Old Ugly

This is my 1972F 100.  I have always loved Bumpside fords….But this one is a little extra special to me.

In October 2019 I was invited to be part of the staff at a rat rod show hosted by the legendary rat rodder and Rooster McGee in Mt Airy, NC.  While I was there and we were setting up for the show, Rooster told me that he was going to drag this old truck down off the mountain and use it for target practice before he scrapped it…. I took one look at the truck and said “No you can’t do that”.  It had too much potential and I offered to buy it.  Of course Rooster refused to sell me the truck but he didn’t use it for target practice either.  I spent all weekend trying to buy this truck and every time I mentioned it he told me no he was not going to sell it to me because it was a piece of junk all rusted out and not worth fixing, which made me want it more.  Anyway once the weekend was over and we were all packing up to go back home he walks out and says “Hey Bob, Thursday was your birthday wasn’t it” and I said “Yes sir it was….”.  And he grinned real big and handed me the title to the old truck that I had been trying to buy all weekend.

Granted I was more than 600 miles away from home and in a small Ford ranger pick up and had no way of getting this truck back home immediately but I told him I would be back next week to get it.  During the next week he gave me the full history of this truck.  Come to find out the old truck was sort of a TV celebrity at one time.  It was used on a television show called Rebel Road and I believe it was on the Discovery Channel around 2013.  And it was also used in the pilot episodes of a show that was supposed to air on A&E called “The Life and Times of Rooster McGee”.  The second show never aired because of some creative differences between Ol’ Rooster and the network, but some episodes can be found on YouTube.

Well next week ended up being two weeks later, but I made the trip back to North Carolina and picked it up and headed to it’s new home in New Orleans, and immediately got to work.

Shortly after beginning work on the truck, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and turned my life upside down.  The shut downs forced me to close the doors of my business putting my employees out of work as well.  I was devastated, and then it eventually cost me my marriage of 15 years.  When it was all said and done, all I had left was this old truck.  This truck became the only thing that kept me from killing myself because whenever I was feeling down and out I would go out in the yard and work on the old truck.  It’s still a work in progress, but it is also my daily work truck.  She’s old and ugly, has no heat or air conditioning….But she makes my life worth living and I will keep this truck until the day I take my last breath.