Hittin' The Road! Dad, Lad, Old Truck and a Road Map

Chapter one written yet??

 

Got back an hour ago. He's in bed, I'm exhausted.
It was a great trip. We saw the Harry S. Truman presidential library/museum, and one of the back-ish roads he had us take drove us by the Laura Ingles home--where she wrote all the Little House on the Prarie books. It was closed for the season, but we got pictures of the outside of it and read the historical marker (several paragraphs, front and back)
The truck didn't miss a beat. It even kept up with (and p***ed!) cars on the highway when we had to take them. Not bad with 4:11 gears and a 283.
There isn't a piece of weather stripping anywhere on the thing, the clutch slave is on it's last strokes, and it could use something a little more in the way of a heater, but any 40+ year old, unrestored truck that'll jump on the road and go 1000 miles in three days earns my respect. And Boy Wonder's, too.
We had a blast together...getting a cool old truck with tons of potential is totally secondary.

And DAMN that boy can read a map! I mean, not better than any kid I've ever met, I mean better than most adults I've ever met! He plotted our entire route from Kansas City to Joplin to Atlanta, and if a road didn't work out because of time or whatever, he was back on it telling me what county road to take, what town to pick it up in, which way to turn when I came up on it...and he even figured out that the length of his pinky finger was about 60 miles, so he was pretty accurate in telling the approximate time to stay on a road before we hit the next town/turn.
At 10 years old, that kid is a born ralley racer.

I'll post pics of the trip later this week.
Thanks for all the kind words, and the tips on BBQ places in Memphis.
-Brad

 

that just plain and simple kicks ***,, wish i could have done something like that with my dad

 

didn't read them all, may have already been said....

but take a copy of the hamb helper list....

 

My grin is large. Wayno

 

ready for adoption:47 year old male with even older car. Good job taking the young'un with you . wish my kids were into it like yours{damn you gameboy!}
R.R.

 

Been waiting to read how the trip turned out... thanks for posting! Sounds like everything went smooth, with no scary-moments to stress out Mom at home. I'm gonna file this thread away to show my wife... maybe some day I'll take that unexpected turn on the way to my kids' school too. Looking forward to the pics.

-murph

 

Good to hear you guys made it safely w/o incident. Bet you're ptoud of that boy!

 

What he said! Sounds cool as hell! Tell that kid a buch of greasy HAMBers consider him a real hotrodder now, Tman says so.

 

Good Read dude/Dad and good on you! He'll never forget it!
My old man pulled a similiar stunt when I was in 5th Grade....Van Halen came to town and I LOVED Van Halen....it was killing me that I knew dad was going and I wanted to go....dad came to school and picked me up for a "DENTIST" appointment and we went off to the Kansas Colliseum to watch Van Halen!! Killer show too!

I carry the torch and took my son out surfing to Santa Cruz with his brand new board and wetsuit instead of school on a nice sunny day a couplw weeks back, needless to say he was STOKED. Man it feels good to play hooky with your son once in a while!