My Favorite Ride: A bittersweet story about a man, a 1956 Ford pickup, and the holidays
A note from My Favorite Ride columnist Laura Lane: I'm taking some time away, and leave you with this 2016 story about a man and his truck. Dick Jones's granddaughter told me a copy of the newspaper it appeared in was on the table beside his chair when he passed away a few months later. That made me smile.
I've added excerpts and a photo from a follow-up article published in December 2017.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, all of that. See you in the new year.
May 2016: 'I'd drive it to California tomorrow'
Dick Jones, a man of few words.
I encountered him and his 1956 Ford pickup truck as I drove east on Ind. 46. OK, “encountered” is not the right verb; let’s try “accosted” instead. I turned around, went back and asked about the truck. He was parked, waiting for a wrecker to haul off an old Ford Taurus that had seen better days.
He cast a wary eye my way. “Great truck,” I said, noticing the wraparound windshield, a new design feature in 1956. He nodded. I introduced myself. He was unimpressed.
“Care if I take a few pictures?” I asked. Jones contemplated the Nikon in my hand. “Guess not.”
He bought the truck in 2000 at a swap meet in Indianapolis.
“It was not in running condition,” he said. So he fixed it up and made mechanical changes, like power steering and power brakes, so that the now-60-year-old pickup runs smooth. “It was a fix-up, not a total restoration.” It handles more like a late-model Ford F-150 than a hard-to-turn relic.
He drives the truck about every day. “I’ve done been to town in it this morning,” he told me Friday. “I’d drive it to California tomorrow, but I don’t think my wife would go with me.”
He will be parking it soon, for some restoration and repair. But Jones won’t be without a truck during the process. “I’m buying a 1955 to drive while I fix this one.”
December 2017: A Christmas card arrives
A Christmas card arrived in the mail from Amy Hoagland in Louisville. It features a vintage red pickup adorned with an evergreen wreath, and there’s a Christmas tree in the truck bed.
Her grandpa’s red 1956 Ford pickup was a My Favorite Ride in May of 2016. Dick Jones loved that rusty old truck, and I wrote 240 words about it that accompanied a pretty nice photo I took before driving away after encountering him on the road to Nashville.
Dick Jones died three months later. He was 77, and had never hauled a pine nor spruce tree in the back of his truck, Hoagland said.
A few days ago, I found out that Jones’s friends and brother had decorated the truck for the holidays. It’s parked outside Bloomington’s SummerHouse apartments on East Third Street, beneath a spotlight and surrounded by light-filled trees.
Have a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Remembering Dick Jones and the 1956 Ford pickup he got at a swap meet
