It was the early part of 2015 and I had been on the hunt for a very specific 1990-1994 Chevrolet Old Body Style (OBS) truck and actually had been hunting for the “one” for over eight months. I knew that I wanted a regular cab, short-bed, single cab, two-wheel drive truck with a 5.7L (350 C.I) V8 and with the Silverado Preferred Equipment Group package. Then one night, around midnight in April of that same year, I was just looking around online at trucks and there she was! When I saw her for the first time, I immediately named her “Brownie” and I knew I would make her mine! So, the next morning I reached out to the owners and saw that the truck was in Jasper, Alabama. Well, at that time, I lived in deep South Texas and Jasper, Alabama was over a 13-hour drive from me. After a couple of days of going back and forth with my seemingly unlimited questions with the owners, I knew that I had to go out to Alabama to see the truck somehow. But, before I did, I called up my former childhood Pastor, that I had known since I was a little kid in the early 1980’s, because he lived in Alabama. He had left our church in 1999 to take a church in Hartselle, Alabama to be near his parents. I wanted to see how far Jasper was from Hartselle to plan a trip to see my former Pastor and look at the truck at the same time. Well, my former Pastor said that Jasper was only about 40 minutes from Hartselle and he actually volunteered to take a mechanic from his church to go look at the truck for me before me making that long of trip. He called me the next morning after him and his fellow church member looked at the truck and his exact words were, “Brian, I do not know what this man wants for his truck, but if it is even in the vicinity of fair, you better buy it because you probably won’t see another like this anytime soon!” Well, that upcoming weekend was the Easter holiday weekend and I just could not make the trip on Easter due to my personal convictions. So, I called the owners up and told them that I would not travel on Easter and that God and family came before anything else, including the truck. To my joy, they were so understandingly gracious to hold the truck for me as they respected my not traveling on Easter. That next week we finalized the sale together, so I went to my bank to get the money, booked my flight to Birmingham, Alabama, and rented a vehicle to go see the truck with my then 13-year-old son for the experience. Well, I fell in love with Brownie the moment I saw her online, but the pictures online did not do her justice as my heart just melted when I saw her in person for the first time! I also could tell when I drove up that it was going to be so hard for the previous owners to let her go, so in my spirit I just could not come in between the kind owners and their truck. So, I told them that if I was going to cause them “heartache” to just book me a flight home and I would go home empty-handed. They were so moved by my character to not purchase the truck as to not hurt their family, even after coming such a long distance and incurring expenses, that they sold me the truck anyway and we made the deal that Saturday. I then promised to send them pictures when my restoration was done and that was the only stipulation of the sale. Well, life happens and in 2017, I began traveling for work every other week and in the meantime, I began a much more in-depth restoration as I went along. Well, being home only half the time, along with performing a nearly full restoration, I ended up finishing Brownie in the summer of 2020 which was over five years later!  After I was done and Brownie was running again, I called the previous owners personally, then I sent them a bunch of photos of Brownie and they were moved to tears after seeing her “all fixed up!” They told me they knew their “baby” was with the right owner and home with their exact words being, “We can’t believe the transformation because we would have never been able to do that to her!” So, in the end, I bought my precious Brownie and got to see my beloved Pastor after 16 years, so it was such a happy ending! Well, that was now nine years ago and I love every moment I have with Brownie. I now have two grandsons and look forward to making memories with them riding in Brownie when they get older and I have Pastor Jess White to thank for helping me find the “one!” The moral of this story is that you can never go wrong when you do the right thing!

Sincerely: