Lucky Strike

That old truck just kept coming back

I was barely twenty and I’d been saving up working as a carpenter/laborer for nearly a year in 1975, when I bought my first car, a pickup truck, a twenty-three year old 1952 International Harvester with beautifully rounded everything. The hood, the fenders, the cab, it resembled a cranky grey gnome. The truck’s bed could fit eight foot sheets of drywall and plywood in, which is what I used it for, picking up materials at the hardware store and bringing them to whatever job I was working on. In fact my boss is the one who sold it to me for a few hundred bucks, a couple weeks work. He went on and bought a new Dodge so he wouldn’t get broke down in that old clunker.

I loved that truck. I named it Lucky Strike. LSMFT - Lucky Strike Means a Fine Truck. I taped an empty package of my Lucky Strike cigarettes with the target logo to the rear window, looking handsome right next to the sticker that said “Ignore Alien Orders.”

It quickly became apparent that my boss had been the sensible one in pawning the truck off on me. Lucky didn’t love to start when he was hot, and the six-volt battery never seemed to have the kick the engine required, so Lucky regularly ran out of juice and then I’d have to push start to get him going. This was fine when I’d been smart and parked him on an incline, but I remember having to push the truck out of a parallel parking spot onto busy Polk Street in San Francisco, pushing it down the street with the front door open, one hand on the wheel until I had enough momentum, I jumped in, popped the clutch and prayed. I don’t know how I did it.

Driving around downtown San Francisco in Lucky Strike was always an adventure, especially with a heavy load of drywall which made the truck sag in the back and the front wheels would float a little. With the steering mechanism already worn and floppy from its years in service as a utility company truck, and its very large steering wheel - in the days before power steering they made the steering wheel big to give you leverage - I’d have to swing the wheel back and forth a lot just to keep Lucky in his lane. And in the tight confines of downtown San Francisco and on the highways that took me to jobs down the peninsula or crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, you can imagine the kinds of traffic nightmares I’d be trying to navigate. Oh yeah, and Lucky didn’t have power-assisted brakes either, so stopping when loaded, or even empty - that truck was all metal - took some planning and heavy pumping on the pedal.

Still, I loved that truck. I felt that Lucky matched up with me in personality, a little funky, definitely not high-performance, old-fashioned and rounded, not edgy. I thought I looked pretty good in my truck, and so did my girlfriend, Sarah, who could squeeze right up against me on the generous bench seat because the gearshift, three-on-the-tree, was attached to the steering column. Lucky was my commuter car, my work truck and my adventure cruiser. Topping out at just over fifty-five miles an hour, I never had to worry about going too fast. In fact, I once got pulled over by a CHP for going too slow on Hwy. 101. He didn’t give me a ticket, but he did confiscate my half-drunk after-work Budweiser tall boy.

Over the years of my affair with Lucky Strike, I lived in San Francisco, then Berkely, and finally in Marin County. And doing my work as a carpenter, it seemed no matter where I lived, the job we were doing was in another county, so Lucky was a commuter getting stuck in traffic twice a day. One time I was driving on the Bay Bridge returning home to Berkeley at the beginning of rush hour and I ran out of gas on the bridge in a middle lane of five or six lanes of traffic. Lucky’s gas gauge never really worked so running out of gas was a constant worry. I actually kept a stick in the back of the truck which I could push down the neck of the fill tube into the gas tank to see how much gas was in there, but it seems I’d forgotten to check. Fortunately, I had a filled gas can in the back and all I’d have to do is pour it into the tank and I’d be on my way. Unfortunately, I was stopped with heavy traffic zooming by on both sides on the gloomy lower deck of the Bay Bridge, so getting gasoline into the tank would be a grim and risky venture.

Before braving the roaring stream of traffic, I thought I’d try to see if Lucky would start, maybe it had just been a hiccup. I pushed the starter button and the starter groaned and turned the engine over slowly, not nearly enough to start even if I’d had gas in it. But when I took my thumb off the starter button, the starter motor continued to crank, ruhhh…ruhhh…ruhhh…, and I couldn’t get it to stop, the solenoid was stuck in crank mode even when I turned off the key. This had never happened before. I quickly hatched an utterly foolhardy plan, a stupid plan. I couldn’t leave the truck in neutral because the parking brake wasn’t functional, I would have to put the truck in first gear, get out and pour the gas in while the truck lurched slowly with each ruhhh down the lane. It never occurred to me that once the gas was in the tank the truck might actually start and then I’d be standing out there in traffic with the truck driving away in first gear.

I carefully edged out of the front seat onto the roadway, cars whizzing by way too close for comfort, grabbed the gas can out of the back, and started pouring gas while the truck continued its slow groaning, lurching march down the highway lane. I had to step along in rhythm to keep up while pouring the gas. I tossed the empty can in the back, jumped back in the cab and, of course, the truck still wouldn’t start. Then I heard the whoop of a siren and a very loud broadcast voice telling me that he was going to push me. It was a patrolman riding up behind me, and he pushed me down the road toward an exit. I put the truck in high gear and popped the clutch and it fired up and I drove off, home to Berkeley. We lived to drive another day.

Alas, Lucky’s last day did eventually come. I was doing a job on top of a mountain between Sonoma and Napa counties, up a steep and winding road. Poor Lucky’s ticker gave out lugging up the hill and I had to have him towed to a gas station, where they literally put him out to pasture under a really big eucalyptus tree. I bought a used Volvo station wagon with lots of safe lockable space for the burgeoning collection of tools I was lugging around. Also, the Volvo actually worked quite well, even the gas gauge, so I was unlikely to stall out on the Bay Bridge. I moved on from Lucky Strike, though every time I drove past that pasture, I’d wave and call out his name. Luuuuckyyyyyy!

A Birthday Present

More than a year had passed since Lucky’s demise and I was feeling emotionally healed from the loss. Now I loved a Volvo. My family had invited me to celebrate my birthday with them at our family’s summer cabin in Sonoma, and so after work one Friday I drove my Volvo up the driveway to our place only to find Lucky parked in front of the house. What the hell?!! I really didn’t know what to think. Would my Volvo be jealous?

My mother had hatched a plan to revive Lucky and give him to me for my birthday. She paid to have him towed to the garage and they put another engine in, checked the brakes, and there was Lucky back in my life. I didn’t feel all that lucky. What did I need a second vehicle for, an old run-down truck that could run out of gas on the Bay Bridge and wouldn’t start when it got too hot, and how would I pay for it? The Volvo was a vastly more practical car, and frankly, I’d gotten used to the luxuries of a modern car with seat belts and a dependable starter. Lucky stayed up at the family retreat and lugged firewood around. Mostly, I felt done with Lucky, I just didn’t have room in my heart for two cars.

Lucky, however, was not done with me.

Boarding School

My younger brother, Will, was accepted for his junior year of high school at a boarding school outside of Sedona, Arizona. If my Mom’s resurrecting Lucky and giving him to me for my birthday seemed like a head-scratcher, sending eighteen-year old brother Will to drive ol’ Limp-Along Lucky to Arizona for his senior year of high school seemed downright foolhardy from a parenting perspective. Aside from the high likelihood that the truck just wasn’t really up for a thousand mile drive through deserts and over tall mountains, along with my brother’s youthful naïveté and complete lack of mechanical skills, and then the exceedingly gentle supervisory environment at the school, one might ask - as it appears my parents did not - what could possibly go wrong? I suspect that the principle reason my brother was invited to drive the truck to Arizona was that it would relieve my mother of driving him there. Will was the last of us four, and I think Mom was just about done with the parenting thing. Dad was out playing tennis with his new wife.

Will tells of many adventures with Lucky in that fateful year, of driving to school on the interstate, going up the many long inclines, redlining in second gear at 35 mph, and then of the school year with only a few kids falling out the back and remarkably, of drinking and driving perilously, but with no fatalities or stints in jail or meaningful sanctions from the school. I’ll leave those stories to Will. But as with all good things, senior year at Verde Valley came to an end, and Will was going to have to do something with the truck. Looking at the map, his eyes drifted to the right, eastward where his older brother (me) was now living, in remote rural New Mexico. Where a life could scarcely be successfully conducted without a truck. Everybody knows Ted loves Lucky Strike; I don’t remember consenting to Will’s proposal that he deliver Lucky to me.

Returning From Mexico

In March of 1979 I accompanied my friend Donald Martinez and his wife Bertha on a three thousand mile three week trip down through Mexico to the capital and back in his green Peugeot sedan. I sat in the back the whole time while Donald and Bertha argued in front. Otherwise, it was a pretty great trip. The last leg of the return is a long slog through the deserts of northern Mexico and southern New Mexico, and I remember I was getting drowsy, thinking I might get some shuteye as we were getting closer to home, but it occurred to me to mention to Donald to keep an eye out for a rundown old grey International Harvester pickup, as my brother might be driving it, slowly, on the highway on this day, I wasn’t really sure.

I woke up on the north side of Santa Fe just as we were coming into the roadside town of Pojoaque, not much there but the road, and as I’m blinking my eyes open, I can see further up the road a bunch of cop cars, lights ablazing, stopped around a car, a truck, a grey truck, a grey truck with those iconic oblong rear windows of the 1952 International Harvester pickup, one of which had a sticker that said “Ignore Alien Orders.”

I’m not sure we ever learned the offense for which Will had been pulled over in Pojoaque, but it must have been pretty bad. There were three cop cars surrounding Lucky, and the lead cop was leaning into the driver side window as we went by. I yelled, “Stop the car, that’s my brother.” Donald pulled over onto the shoulder, got out of the car and strolled over to where the cops were about to find the cup of whiskey my brother had clumsily spilled all over his lap as he tried to hide it under his seat, and the open bottle of Jack under the sweater beside him. My brother probably deserved a night or two in jail just for being so stupid as to drink whiskey out of a Sierra Club cup while driving. But somehow Donald knew one of the cops or had some kind of movida (special motivation that could convince cops not to do what they were sworn to do, like a bribe or knowing somebody important), and he walks up to the cop who’s about to pull my brother out of the truck and after a minute of conversation, the cop backs off and they all retire to their cop cars and drive away. It was a freaking miracle!

El Rito

So Lucky found me again, like those dogs in “The Incredible Journey,” crossing thousands of miles of desert, braving the heedless choices of a drunken high schooler, and narrowly escaping the clutches of the law and the Rio Arriba County wrecking services, Lucky found his way to my remote hideaway in the mountains above the humble New Mexico town of El Rito. During the dry season Lucky turned out to be a godsend, lugging firewood and at one point I loaded an entire outhouse in the back, fully formed, and drove it up to my house so I could live with the splendor of a real outhouse and no longer depend on my “outbench” for my daily business. But the seven mile dirt road up to my hideaway was so rutted and rugged, especially during any wet spell, neither Lucky nor my Volvo was up to the task. After a while I got tired of slogging my groceries up the muddy or snowy road on foot. I bought Avedon Trujillo’s 1970 International Harvester four-wheel drive heavy duty pickup so I could drive home under most conditions - sometimes the road was simply impassible.

Once again Lucky was left out in the cold. My neighbor Steve expressed interest in purchasing Lucky, but like most of the young drifters who ended up for a spell in the little gringo community around my hideaway, Steve had no money. He offered a hunting rifle in exchange for Lucky. I accepted, but Steve never came through with the rifle and then, when he got frustrated with the truck, he just left it for me and lit out of town. He’d done just enough bad modification on Lucky that it seemed hopeless to try to fix him one last time and what would I do with him anyway.

This truly was the end of the line for Lucky. I had him towed to the local junkyard in town. Every once in a while I’d go visit him in that desolate field of junk cars, but it was so depressing, and they tell me one day a salvage guy came and took Lucky to the smelter. I’ve gone out into that field a few times since, even just a couple of months ago, thinking maybe I’d gotten it wrong and Lucky was still out there somewhere, wouldn’t it be cool to see ol’ Lucky. Well, Lucky’s gone, and this time he’s not coming back.