Jeeps

Let's do something fun today!  Well, it may not be fun for you but it will be fun for me.

As a young boy I remember sitting in front of our first television, a 12" screen, black and white Motorola (which I have sitting in my shop, by the way).  One of my favorite shows was the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans show.  I was especially taken by the Jeep, Nellie Belle.

Part of my fascination with that show was I was remembering the Jeep my grandfather had bought in 1949 (or 8 as some of the family say) to use on his farm.  It was a dark green CJ3.  It had an indestructible 4 cylinder flat head engine, the military style tires for mud and a Willys tailgate that was let down with chains.

When I visited the farm the location of the Jeep was one of the first places I'd go to after getting out of the car.  My cousins and I would sit in it for hours playing all sorts of make believe. 

We went everywhere in that Jeep...over the 280 acres of the farm, pulling wagons, trailers, hauling things or just out for a drive to see the cattle on Tunnel Ridge.  Later after my grandfather died, my uncle would drive us into town to get supplies and we'd always tag along, two of us together in the passenger seat.  Usually, it was my cousin Danny.  Back then, the canvas top was long gone and my uncle had built a white plywood top to go over the two seats to keep warm in the winter. 


As I got older, reaching the big 12, I was allowed to try to drive the Jeep moving it around from place to place.  In fact, that's where I learned to drive.  I had to stretch holding on to the steering wheel while pressing the floor starter button and depressing the clutch to get it started.  Sometimes there just wasn't enough of me to get that done.

As I grew older my cousin Dan and I would get the Jeep out and drive it around the farm occasionally getting it in a situation where we needed the help of the tractor to pull us out.  One time in particular we had killed the motor and the Jeep was sitting too close to the rock wall, threatening to go over it backwards.  Part of that problem stemmed from being too short for us to get it started, let out the clutch and get it going away from the peril.

When my grandfather originally bought the Jeep new he purchased a short wheelbase trailer to go with it.  The axle was located right in the center of the trailer.  It was the hardest trailer to back that you have ever seen...but that didn't stop my cousin and I from trying it.  Over and over and over again.

When my grandmother died we went back to the farm for the funeral.  I had my new wife, Pat, along.  We had just been married a few months.  I remember taking her for a ride in the Jeep out into the old orchard.

In 1986 we went back to the farm while at a family reunion.  The Jeep had been sitting for some time and hadn't been used on a regular basis.  All we had to do was pour gas in the carburetor and make sure it had a jump and it fired right up.  By then the two pedals for the clutch and brake had rusted together...but it still drove.  In fact, if I remember correctly, my daughter Nissa took it for a drive.

I remember asking my uncle who still owned it (and still does!) if I could buy it from him.  He wasn't willing to sell it so I returned back to PA where we were living at the time and bought one of my own.  It was a '61 Willys Jeep CJ5, red with a white hardtop probably bought at Sears.  The original 4 or 6 cylinder motor had been replaced by a Chevy 283 V8 from a '68.  The owners had used it to plow snow and wanted some more horsepower.  They also equipped it with a J C Whitney overdrive.  And most importantly, it had a Willys tailgate with chains to let it down.

I've had a lot of fun in my Jeep but not as much fun as I would have hoped.  I drove it everyday back and forth to work for about a year when we first moved back to OH.  Then I used it to drag trees in the woods around our home when we bought out in Millersburg.  I occasionally got it out and ran down the road, taking the various grandkids for a ride.  Yea, they go for the Jeep when they get to my house now, sitting in it and playing make believe.  When we lived in OH my grandson,  Briggs, used to ask me to take he and his brother Rece for a ride in the forest (the woods around my home).

I can't drive my Jeep now.  PA wants me to have it look like new to get Antique Plates on it.  The other option is to license it regularly but that would drive the national deficit up even further to bring it back to road-worthiness. 

Why do I keep it?  Because it still means fun to me.  It still brings out the boy in me and reminds me of all the fun times I had on the farm, exploring, seeing the countryside and doing the work of a farmer.  Every kid should have that experience.