Moser Good Eats and Good Times: August 2018

Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

It’s been almost two months since my last blog post. No, I’ve not been too busy to write. Until this past week Verne and I have done nothing newsworthy. No good eats worth talking about. Just lots of simple salads and summer veggies. No excursions, except the occasional trips to town for provisions, and they hardly qualify. While we’ve been homebodies, we’ve not been idle. Our single focus has been on the restoration of Verne’s ’50 Chevy pickup. A few years ago Verne and his brother Keith restored his ’52 Chevy truck. Keith spent the better part of a day each week working with Verne on the project and lo and behold the truck was restored in a little over a year. Two things are different with this project. First, the ’50 Chevy pickup requires substantially more work than the ’52. Secondly, Keith now lives in Arizona. Verne needed a replacement barn buddy and that person is me!

After breakfast each morning (and Verne’s second cup of coffee and an hour working his crossword puzzle) and before it gets too hot, we walk to the barn to consider the prior day’s work and begin the present day’s tasks. July was spent preparing and priming the truck, each and every piece of it. Before I go any further, I’ll remind you that the pickup is completely dismantled and has been for some time now. Every part, every nut and bolt, all of it is in pieces all over the barn. Remember the matching game you played as a child? I always liked it and could do it very quickly. That’s a good thing, because I’ve spent part of my barn time looking for like kinds of things. For example, Verne will show me a part and say, “there should be two of these…” And, I begin the search. All the big parts were easily found. Not so with small bits and pieces that have either gone missing over the years or rusted to the point that they need to be replaced.

I have a new appreciation for two resource catalogs Verne uses, The Filling Station and Chev’s of the 50’s, which have every single part needed to rebuild classic trucks. Replacement parts are pricey, but they are available. For example, the steering wheel in our pickup is cracked in about 25 or 30 places from years of use and weather. Our options include repairing the steering wheel (there are several excellent online videos with step-by-step visuals of the long, tedious process) or purchasing a new one for around $200. Verne has suggested a third option…leave it as it is and let Jeff do it. After watching Tool Dude Tony’s YouTube video on steering wheel restoration, I’m inclined to agree with Verne. One of the challenges to using the catalogs is knowing the exact name of the part. I am continually amazed at Verne’s knowledge of the truck and all of its 1,000+ parts (one of the catalogs has over 400 pages). I have never known him to refer to a “thingamajig”, but calls every part by its technical name and if I am interested, he explains the purpose of the part and how it’s used. Sometimes TMI (too much information)!

Until recently I’ve held little hope that this project would ever be completed. Verne has spent countless hours bead blasting, sand blasting, and sanding (by hand) years of rust from the old farm truck. He’s Bondo’d (filler used to repair dents) the worst of the dents and dings and left others to “add character” to the pickup (like that little dent that Jeff fixed—read on). This past month we have prepared and primed every part. The next step will be to scuff sand (using an abrasive pad) in preparation for painting. Seeing the freshly primed parts ready for a final coat of paint has inspired both of us to push on. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by a project like this. As Verne continues to remind me, the Great Wall of China was built one block at a time. This hard-used near 70-year old truck is our Great Wall and to get this far we’ve had to adopt the same approach. We avoid thinking about the project in its entirety and instead focus on today’s small piece of the whole. It’s working. Every day we enjoy small achievements that are satisfying and encourage us to spend the next day working on another small piece of the project. It has actually become addictive and I’ve found myself wondering what we’ll do when we’re finished. That is, besides packing and moving on.

Primed fenders, grill and hood out of harms way on the '52 Chevy truck bed

We enjoyed a well-earned break in August. Jeff and his family spent part of their California vacation with us. I doubt the boys considered it much of a “vacation” as our time together was spent working on the pickup and wood splitting. I have pictures of the boys power washing the pickup when they visited two years ago. That was definitely their idea of a good time. Who doesn’t love outdoor water play on a hot summer day? Working in a hot barn scuffing the primed parts wasn’t nearly as much fun and it didn’t take long for their enthusiasm to wane.

Patrick scuffing dash

Boys scuffing pickup bed

Trish scuffing grill and doing a Great Job!

Trish and boys taking a break from scuffing

Jeff (and Verne) spent two grueling hours on a 10-minute project repairing a small dent. Later (after we’d put out the fire) Verne explained to Jeff’s boys, “This is a case for leaving well enough alone.” Let me back up a bit. Shortly after we’d walked down to the barn to admire all that Verne and I had accomplished, Jeff began to futz with the bottom louver of the vent on the passenger side of the truck. Years ago the entire right side of the truck had taken the full impact of an accident. Verne replaced the door and it looks like he made an attempt at some point to pound out some of the dents in the body. One small dent in the vent (between the door and the front fender) remained. Back to options, Jeff could have (1) just lived with the small dent or (2) he could have tried to pull it out from the outside of the truck or (3) he could “do it right” and remove a panel on the inside of the cab so as to access the damage and push out the dent. Like his mother, Jeff chose to do it the right way. He easily removed five of the six bolts holding the panel. The sixth bolt was not so easy. It was stuck. Frozen in place. He worked and worked at it first trying to loosen it with a lubricant made for such challenges. Eventually, they (Verne had joined him at this point) decided to drill it out. That resulted in additional challenges, which required a metal grinder. At this point the entire family had gathered to watch the sparks fly. After what seemed to be hours, they got the plate off. But, all this twisting, torqueing and grinding had left them with a new problem. The nut (now just metal grindings) was originally spot welded to the back of the plate. No problem. Out came Verne’s welding tools and torch and within a few minutes a replacement nut was secured in place. Before the guys could congratulate each other on a job well done, I noticed the smoke. They ignored my shouts of “FIRE” at first, but before long smoke was wafting from just about every hole in the firewall (appropriate name) that got everyone’s notice. The boys had been playing with the hose so it was close by. Always calm at times like this, Verne just grabbed the hose and shot water through the holes putting out the fire. All in a day’s work or, in this case, a 10-minute job that took two hours. The moral of this story is “Leave well enough alone!”

Verne welding (before the fire)

The day after the McKenzie’s left for SoCal to spend time with family, we packed and left for Portland to spend the weekend with Lauren. It was mostly a kick-back weekend for the three of us with our only big event being a trip to the Oregon Air Museum in McMinnville. Thanks to our incredibly knowledgeable guide, it was one of the best museum experiences we’ve ever had. While the big draw of the museum is Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose, it offers much more than one oversized plane (largest wooden plane ever constructed and only flown once). It documents the history of aviation from the Wright Brothers to more recent times that include planes and helicopters used in the Korean and Vietnam wars, as well as civilian aircraft. Our guide was familiar with every aircraft and having fought in the Vietnam war shared stories from his military years. It was all fascinating.

Verne and Lauren at the Oregon Air Museum

We continued our trip on Monday taking the coastal route to Gold Beach, where we joined Scott and his family for the next few days. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and relaxing experience. The house he’d rented was literally a stone’s throw from the beach. We’d left a heat wave in California, so the mid-60 degree temps in Gold Beach was a welcome change. Scott and his family had stopped and picked blueberries before arriving. On our second day Verne and I made a blueberry pie. The kitchen lacked a food processor, so we made the crust the old-fashioned way by using a fork to cut in the butter. Verne operated the fork while I dropped in pats of cold butter and ice water. As it always happens with the food processor, the crust magically came together as I was adding the final tablespoon of water. We had a crust. The rest was easy. Some of my favorite memories are simple times like this, working together side by side to make a delicious blueberry pie.

Watching the waves

Scott after spending a morning fishing and catching his limit - Happy, Happy!

Scott and family

Scott and Josh with their catch

Our final day in Gold Beach was spent at the marina watching the boys (Scott and Josh) return from their second day of fishing. I doubt I’d go out on a small fishing boat (actually, any size fishing boat), but watching the offload and cleaning of the fish was interesting. Scott has loved to fish since he was a small boy. Easy access to both fresh water and salt water fishing makes Gold Beach one of Scott’s favorite vacation spots. From there we drove to Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and spent a few hours communing with the giant sequoias. Always a pleasure. We left early afternoon for home and back to the heatwave (and our restoration project).

A few more pictures...