1969 Chevy CST20 – Gary X.

The yellow truck was pointed north, nearly due north, from the little village of Ovid that warm June afternoon, beginning a journey which is, fortunately, not yet over.
I loved that truck. The yellow truck, we’ve called it in the years since, but when it arrived in the fall of ’68, I just called it my truck. I was 18, and the decision to order it was almost a whim. I’m sure my parents were not thrilled by the news when I walked in the house and announced I’d given Mr. Bond a deposit on a new truck – ordered just the way I wanted – to be built and on its way to Ovid within a month or two. I loved it so when it arrived – all shiny and bright yellow – and everyone in town soon knew it by sight. I drove it to work and I drove it to college and everywhere I went it attracted a lot of attention. And it apparently caught the eye of a pretty blonde, because she was soon often seen sitting beside me as we cruised through town.
I sat in the truck with her after Midnight Mass on the Eve of Christmas 1970, and put a diamond on her slender finger.
That June day started with some clouds and overcast – and the rain was brief – some folks said that was a sign of good luck on a wedding day. So off we went, my bride and I, after a wedding mass at Holy Cross – with a rented camper mounted on the back of the yellow Chevy. We headed north.
The yellow truck made its way up Route 414, and as Seneca County receded from view in my mirrors, we knew we had crossed a literal bridge that would be behind us forever. At the stop sign where we met Route 104 we paused a moment, realizing, I think, that neither of us had ventured this far without our parents, and though we weren’t really running away from home, it felt a bit unsettling.
But we smiled and held hands and continued north, and then followed the Lake Ontario shoreline on into our future.
The yellow truck was mine until the fall of 1973, when fortunes and finances changed, and I sold it to make room in the budget. And life passed by, and the yellow truck became nothing more than a fond memory…
It was a Ford this time that took us away from Ovid, and as we loaded the car and headed south on that warm June day, we talked a lot about a previous trip, in exactly the opposite direction, etched in our collective memory some 45 years before. There was no rain to start this journey, though, and no rain in our path, it seems, so for a couple of weeks the sun shone brightly on the shores of the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
It felt like four and half decades had never passed, for despite the fact that we now had grown children and a granddaughter as well, to each other we’re still the same youngsters that started that wondrous journey northward.
We love the water, Linda and I, and the Outer Banks is one our favorite places. There’s something about the ocean, I guess, that draws us in and holds us, and though we’ve never had the opportunity to live within reach of its broad expanse of winds and waves, we visit whenever we get the chance. So we’ve heard the surf and felt the Atlantic breezes from Maine to the Carolinas, and have spent some time on the Pacific coast as well. And through the years, as the waves crash persistently and carry rock and sand out to sea, as our bodies change but our thoughts and feelings do not, as life moves relentlessly forward, we’ve been together through low tide and high…
“Hey Dad,” son Nicholas texted one-day last summer, “I’m coming to Rochester to look at an old truck.”
I wasn’t surprised, for he’d been searching for a 1965 Scout like his grandfather once had. But he lived in Colorado, so it was a bit of a jaunt just to look at an old truck.
“Brent’s going to pick me up at the airport,” the message continued, “can you and Mom meet us at Engels?”
The yellow truck. There it was, in its entire splendor, parked inside the classic car shop. I nearly drooled as I walked around it, careful not to touch the pristine yellow finish, and leaning closely to look in the windows.
“Do you know what year this truck is?” our friend Engels asked as he stood between it and a million dollar Barracuda parked behind.
“Of course,” I said, somewhat haughtily, as if I wouldn’t know a 1969 Chevy when I saw one. “It’s a ’69.”
“Was this the color of yours?” Brent asked as I gawked.
“Exactly,” I said, “but this is a heavier truck. Mine was a half-ton, this is a three-quarter. And mine had a 307 with a 3 speed, and this has a big block with an automatic. And the paint is fabulous…”
And so I drooled.
“Why don’t you take your bride for a ride,” Nick said, as both sons grinned like I’d never seen before. “It’s yours, Dad…”
The yellow truck headed south that summer afternoon of 2016, and though a brief rain pelted the bright yellow finish with splattering drops, the skies soon cleared. Rain is a good omen, some folks say.
And cradled between Brent leading the way and Nicholas following behind, the yellow truck carried us home, once more, to Ovid.
It’s not the same exact truck to be sure, for the one I bought in 1968 may be anywhere, or nowhere, we’ll never know. But this truck has the soul of my yellow truck, all grown up now, perhaps, like Linda and I. And when we go for a ride along the lake shore, when we take it to the Post Office or just for a trip around town, everyone, once again, knows that’s our yellow truck.
Thanks to our sons, it finally found its way home.