For the Love of Truck

Our 1965 GMC truck is quite possibly one of the smartest purchases we ever made.

Barnaby in our purple truck

We bought the truck back in 2003, when we were beginning work on the Old Magahey place. We had often thought about getting a pick up truck before, to use for hauling and to make it easier to do dump runs. But we never really looked for one.

In 2003, as we were starting the Herculean task of restoring the Magahey place, we noticed the truck sitting on Parker Street with a for sale sign. It was mostly primer color, but looked pretty good, and the guy who was selling it claimed the engine was "excellent" but it needed some work. So he sold it to us for $900.

Since then, we have probably invested about $1000 in the truck (not including the can of purple house paint we used to paint it) but it has done an incredible amount of work. It has hauled furniture, building materials and lots of debris. We use it for everything, and it runs great. The electrical system is still dicey (the tail lights and blinkers are currently out of order) but other than that, it runs strong and never causes us any trouble.

This weekend, it took several loads of debris from the back yard to the dump. Both loads were approaching 2000 lbs, but the truck sailed through with little trouble.

So, other than hauling debris, what did we do on Saturday? I soldered a spigot onto the place where we cut the water main, so we again have water at the site. We finished transplanting roses, cleaned up the site, and fixed the holes in the siding in the back of the house. Now that the basement has been demolished, we have lots of extra siding that matches the rest of the house, so we finally had some we could use to patch.

On Sunday, we'll be breaking up the old Delaney foundation. Then on Monday, Phil will slide the house over some to get it perfectly aligned in its new location. And we'll begin our next battle with the City of Berkeley to get them to release the Cheney Cottage permits.