'What would you give up for a year rather than give up the keys to your truck?' A lesson.
A few years ago I was reading a piece in one of my favorite gear blogs wherein they cited a poll conducted among truck owners. The poll question was more or less, “What would you give up for a year rather than give up the keys to your truck?” I uttered “yeah right” out loud while reading that around 40-percent of those polled indicated that they would rather be celibate for 12 months than give up their truck. At the time, I assumed if it were even true, this statistic was more a reflection on the personality type of one who would own a truck than it was on the supposed greatness of trucks (no offense to my dad and most of my uncles who have all only owned trucks as long as I have known them). After now having owned a truck for a few years, those poll results seem a lot less absurd to me.
The first several days spent in our yet-to-be officially acquired new abode were spent setting it up to be livable, but also workable. Britt and I would need to wait until we officially closed (when the county recorder was open again because of the pandemic) to start any of the planned major renovations, but we identified several minor items that we could get going on in the meantime. The list was mostly demolition of rotten, broken or worn out features in almost every room of the house.
Since we knew we were going to be doing work in each of the bedrooms, we decided to arrange the living room into a makeshift bedroom that transitioned into an office during the day. The transition was made by leaning the inflatable air mattress bed up against the wall during the day, and deploying a collapsible patio dining set which Britt and I shared as a desk. The air mattress was one that we had brought with us. The patio furniture was a spontaneous Target purchase (as most Target purchases tend to be) that Britt picked up in Kingston, roughly 40 miles east, when she was there shopping for other essentials. This setup also made sense since the kitchen, which was generally in working order after some minor tinkering, was adjacent to our flex-camping/office.
While it was our intention to repurpose as much as we practically could during this renovation, there are some things that just needed to be discarded. Heavily stained ’80s brown shag carpet was one prime example. As with many of the rural municipalities in the Catskills, town sponsored trash pick-up does not exist. Even if it did, disposing of demolition/construction trash would be tricky based on size and volume (though, I’m sure people have done it). For regular household trash in this area, most people cart it to a waste processing transfer station that is run by the town. But there are pretty tight rules around what can be discarded at the transfer station. One of such rules prohibits most construction trash.
With all of this in mind, Britt started researching private trash collection services and dumpster options. Our initial idea was to order one of those large open top dumpsters that could just live in the driveway until our whole project was finished. Pricing it out through the end of the summer (which we naively thought would be plenty of time) came to a figure of several thousand dollars. To both of us, it seemed like quite a lot of cash for what it was.
There is a county landfill less than an hour away from the house where one can dispose of pretty much anything. In an effort to maximize the value for dollars spent, I proposed to Britt that we try to find an old pickup truck on Craigslist priced in the same range of what it would cost to rent the dumpster. This would solve not only the trash problem, but could also be used for hauling large supplies purchased at our local hardware store, rather than having everything delivered from a big box hardware brand out of Kingston, which was our initial plan (again, the naivete).
I discovered almost immediately that most of the trucks for sale in the area at that price point were either not driveable or would be impossible to register with the DMV. There were scores of listings for plow and farm trucks with no title. Almost as many in number, were those with cracked frames or check engine lights ablaze. I went as far as driving to inspect a few in person, only to discover that the main wire harness had been a meal for a rodent, or that only the front brakes worked. In each case the seller would apologize for not mentioning those details when we spoke on the phone and reassure me that it was “nothing to worry about.” After hitting what I thought was such a home run on the house purchase, I was re-learning the adage “you get what you pay for.”
I’m not sure exactly for how long this process went on. But at some point after what seemed like months (but was more likely a couple of weeks), just as I was starting to give up on my Craigslist truck dreams, everything changed. It had become apparent that the virus situation was going to be a thing for a while. Some people were calling it a pandemic. As a result, it also became clear that we would be living in our construction project for the foreseeable future. The world had started to adapt to this new reality. The gears of society began again to slowly turn, albeit under a heavily circumscribed “socially distanced” regime.
Britt and I were able to close on our purchase and officially own the house. It was the first time that either of us had ever been the primary steward of a freestanding structure, let alone one that included a miniature forest. Neither of us took this new mantle lightly. We teamed up to spend all of our free time grinding away at our list of projects, which only seemed to grow longer every day. Through the grace of God, or whatever you want to call it, Britt and I both remained gainfully employed during this global upheaval. Week day business hours were spent conducting our respective business… mostly.
Working remotely meant that I could now multitask during some of the meetings that probably didn’t really need to be meetings in the first place. Traditionally in these types of meetings, I would sit in a conference room with the other participants and doodle on my legal pad during the parts of the meeting that weren’t relevant to my role. Now I could scour Craigslist for a pickup truck during these types of lulls. It was during one such meeting that I first saw her.
It was a mediocre photo taken with what, in my estimation, was probably a model of iPhone that was still in the single digits. Low tech imagery notwithstanding, this old hunter green square body 4x4 spoke to me. Unlike most ’90s vintage trucks in the Catskills, the wheel wells were not totally rusted out. Possibly even more exciting, it was a manual five speed.
After exchanging a few emails and texts with the seller’s son (apparently the actual seller was not super tech savvy), I arranged a day/time to come inspect the truck. It was a very pleasant summer evening in the Catskills when Britt and I made the journey about 1.5 hours southeast of our house to physically lay eyes on this prospective solution to our conundrum. Based on how our Craislist saga had transpired to-date, neither of us had high hopes. But it was worth a shot. The truck was running when we pulled up – a good sign. There were also jumper cables still connected to the adjacently parked car. Potentially not a great sign.
I met the seller. He was a really nice guy who was not giving off any “I’m trying to pull a fast one” vibes. He explained that he loved the truck, but had grown tired of constantly paying to get it fixed. He was not particularly mechanically inclined, despite being an architect/builder by trade; We Googled him later, and discovered that he does some awesome work. In an effort to mitigate the mechanic’s bills, he had purchased a newer model truck to replace the old one. I asked him why it hadn’t sold yet. Apparently no one knows how to drive stick anymore, including several people who had come to inspect the truck, after failing to read that detail in the CL listing.
The test drive was great. My olfactories ginned up some great nostalgia upon first hopping into the driver’s seat, which was held together by flashing tape. The cab smelled exactly like the trucks I had been shuttled around in as a kid. The clutch had recently been replaced and the tires were newish as well. Growing up as the eldest child to a dad who could build and/or fix practically anything, I learned how to read a Chilton’s manual early on. Upon a quick once over, I noticed a few minor nits, including the fact that the parking brake assembly was entirely missing. But the truck generally worked and there was nothing that I would not be able to fix or replace at home in the driveway.
Without much additional ado, Britt and I were the proud new owners of 1995 F150 4x4 with a fully manual drivetrain (down to the front hubs). We named her Greedo after the alien bounty hunter gunned down by Han Solo in the original Star Wars movie, mostly because they are exactly the same shade of green. We finally had a hauler!! Beyond what we had initially imagined, Greedo proved to be a game changer for the renovation project as well as our exploration of the Catskills.
Growing up in the Rocky Mountains, Jake Breinholt has been an avid outdoorsman and photographer for as long as he can remember. He moved to New York for school in the early aughts. After about 15 years of the desk jockey grind, he and his wife made good on their years-long dream of owning a home in the Catskills. As he’s spent the past few years fixing up the place, he’s also getting back in touch with his roots through time in the great outdoors. Check out his Personal Blog + Photography.
This column first appeared in the HVNY newsletter, This week in the Hudson Valley. Sign-up to get it delivered for free every week.
