1937 Ford 3/4 Ton Stake Body Truck
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1937 Ford Stake Body Truck Pictures from Russian Galleries
The first truck the Chacón family owned was a 1932 stake body two-ton truck. I learned to drive it out of necessity as a twelve-year old. My father used it to haul the mails and freight from Dixon to Peñasco. It was also used for the harvest of our crops, mostly grains such as wheat, corn, and peas as well as hay and alfalfa. My father taught me to drive it slowly while he and the hired hands loaded it.
Then in 1937 the Ford Motor Company introduced its miniature stake body
truck, a 3/4 ton replica of the biggies. It was a beauty, brown colored. I
remember the day we picked it up in Taos and drove it to Peñasco. My father,
perhaps as a gesture indicating to me that I was no longer a kid, offered me a
cigarette. I tried it but choked. Dad did not really smoke either, but he had a
pack of Lucky Strikes and must have been feeling good, what with being able to
buy a new Ford truck and during the depression, even; offered me one. He also
told me that very soon I would be able to drive the new truck and not just
during the harvest period. Oh boy, I could not wait. I soon learned to handle it
but was not really allowed to use it much.
In April of 1943 I joined the US Navy and after boot training at Camp
Waldron, Farragut Naval Training Station in Idaho I came home in June. Dad had
been ill and the Little Brown Truck had been sitting idle. I started it up and
asked my buddy Benito Duran to go fishing with me at Santa Barbara. We were big
guys now, I was in the Navy and Benito was soon to go in the US Army, so our
first stop was at Tom's to get some beer for our fishing trip; of course!
La Jicarita - View from the Peñasco Valley
After a day fishing, we headed home to Peñasco at sunset. We were feeling pretty good, we had a good catch of cutthroat trout and had consumed the beer and sardines we took for lunch. (Isn't it ironic that we always seemed to have sardines for lunch when we went fishing?)
The narrow valley of the Santa Barbara gets dark as soon as the sun starts to
set, but where it shines through breaks in the mountain ridges it comes in
strong and in a horizontal direction. That is exactly what happened. The sun hit
us head-on and blinded me. I stuck my head out the side and barely missed
getting it chopped off by an aspen tree as we went down a ravine. We wound up at
the bottom of the river bed. Miraculously neither of us was hurt. Bruised yes,
but hurt, no. Next day we had to take two teams of horses to get the truck out
of the river. The truck never ran again, at least not under the control of a
Chacón. Dad's health had worsened, I returned to my Navy duties and the truck
just sat at home.
Charles Abéyta later bought it, for a song, got it fixed and owned it for years. A classic among trucks. I will paint it next! (psd)
I nearly lost my life in it.
Beníto, later my brother-in-law, reminded me about it every now and then until his death in 1998.
That is how my third life ended, almost chopped-off by an aspen tree.
Aye, Dios! Otra Vez!
God Bless
America
By José Andrés "Andy" Chacón, DBA
Free Lance Writer & Ex-Adjunct Professor, UNM
Chicano Motivational Speaker.