This was the first photo I ever took of the 1979 Toyota Longbed that sat for sale in front of my neighbor’s house in 2021. I remember walking by it for a month or two, headed down to the bus stop at the corner, and leaning in to see that beautiful blue plaid vinyl on the seats, and the shine of the gear knob. It had a massive blue steering wheel with an angular “T” in the center, which matched its logo on the grille. “That would be cool,” sophomore me thought, “But it’s too old and too impractical to get approval for.” But I was immediately proven wrong mere days later, when my mom brought it up to me in the kitchen. Sure, I was a huge car nut, and I had been driving my family around ever since I got my learner’s permit, but surely I wasn’t lucky enough to have something so cool as my first car. She simply said, “It would be a whole lot of fun,” and I couldn’t agree more.
Oftentimes, with my mom, things just seem to pop out of nowhere. Now, a month later, I stood in front of the newly bought truck, barely able to contain the shock. But there was also a sense of trepidation. I had never driven a stick shift before. It proved difficult, but in a few days of training, I was able to drive it as though it were any other car, and the familiarity with it would only grow from there.
By the beginning of junior year, after a characteristically incensing process with the DMV, I had a license of my own, and carpooled a close friend off to school every day. It made the menial a blast, made me appreciate every bump and corner, and truly brightened every single day. But this truck, being over double my age, started to have some issues with so much legwork. On the way to school one morning, the clutch simply gave out. I had to, with great effort, manually move each gear into place. The truck also began to stall at red lights, much to my panic. After a dangerous U-turn, I had to swap cars with my mom to make it to school, still on time. This photo was taken that weekend, when I set about replacing the blown clutch master cylinder. Aside from constant headbanging in the footwell and brake fluid flying everywhere, it was a very fun experience, though I needed help bleeding the air out of the system from my neighbor, whose mechanical skill with cars is nigh untouchable. During the week of its absence, every single one of my friends was asking where it had gone.
Later that year, I was driving home with a friend, and the front right tire popped, forcing us to make an emergency pit stop by the dog park. Removing the dry-rotted, mothballed spare was one of the most unhinged moments of my life, only to realize it after we put it on, that it couldn’t hold air either. Gingerly, we drove home and propped it up again in the carport, where it sat waiting for the replacements.
But the following year, things took a turn for the worse. Eventually, the truck began to sputter and rev wildly in neutral. It got to the point where it was pretty much undrivable at low speeds, the throttle jumping up and down without any input from the driver, the suspension squeaking in confusion. It was so bad one night that I had to leave it in the school parking lot after a rehearsal, when this photo was taken. We took it everywhere we could, replaced the carburetor, the spark plugs, and got it a tune-up. But it didn’t work, and apparently the new carburetor didn’t even fit the car. The neighbor and I looked at it furiously, swapping lines and hoses frantically, but nothing could be done. Ultimately, the truck was more or less phased out by my new duties as a student. My mom was too afraid that driving it on I95 would get me killed, and even though we had stabilized its strange malfunction, there was no one around to drive it anymore after I left home. Now it sits in the carport collecting dust, its paint ravaged by the sun and the rain. Now I have to move on, but I’ll never forget the whole lot of fun I had. Do you have a similar story? Complete this assignment and please share!