A decidedly scary thing happened last Friday. My husband was on his way to work on the Saint Jude, our family fishing boat, in Port Angeles.
Our home phone rang, and I skipped over to answer it expecting to hear that he had got the generator on the boat running.
Something had gone wrong. In somewhat halting words, my husband said that the truck had caught fire but that he was okay.
The Sequim Fire Department putting out the fire that started under the hood of our classic 1972 Ford F-250. No one was hurt and the fire was put out safely!
How grateful we are, that no one was hurt!
My husband had noticed the fire, after returning an item in a store. The truck was off the road and parked away from any crowd of people. A passing good Samaritan had called the Sequim Fire Department and two fire trucks showed up, sirens blaring. Tools were needed to cut and pry open the hood so the fire could be completely extinguished.
A neighbor had been shopping at the store and had given my husband a ride home. AAA towed the injured truck to a nearby auto repair shop.
Within a couple of hours, it was time to pick up our pre-teen son from school. We considered how to break the news to him. We decided to let him know we would be getting a newer truck. As much as my husband and I had come to appreciate our classic Ford truck, that we used for our fishing business, it was our son that expressed the passion that many people have for collector vehicles. He loved that truck!
He and I had driven by the truck many times, when it sat in a row of cars for sale. It had a presence about it. Most of one Spring we drove by it every day during school drop-off and pick-up. It was, overlooking Highway 101, patiently waiting for new owners.
One day, later into summer, my son and I pulled into that parking lot. Kicked at the tires of all the vehicles lined up in that little row. Came back to the truck.
It was old. No airbags. No power mirrors, doors, or locks. Old.
Over 40 years old.
In 1972, when the truck was new, my husband had barely started his commercial fishing career, and I was in second grade. About the same age as my son when he and I took a first, serious look at the truck.
The truck, as it turned out, was on consignment. The person consigning the Grabber Blue Ford, gave me a spec sheet. Balanced 390 engine. Thorley headers. The list went on.
With the spec sheet tightly grasped in my boy’s fist, after our visit, my son and I drove home in the slightly battered 2001 Honda Odyssey mini-van. In my mind, the greige-colored mini-van is about the least cool vehicle on the street and, admittedly, ever so practical.
In the Fall, near the end of that fishing season, my husband came home. He’d been commercially fishing King Salmon, mostly, off of the coast of Oregon. We were in financial recovery from the recession, unprecedented fishing closures in Washington, Oregon, and California and from a family member having dealt with a serious illness.
Spending money, even contemplating spending money, required very careful calculation.
We decided we needed a truck for our fishing business. Renting U-hauls was getting expensive. The yard work was getting way behind. Junk was accumulating in the garage.
And that 1972 Grabber Blue Ford F-250 truck was pulling at our heart-strings. It fit our needs. And our budget.
We drove it to my Uncle Dave’s house. He was a retired master mechanic. It was the second truck we had brought to him. With the 1972, he just said not to worry too much about gas mileage. He told us not to put a locking gas cap on it because it would just get broken into. He suggested a theft alarm instead.
(My Uncle Dave passed away a couple of months ago. We miss him very much).
Bolstered by my Uncle Dave’s suggestion, we wrote a check out for the 1972 Ford F-250 truck. Paying for it in full. The previous owner had sold it to us for $4,500.
I drove it out of the parking lot toward home. Gave it a little throttle as I prepared to merge into traffic on Highway 101. Gravel spun out from under the back tires. Back at home, my husband laughed good-naturedly. The 390 had serious vroom.
The truck was a beast!
Not many weeks later, as the leaves were turning yellow and orange, my husband and I drove out along the Dungeness River toward Nash’s new Farm Store in Dungeness while in that truck. By happenstance, it was during the opening celebration. We spoke briefly with Huber Nash, then with his wife Patty McManus. They both told us to call their marketing manager, Mary. We drove off with folks waving at us, and we at them, as we went by the front doors. The re-built, balanced, 390 giving a throaty, low rumble.
That 1972 Ford F-250 is a classic in every way.
It fit right into Farmer’s Markets, where we sell our fish, and on the back roads meandering through the rural farm land of Sequim. It packed kayaks to Sequim Bay. With the alarm armed, it patiently waited in marina parking lots while the skipper of the Saint Jude, my husband, was working off-shore catching albacore and salmon. The truck waiting to get him home to see his family again.
In photos, the truck looks straight and true parked next to our fishing boat, the Saint Jude, in the Port Angeles Boatyard during Spring boat work. With a freshly cut Christmas tree in the bed, it made a a great back-drop for our red-headed family during impromptu holiday photo sessions.
That truck would be our go to vehicle for delivering frozen albacore and picking it up, hand-packed, from artisanal canneries. It would pack frozen salmon back to the Olympic Peninsula for our local customers. It would also help us deliver fish to Nash’s and other local grocery stores.
It was a work horse.
Tenderly, too, that truck would wait patiently in the school parking lot for our son. With a chocolate lab on the bench seat and his daddy at the wheel, home from fishing on the coast, that truck represented the image of our family healing.
It was cool, it was real, it was authentic.
That truck was also inexpensive to insure. No renewal tabs are needed for a collector vehicle. Comprehensive insurance on an older work truck did not fit our budget well. So we just carried liability.
Our fish truck, like our boat, is a tool.
An object.
These days, our fish truck is also part of the face of our fishing family business.
The safety of our family is a priority. It is time for us to make a change.
Our young son cried when he learned about the truck fire. His grandmother, visiting us at our home at the time, comforted him. We took he and his older sister out to dinner and bought him an old-fashioned milkshake before he would meet up with his troop for his first Boy Scout camp-out since he had crossed over from being a Cub Scout earlier this year.
For the week-end, he would be amongst friends. That was the important part.
My husband and I left Friday evening for a planned business trip to Seattle. To pick up our life raft for the Saint Jude. To walk the loop in the Arboretum while the cherry trees were still blossoming. To dine at Lark restaurant and congratulate Chef Sundstrom on all of his current success including being a James Beard award winner. To buy Chef Sundstrom’s new cookbook, “Lark: Against The Grain”.
To get ready for the new fishing season.
While in Seattle, I received a message from a facebook friend. She mentioned that an instructor who works with the Sequim Fire Department, and had helped fight the truck fire, was interested in owning our truck.
We spoke with him last evening. It feels right. We will sign the title over to him. He knows how to talk Ford. It is easy to tell. It is in the voice. In the low, throaty rumble.
His plan is to bring the truck back to life.
Our plan, is to find a replacement truck. Another Ford F-250.
Word is out. Friends have been calling. A 1972 Ford F-250 is on Craigslist in our area, mentioned one friend. Another sent a message about an upcoming auction.
Fishermen up and down the coast expressed sympathy.
The loss of a classic old truck is painful. Especially one wearing Grabber Blue paint.
When our old fish truck got wrecked in that fire, new friends suddenly became old friends in the making.
“How much do you want for it?”, the firefighter instructor asked.
“Pay it forward,” the fishing couple let him know. ” We are just grateful to the Sequim Fire Department and that everyone is safe. The truck served us well and we loved having her. It is time for us to move on. We are glad the two of you have found each other. It feels right”.
That is the way it is with classic, old trucks.
Our next fish truck may not be quite as old. In 1998, Ford F-250 trucks came with airbags. We’d like to have those. A long bed for sure. 4 x 4 and an extended cab would be ideal.
We will miss our old blue fish truck.
What matters most, though, is the story. The story of a family being well and gaining strength. The story of being strong enough to let go for the sake of growth. The story of friendship. The story of gratitude.
In the end, these are the things that really matter.
Side note. If you would like, you can learn more about our fishing family on our business web-site for Dungeness Seaworks: http://www.freshfrozenfish.net
Integration 