Back in 1995 I ordered a brand-new 1996 Dodge Ram 2500 with a Cummins turbodiesel engine. I had gone though a 1984 Datsun pickup and a 1987 Ford and had decided that I wanted a real truck. It was the first year of Dodge’s “big-rig” look truck style, the one that Dodge and now Ram has used ever since. I sat down with the salesman at the dealership and went though everything I wanted. He nodded and said yes until I said I wanted a manual transmission. That stopped him. Not many people wanted a manual. But I wanted every little big of mileage I could get, and the manual did a better job than the automatic in those days.

Almost immediately after I took delivery, I drove the truck down to Mexico with my friend Tom, who is fluent in Spanish. We went beyond the frontier, deep into the parts of Mexico that most tourists don’t go. We stayed in motels that had gated courtyards, like an old castle keep. We went to department stores with no English speakers anywhere except us. We ate food cooked on wood-fired grills. Tom took a picture of me and the truck somewhere in Mexico.

Both of us were younger in those days.

Most people who buy pickup trucks use them as everyday transportation, just a very big, inefficient car. It was my only vehicle for a while, but it got reasonable mileage for something that big, around 20 mpg. But I also used it as a truck. It was in pretty constant use as a truck while I built my first house, where Leah and I lived before we moved to our current house. That diesel engine was loud. When I visited my friends Errol and Cookie near Atlanta, they said they could hear me coming from a couple of blocks away (that might have been an exaggeration). Errol said it sounded like the garbage truck coming. Here is a photo I took of the truck, my father, and one of my Dobermans.

Those are the footing forms I built for the house. The forms themselves were a major construction project. I had to step them down around 20 feet from the highest corner of the garage to the lowest back corner.

When I bought the truck I was living in Alabama, where I worked. When I moved back to Rome in around 1999, I decided I needed something a little smaller and more fuel efficient, so I got a VW diesel. That got 50 mpg. I kept the truck because the house construction went on for a long time. I eventually got another truck in 2003, and rather than trade the old blue Dodge, I sold it to my brother, Henry.

Henry drove the truck from 2003 until he died last April. He used it down in southern Mississippi when he worked for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, helping people rebuild their homes after Katrina, when just about everybody else had forgotten about the hurricane victims. The truck got worn and dented, inside and out. It needed various bits and pieces, some of which were no longer available new. Through everything, it just kept trucking’.

When Henry died, his older son Thomas took the truck. Thomas lived in Atlanta at the time, but moved to Dallas a few months ago. We hadn’t heard from him since he moved, so we were glad to get a text Saturday. Unfortunately, it was not good news. Someone had stolen the Dodge, and it had not been found.

It’s so old it has very little value, except for the Cummins turbodiesel engine. That apparently has a fairly high value. But maybe it wasn’t stolen for that reason. Maybe it was just someone off on a joy ride. Maybe it will show up. Maybe it won’t be dismantled, wrecked or burned. I hope so.