For $756, I bought my truck from a friend in Amarillo, Texas, whose daughter had it in her backyard where it had been sitting for a few years. The truck belonged to his grandpa who bought it new. It did not run as water had gotten into the carburetor and the engine seized. A farmer friend gave me a Ford 360 and I had it rebuilt while I worked on the cab and other parts. This truck represented FREEDOM to me from a long-term relationship that had gone bad and it helped me reconnect with my past that I had shelved decades before. I had a series of Ford pickups beginning in 1980 with a 1963 F-100 four-on-the-floor, straight six, positrack rear end, spot-lights, and an oil-bath air cleaner that I bought for $75 out of a farmer’s field north of Kansas City where it had sat for about ten years. It had red stock racks for hauling cattle. My best friend’s father and I rebuilt the engine and I drove it for few years. Top speed on the highway was about 50 mph. I sheared off one of the kingpins on the front end driving through the University of Kansas campus where I was as student. Another friend named this pickup the Eat Me Death Truck. After a couple years, I traded the same farmer the EMDT and $50 for a rusty POS automatic 1974 Ford F-100 with a 390 that had been sitting in the same field next to the original EMDT. Like a fool, I thought I needed something newer. I rebuilt the motor in EMDT II with the same best friend’s father. That truck lasted about a year when I T-boned a red-light running woman in a Buick (or something) on Kansas Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, while driving home from work. Bent EMDT II like a banana and I could touch the grill just by reaching through where the windshield had been. Broke my nose on the steering wheel which I had pushed down to the column with my face. Probably broke my hand on the knobs on the dash. Good riddance to that POS. So, got a maroon 1967 or 1968 Ford F-100 three-on-the-tree straight six with a gash torn in the passenger door: EMDT III. Sold that truck in 1984 when I moved to DC for two years. Back in Dallas for grad school in a moment of insanity and a lack of Ford pickups, I bought a 1974 Chevy Cheyenne Super automatic and had it for a couple years (not an EMDT). Finally, in 2016 I bought my current EMDT IV otherwise known as FREEDOM. I built stock racks for the bed for when I get a horse. I bought an original Philco AM radio online and had it installed so I can listen to AM Country, not that NashVegas trash people call “country” today. As a cowboy historian, I am proud to have a proper truck again. Thank God for old Ford pickups!