{"id":173,"date":"2010-04-08T16:28:16","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T00:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/?p=173"},"modified":"2010-04-08T16:28:16","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T00:28:16","slug":"why-i-bought-a-60-year-old-vehicle-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/08\/why-i-bought-a-60-year-old-vehicle-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Bought a 60 Year Old Vehicle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since I purchased the 1950 Willys, and even before then when I started my search, a lot of people have asked why I even wanted a vehicle like that. Some saw it as a cool idea, but not really worth seeking one out as fervently as I was. To answer that question, we need to start many years back…<\/p>\n

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Dad Sitting in Charlie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Back when I was younger, I used to go and visit my grandfather in Lassen County in northern California. He owned a few dozen acres up there, and had a lot of cool older vehicles that he used to keep the place running. His main working vehicles were 2 International pick-ups, a 3-wheeled electric golf cart, and my personal favorite was a 1947 Willys CJ-2A Jeep named Charlie.<\/p>\n

When I was 11 or 12, my dad put me in the driver seat of Charlie, and I learned to drive. There was something unique about learning to drive in a then 45(ish) year old vehicle. Unlike learning to drive in a modern car, I had to not only learn how to turn the thing, look around me for traffic, and watch for things I shouldn’t hit, but I had to learn to drive a no-power vehicle. Charlie had plenty of power for its 2200 pound self, but each component on it was completely manual. No power steering, no power brakes, no power clutch, no power anything. If you wanted to stop quicker, you pushed the pedal harder. Need to make a sharper turn? Better start spinning that wheel a little faster before you run into the tree.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It was during those first few driving lessons (once I could get the thing to go from one place to another without stalling too much) that I fell in love with the little guy. He wasn’t much to look at. His red paint was chipped in several areas revealing several layers of previous colors and repairs. Dents marked his aging sheet metal, and welded modifications served as an all too evident reminder of it’s working-class status. When it was parked in the car port, small drips of oil would mark the dirt below it, and cold mornings would give it some trouble starting. But, once the 60 horsepower ‘Go-Devil’ engine fired up, you knew it was ready to take you wherever you needed to go and assist you in any job you needed to perform that day. It also let off this smell which reminded you that you were driving a machine made to work. Some combination of gasoline, oil, grease, and dirt that identified the multi-decade road this vehicle had traveled.<\/p>\n

It has been some time since I’ve seen the scared face of Charlie, fought to get it started on a cold morning, or smelled his unique odor, but I’ve never lost my love for the little guy. When I would see an older Willys or Jeep vehicle driving down the road, I’d immediately be brought back to the summers on my grandfather’s ranch in the mountains. The smell of gas and oil mixed in with a little grease, dirt, and a number of years of work caused me to be transported back to that car port with a wrench in my hand and some spare parts pulled out of a water-logged box in the rafters to do a repair.<\/p>\n

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My sister and brother posing with Charlie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Only a few days ago, I brought home my own Willys, newer than Charlie by a few years, but still with many of the same characteristics. Walking into my own garage now, I’m greeted by a wall of smell not unlike the smell I remember from 13 years ago. My Willys has a little oil leak, takes a while to get going on cold mornings, and rattles and squeaks not unlike an old shopping cart. The sheet metal has plenty of scars and dents, each with a unique story that will never be told I’m sure.<\/p>\n

My CJ-3A may have a new path ahead of it, away from that of a working vehicle and instead be put through a complete restoration, but I do it not to remove it’s history, but hopefully to preserve it. These vehicles are the direct descendants of the little 1\/4 ton truck that helped win World War II. My little guy never saw any combat or even use in a military capacity, but there is no denying the visual cues and and homage the slightly newer model pays to its older brother.<\/p>\n

I guess all of that is a long way of saying that I don’t expect everyone to understand why I purchased a 60 year old piece of scared and rusted metal, or why when I walk out into my garage a little smile appears on my face. The vehicle may not be much to look at, nor have the modern accouterments most have become accustomed to, or even be able to sustain speeds higher than 40 MPH in most cases, but it just seems as though it is part of who I am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since I purchased the 1950 Willys, and even before then when I started my search, a lot of people have asked why I even wanted a vehicle like that. Some saw it as a cool idea, but not really worth seeking one out as fervently as I was. To answer that question, we need to start many years back… Back when I was younger, I used to go and visit my grandfather in Lassen County in northern California. He owned a few dozen acres up there, and had a lot of cool older vehicles that he used to keep the…<\/p>\n

Continue readingWhy I Bought a 60 Year Old Vehicle<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5,13],"tags":[20,21],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cj-3a","category-jeep","category-willys","tag-jeep","tag-willys","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pE9Qq-2N","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtisfranklin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}