Daniel Edward Newton and I have been friends for 45 years. We met in kindergarten in the fall of 1962. We later went to the same college, roomed together, attended who knows how many sports-car races, and have never had a cross word between us. Well, there was the time when his dog ate a box full of rare rubber parts for my Pantera...but Dan gave me some money and bought pizza that night, too, so we forgot about it.
A few months before Dan and I began terrorizing the playground at Valley Vista Elementary School (Cucamonga, California), his folks, Ed and Connie Newton, bought a new 1962 Ford F-100. It's a longbed half-ton with a 292-cubic-inch Y-block V-8 and manual everything. What was labeled a Custom Cab wasn't all that custom back then. His father converted the original three-on-the-tree to a granny-low four-speed so the 160-horse V-8 could better handle trailer towing. Dan and I took it camping and on many road trips with our 10-speeds or motorcycles in the back. Went to the late, great Riverside International Raceway, to the swap meet, to the dump, and who knows where else. I've known the Newtons' F-100 its entire life, which equals about 90 percent of mine.
Dan's parents have since passed away, leaving him the truck. He drove it every day, then only once in a while, before parking it a few years back. He and his wife have other vehicles, he has a long commute, and the Effie has no A/C (or other power accessory of any kind). So the truck was mothballed in a desert storage lot to bask in quiet, sun-drenched retirement.
Dan and I were e-mailing recently, and I asked what he was doing with the F-100. He replied, "Oh, I'm kinda done with it. It's part of the family, but I'm paying to store it, I don't drive it, and it deserves someone who wants it. I'm going to bring it to our next block-party garage sale, and if someone will give me a couple hundred bucks, they'll own it."
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