I have had a fetish for '69-70 Chevrolet C10 pickups my whole life and have owned several '67-72 models. I had a very clean '69 to build and restore when we moved 5 years ago, but sold it in 2020 to finance finishing the inside of the bare pole building into a heated shop. I bought 2 '67's a couple years ago, but just can't get into that front end like I do the '69-70 model. So.... Monday I left home at 4pm and drove straight thru the night to Mannford OK to buy another abandoned '69 mutt to build into a driver. I did stop and take a 3 hour nap in Iola, KS, so it wasn't entirely non-stop. I got to the location at 8:45 am Tuesday and looked the truck over and made an offer less than he wanted, but he accepted, since it wasn't quite as clean as advertised. I called my wife and told her I was loaded up and would be heading home. That's when she asked if I had checked the weather for Tuesday and Wednesday and I said I hadn't...why ? apparently, I had missed seeing a warning about a blizzard set to hit the entire length of I 35 from KC to home...
CRAP ! I pushed the truck hard to get thru KC before rush hour and made it at 3pm and was starving and tired. I stopped long enough at Kearney, MO to eat at a Taco Bell and guzzle a gallon of coffee and kept going. I ran into the crazy strong wind and, at times, torrential rain, in central IA and the snow storm in northern IA and drove thru near white out conditions and deep snow the rest of the 160 miles home. A sane person would ask themselves, "was it really worth it for a derelict truck" ??
. No, but I made it home safe. I have an old trucker mentality of "keep going and you'll drive out of it". That did work many times in the Pete over the years, but I drove into the worst of the storm to get home and am very happy to be here.
Here's a pic of the truck at the previous owners home. It has "a lot of potential"...
