990 3/4 ton 4x4 Suburban full of woodworking tools/saws. My dad missed the road he wanted to turn on so he tried to turn around by backing in a driveway approach. he missed the approach by about 4 feet and the back of the burb dropped about 5 feet into the ditch full of snow. The fuel tank and rear hitch were hung up and we only had a small shovel along. We dug and dug and dug some more. The truck barely clawed it's way out in 4-low at full throttle. Those were fun times. I have many other stories involving bucket trucks, my thumb pinched in '52 International door, hauling railroad ties on top of a Jeep Cherokee, pulling down 80 foot trees with deuce and a half etc.

 

[BigE_]

My dad was a preacher and a mail carrier, so most of my memories of him are of him sitting at his desk in his office preparing the next sermon. However, we also had a wood stove in the house, and we burned through a lot of firewood. Him being a preacher and a part time mail carrier meant that money was tight, and so any firewood we burned, we had to go a cut ourselves.

My dad, older brother and I would pile into my dad's old pickup truck. I was only about 8 and don't really recall the make, but I seem to have a memory of it being a Dodge, and it was ancient, hard to start, etc. We'd load the new Craftsman chainsaw carefully into the back (his father's day present from my mom) along with the gas, oil, and the axe. Sometimes we'd bring along something to drink, but I don't ever remember bringing along any food. Then we'd set out to whatever place he'd found where we could cut firewood for free.

My dad was a rural letter carrier, which meant that he was always driving out in the country. Whenever he came across a logging site, he'd stop and ask if he could cut the slash up for firewood, and generally always got permission for it. The worst was when they let him cut the slash *after* it had been burned. Talk about messy! Black soot everywhere at the end of the day, and then every time my brother and I brought the firewood into the house, we would get filthy. We only did that once.

Other times he'd get permission to cut down smaller trees in areas where they had already logged. The 1 to 2 foot diameter trees weren't worth taking back then. I always thought my dad was the coolest person ever because he knew how to cut down a tree. Once it was down, he'd go through and limb it up, then buck it up, and my job, along with my brother, was to split it and stack it in the back of the truck.

Anyway, back to the firewood collection... Where ever we went, we generally always had to drive through a gate, so either my brother or I would get out, open the gate, wait for my dad to drive through, then go back and close it.

There was this one time that I still recall where, after a long day's work loading up the pickup, we headed on back. We had to go through a gate, but it was locked, and my brother and I couldn't figure out how to open it. So, my dad had to get out and get it open for us with the key they had loaned him. Then he yelled at us to drive the truck on through so he could close the gate. I was the younger, so I always sat in the middle of the truck's front seat. That meant I was closest to the steering wheel, and being only 8, I jumped at the chance to drive the truck.

The truck was an automatic, with the shifter on the steering wheel. I figured out how to get it in gear OK. Because it didn't run too well, the idle was set high, so once in gear it just took off through the gate like I was giving it gas. Once through the gate, well, I could barely see where I was going because I wasn't tall enough. I definitely couldn't reach the brake pedal. Looking for the brakes, I started drifting off the road and into the ditch. My dad sees what's happening and starts running after the truck, yelling at me to stop. I'm still busy trying to find the brakes. My brother is yelling at me to watch where I'm going. Finally I said to heck with it and jammed it back into park, bring the truck to an abrupt halt.

I got quite a scolding for jamming it into park instead of using the brakes. I always figured it was better than trying to get the fully loaded truck out of the ditch, though. Nothing was broken, and we made it home just fine. After unloading all the wood and stacking it in the basement, my dad took us out to McDonald's. That was such a rare occurrence it was an incredible treat.

Whenever I'm out cutting firewood with my kids it always brings back memories of going out to get firewood with my dad. My kids have it easy, though. I've got the tractor to haul the bucked up pieces through the forest, and a nice splitter to split it all up. No finicky pickup truck to mess with, either.

 

[Larro Darro]

This is a tough one. I farmed with Daddy for years, so there are so many stories to choose from. It is hard to decide on just one truck story. The time we crashed the tractor and truck while going to the hayfield would make a good story. Or the time our outboard was broken, and we hooked a eight horse Briggs and Stratton to the shaft of the old motor. The gear ratio wasn't just right, and when we got going, our little five acre pond wasn't big enough to contain us that day.

But I will tell about one of our watermelon selling adventures instead, one that involved Mamma and Daddy. We truck farmed during the summer. Peas, corn, squash, peppers and melons were our main crops. Daddy would take a load everyday to the farmers' market on highway 98 in Panama City. One of the rules of the market is you can't post signs. So if you have returning customers, they may be paying four or five dollars per melon from you, when the next truck over has them for a dollar. That was the case with Daddy. He was there everyday, so people knew his produce would be good. Every evening we would pick the peas, melons and the rest, getting the truck loaded and ready for an early start. He would leave before day to get a good parking place inside the building at the market.

But I also sold melons to the restaurants on the beach. If I had an order for thirty at the Sunset and twenty five at another place, I would load sixty five or seventy, and try to sale the extra wherever I could. Even doing the dreaded side of the road sales if forced to. This could take all day, so Daddy would work at something else while I was peddling. Mamma loved doing this as much as I disliked it. So she often went with me.

This would have been twenty three years ago in 1990, the summer before Margie and I were married. He bought a 91 GMC the next year, and we wouldn't have been driving the old truck if he had the new one already. Back then I was poor, and my old trucks were not very trustworthy. So I used Daddy's 79 Dodge. He helped me load up the night before, and we put all that the springs would handle. Mamma was going with me, so we left the loaded truck at the farm. I got back out to the farm and we got an early start the next morning. Maybe not quiet as early as Daddy would have, but we were on the road by six o'clock. I knew the restaurants would not be open so early, but we had about thirty extra melons I was going to peddle at stores along the way.

We sold a few melons at gas stations and small grocery stores, but they were by no means just jumping off the truck. We got to the place on the beach that had ordered thirty of them about nine o'clock. [I will leave the restaurant unnamed] I had brought many loads to this restaurant and knew where everything was. I backed right up to the big cooler door and went into the kitchen to let the head cook know I was there and needed some help unloading.

Not only didn't I get any help unloading, I didn't do any unloading at all. They had bought a load the day before from someone else. This was one of the pitfalls of selling to restaurants. If a better deal came along, they would undercut you. As Arlo Guthrie would say, 'with tears in our eyes' we went on down the road. But it was a bad day for selling melons. Mamma and I spent all day trying grocery stores and restaurants. We even sold a few beside the road.

But when the sun set over the beach, we still had over half of the melons. We set out for home, going across the big span of Hathaway Bridge then turning onto 23rd Street. As we were getting close to the end of 23rd, where it meets US 231, the truck quite running. It ran out of gas, even though we had half a tank. I pulled into the turn lane in the middle of the street and coasted to a stop. After getting out and raising the hood, a family was leaving the hotel on the north side of the street. They pulled over to where we were and ask if they could help. Not knowing what else to do, I ask them to help me push it across the north lanes into the hotel parking lot. A couple of the smaller kids stopped traffic and the rest of us pushed. People from the first couple of cars to stop got out and helped. With so many hands at the wheel, we rolled right into the parking lot.

After thanking everyone for their help, I went inside to borrow the phone. And to ask could I leave the truck there overnight. This was before cell phones, not that Daddy would have had one anyway. I had to call collect, and pray he was in the house. Lucky for us, he was. An hour later he showed up in the Buick. After a quick look at the truck, we decided it was the fuel pump. Not an easy to change electric one, but the old mechanical type. We left the truck load of melons in the hotel parking lot and headed home.

The next morning we were back in Panama bright and early, and it looked like every melon was still on the truck. As our original plan was to tow it with a strap, we wouldn't have minded if a few were gone. We had brought some gas in a jug, just to make sure it was the fuel pump that had gone out. We poured a little gas into an oil bottle to make it easier to pour in the carb. We dribbled a little in there and she fired right up. That got us to thinking. We had seen several state troupers on the way down, so we were worried about our tow strap plan. I said, "if we just had somebody sitting under the hood, holding the oil bottle, we could drive it home."

Daddy said, "hang on a minute." He dug around behind the seat until he had found his nail apron. He looked through the nails and found the size he wanted. Then taking a little scrap of wood, he hammered the nail through the cap of the oil bottle. He turned it upside down inside the breather and said, "try it."

I turned the key and the truck cranked, but wasn't getting enough gas to rev it up. We switched off, and found a bigger nail. After two more tries, we found the right size hole. But we had to make a small vent hole in the bottom of the oil bottle. [the top when it was upside down in the carb] Then we made a little clothes hanger holder to keep the bottle in place. Daddy had a certain way of grinning when he was really feeling good. He blessed me with one of those grins when we were able to close the hood, then drive the truck around the parking lot without it starving for gas. The problem we had was by making the hole big enough to run at highway speed, we couldn't just let it sit and idle. Too much gas was pouring into the carb for that. We had to take the bottle out as soon as we had made the test drive.

We gave the hotel people a couple of melons for their kindness, then we filled our 'gas tank' with a quart. Daddy drove the truck and I followed in the Buick. He stuck to the right lane, so when the quart of gas ran out, he could just coast to the side of the road. It would only do forty five miles per hour, and we had to make several pit stops along the way, but we drove the load of melons home. We even sold two while we were stopped refilling the oil bottle. A car load of tourists thought we were stopped selling melons and they pulled in behind us.

We had fuel pump trouble with the Dodge a few more times. We found out it was the camshaft that drove the pump that was causing the problem. We put an electric one on it in the end. But we always knew if all else failed, we could go back to the one quart 'gas tank'.

 

[phiferpharm]

Any of you who have been to the Florida Keys may well know the area I'm talking about - It's called Jewfish Creek. At the time, my Dad had just purchased his first Boat, a used 1960's 16 footer with an Mercury outboard. I was onboard with my Dad and my brother had been dropped off at the dock and was backing the trailer down the ramp.

For some reason, my Dad pulled away from the dock, swung the Boat out into the creek, then turn around and headed for the boat ramp at dang near full throttle. As we neared the ramp, he swung the wheel over and headed for the ramp, while pulling the boat shifter back to slow down. Unfortunately, the shifter snapped off..

We ended up in the parking lot with God and Country staring at us as the boat rocked back and forth on the keel. Thankfully he missed the trailer, my brother, and anything else in the lot. Dad ended up becoming a commercial fisherman and respectable boat captain, just not on that first day of boating.

That first boat turned out to be pretty star-struck. Heading down to the same area, we were rear ended by a drunk and the Boat was launched on top of our car. Soon after the boat was sold to a fellow who was a bridge tender in North Florida. They think he ran into a barge one evening, and was never found...

 

[kneedeep]

I have a truck story about my Grandfather-

He was a truck farmer, small time cattleman, country store operator, part time moonshiner, and a hard working man. He did not go to church since the preacher pointed at him while preaching a **** fire and brimstone sermon about the evils of liquor after not paying him for the gallon picked up a week earlier that he had tried to collect for before the service. He always gave 10% of any money he made to the church cause his mom and dad were buried there and he was going there too (he did in 1983, grand ma in 1987)
The story,
He was a small time cattleman, keeping a few cows for milk and the occasional calf when the neighbors bull would visit. He would haul neighbors cows to the livestock auction cause he was going anyway to sell produce. He had a 3/4 Chevy long wheelbase with a cattle cage on it. He would load his produce in the front to one side and any grandkids close by got to ride back there and keep the cow or horse or mule or goat or pig he was hauling from eating any produce. If everything was good after arriving at the local Cattle Auction, we would get a coke and a big juicy hamburger from the Stockmans Cafe while he peddled produce and traded livestock. The cowboys (what we were pretending to be that day!) would roam the catwalk above the pens and watch the real cowhands move the cattle from pen to pen while trying to talk like the red faced big hat Auctioneer.
ADDA ADDA ADDA GIMME 2 MAKE IT 3 -ADDA ADDA GOT 4 OVER THERE- ONCE, TWICE, SOLD TO BIG JOHN- PEN EM IN 4 BOYS- GETTEM IN HERE OR WE BE ALLLLLLLL NIGHT!!!!
The ride home was usually 2 or 3 boys wadded up in the front seat of that old truck wore slap out!

 

[fordmantpw]

My story involves cutting a load of wood with my dad when I was about 12 or so.

It was a pretty cold morning and the ground was frozen. We had a Bronco towing a trailer to haul the wood. We normally used an old 2WD pickup we called a Jimmy Ford. It had a GMC front end with a Ford bed on it. It was mostly a junker, but it ran long enough to haul wood, and would haul a bunch! However, it was supposed to warm up a bit that day, and my dad knew the ground was going to thaw some, so we had to have 4x4.

Well, we had a load of wood cut and loaded on the trailer just as the ground was starting to thaw and get slimy. We were at the bottom of the hill, and had to go up to the top to get to the road. We started up the hill and made it about 3/4 of the way up before we made it to the part where the sun was really thawing the ground. We lost all traction and all 4 wheels were spinning. Forward momentum stopped, and we started sliding backwards. At this point, there was nothing to do but hold on. My dad was doing all he could to get it stopped, but it wasn't working. There were two trees we were headed for, and I remember him saying "hold on, we're going to hit!"

About 2-3 seconds later, for some reason, we stopped. Gently, not from ramming into something. We didn't hit either tree. Instead, somehow, the trailer managed to snake it's way between the two large trees, with about 8-10" to spare on each side of the trailer. We stopped a foot or so from ramming the back bumper into one of the trees.

So, once the adrenaline stopped and we quit shaking, we hopped out of the truck, threw about 2/3 of the wood off the trailer, and hauled the remaining 1/3 up the hill without incident (though we did spin the whole way up the hill). Then, we threw that off of the trailer, went back to get another 1/3, came to the top, loaded the 1/3 at the top on, and headed home. We left the 1/3 down by the two trees as a reminder to never again haul a trailer load up that hill when the ground was thawing!

Thankfully, I inherited my dad's trailer backing skills, and I learned to drive by backing the boat trailer down the ramp when I was 13 or so.

 

[sparc]

Dusty, you have a great writing style, hopefully you are cashing in on it with your day job.

If not maybe you missed your calling.

Great story, when does the book come out?