A Little Old-Fashioned Fun

Back in December, about 2 days after Mr. V got home from Iraq, he decided to buy himself a truck. But not just any truck...THIS truck:

That would be an old 1964 Ford pickup truck. Its rusted everywhere. It has the same engine that it had back when it was made in 1964. Its missing a door handle on the inside passenger door. The windows are cracked, a rear view mirror is missing. Wires are hanging out everywhere. There are all sorts of things wrong with it. To top it all off, it even came with a ski mask under the seat and a bumper sticker that reads "Jeffrey Dahmer says that tattoos taste better at Tiny Tim's Tattoo shop". I wish I was joking about that last part.

Mr. V's first car was a 1960-something Mustang that he restored. (He'd probably hate me for not remembering exactly what year his first car was.) He loves old cars and enjoys restoring them. We've been saying that we wanted a truck so we could haul stuff around (i.e. firewood, anything large that we buy), so this truck is perfect. It can haul stuff, and in his free time (that he never has) he can restore it to its original condition.

In the meantime, the truck sits on the street in front of our house as a huge eye sore. He's driven it a few times to run errands, but I have to admit that I'm not too fond of riding in the truck. The first time I went for a ride in it, we ended up broken down on the other end of town, and had to call my friend's husband to come rescue us. The few times that Mr. V has driven it without me as a passenger have been hit or miss as far as how well it runs. We bought an antique cabinet at a garage sale a few weeks ago. We had paid for it with the promise of coming back to pick it up in a few hours. The truck made it 30 minutes down the road to pick up the cabinet, but the people we bought the cabinet from had to push Mr. V down a hill so he could do something with the clutch to jump start the engine (you can tell that I know nothing about cars) after it became clear that the truck wasn't going to restart on his way back.

Since Mr. V clearly doesn't have the time to restore the truck any time in the near future, he tries to find other ways to play with it. This past weekend he decided to organize a group of friends to head to the old drive-in movie theatre on the island. I have to admit that I was skeptical. First, I didn't think the truck would make it to the drive-in and back. And second, I didn't think that anyone was going to humor him in regards to using the truck to get us to the drive-in. I'm happy to say that I was wrong. We ended up gathering up several friends and headed off to the drive-in.

Since the bed of the truck is rusting away, Mr. V bought some straw to line the bed with so we could sit back there. Then we packed up some blankets, some hand warmers (did I mention that its supposed to be summer now?), a battery powered radio (the drive-in's sound system is a radio station and the truck has no radio) and some old fashioned coke in a bottle and we were on our way.

I am happy to report that we made it there without the truck breaking down! The theatre was showing a double feature of Toy Story 3 and The A-Team. I wanted to see Toy Story. He wanted to see The A-Team. So we set up some chairs, laid some towels on the straw so we could sit on it without being poked, wrapped ourselves up in some blankets and had a great time!

I have to admit that I had much more fun than I was anticipating. I guess my apprehension about the truck in general, combined with the cold weather, made me think I was going to be miserable all night. I was freezing, and 3 layers of clothes (t-shirt, sweatshirt and jacket), 2 blankets and some hand warmers didn't do much to help, but I still had fun.

Now we're looking forward to planning the next drive-in adventure!

There are a lot of things that I don't like about this town and general area, but this is the kind of stuff I never did anywhere else. I didn't grow up in a place where I could go to a drive-in, while looking at the sunset over the mountains, and see cows and horses and barns in the distance. I love new adventures, and this was definitely one!

(packing up the truck with blankets in anticipation of the weather getting even colder once the sun set!)

(the straw to cover the rusty truck bed)

(me - looking very apprehensive about going for a ride in the truck)

(getting the straw all laid out)

(The Blue Fox Drive-In - since 1959!)

(old fashioned coke bottles and if you look closely at the back window you can read the Jeffrey Dahmer bumper sticker)

(The Olympic Mountains in the distance)

(Everyone waiting around for the movie to start - it should be noted that its about 9:30pm here and it hasn't even started to get dark yet)

(around 10:00pm and the sun is finally setting)

(eating and waiting for the movie to start)

(all bundled up waiting for the movie to start)

(still waiting for the movie to start)

(group shot before the movie - my friend's dog is in the bed of the truck too, but he's hard to see. I love this picture though!)

(10:30pm...still not quite dark, but dark enough to start the movie. Its hard to see but this is an old advertisement for the theatre)

(around 11:00pm...notice that the sky still isn't completely dark yet)