Against All Oddities: An F-100 ripe for the taking

Regular readers know me as oddball-car diehard, one unafraid of high-stress projects that would dissuade the hobbyist of sound mind. But even I need the occasional outlet, so I jump to a number of backup hobbies to prevent mental burnout. Right now it’s fall foraging time in Appalachia. The muscadines and scuppernongs are turning sweet and the paw paws and persimmons are starting to hit the ground. With everything going to seed and bearing fruit, I figured I’d give my mind a break from car projects.

A free Ford F-100 was not on my radar.

Here’s how it went down: A few weekends back, my wife and I decided seek out some house furnishings at various antique shops and variety stores in the nearby Carolina mountain towns. I have enough project cars for for three lifetimes already, so I hereby swear, dear reader, that my eyes were fixed on roadsides solely for home goods and indigenous plants.

After securing some lamps and door hardware, plus a few heads of blossoming native Joe Pye weed (butterflies love it), I spied a decent-sized-yet-almost-certainly-closed variety store situated aside an old mill. After my third pass walking around the building, a friendly woman’s face popped out of a side entrance. She invited us inside.

The wood-floored warehouse housed a large doll collection. A thousand square feet of their weird little eyes stared at me as I perused the place for stray books and tools of interest.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any vintage car memorabilia, would you?” I asked.

“No sir, not unless you’d want the old truck on my property!”

My internal 33 1/3 scratched to a halt. “Old truck? Wha-wha-what kind?” I inquired, cool very much intact.

“Oh, I don’t know, some old thing that got left out there about … 27 years ago. If you want it, it’s yours.”

She rifled through her phone and found a couple of pictures of a sorry-looking 1963 Ford F-100 short bed Unibody. Our respective senses of trash and treasure were clearly reversed, because I recognized as rare and very interesting—one of just 5000-or-so such trucks produced. It was rough, yes, but exactly the flavor of fallen fruit I like. I thanked her profusely and promised I’d get back to her within the week.

My wife and I headed back to the road. Try as I could, however, neither art vendors in Blowing Rock nor goldenrod seed heads, could quiet the devil on my shoulder. (I’ll spare you the specific rhetoric, but the little guy made a convincing case.)

Later that afternoon, I called Barb that I’d be coming for a look. She gave me truck’s general location, an area far removed from any other attractions. She offered a text message stating official approval of my snooping should I run into any human resistance, and two possible gate codes to enter the remote mountain subdivision (if you could call it that).

The following weekend, I coerced a new hire from my motorsport engineering day job to meet me at my house, 7 a.m. sharp.  “It’s part of the cultural onboarding,” I explained as the sun was coming up over my chicken coop. “You know, doing normal North Carolina car person things.”

I had already secured a trailer, hitched to my wife’s 4Runner. The Toyota’s cargo area was filled to the brim with tools, ropes, and chains. I punched the vague description of where were were going  (just a street name and a county) into my phone. Off we went.

Rain arrived, falling hard through the tree canopy above narrow, winding roads of Iredell and Catawba counties. As we climbed in elevation, lined roads changed to narrow tracks, which morphed into gravel passes. Into 2WD locked-diff mode I went. The tires were grappling for grip as we finally arrive at the entrance to the gate. Why there was a gate I had not a clue, but I did remember Barbara’s words of warning: “Last time someone went down there, he went down the wrong drive and my neighbor caught him on the deer cam and called the cops.”

I deduced from this information that I was entering a private area full of private people. (My zero bars of cell service said as much.)

After trying both codes under the gaze of a Ring camera, the gate lifted and we entered on foot. Armed with no address and only a plot number, we resorted to scanning temporary power poles for numbers; Barbara said that at one point the lot number was 42, then it got changed to 899, and its current status was anyone’s guess. Having burned two hours poking around various plots and critter-namesake driveways, I was certain that the local sheriff, highway patrol, and militia was hot on our tail.

We needed another approach. Given our soaking-wet clothes, the new angle involved heated seats and a drive toward cell service. After only about a mile, I was able to pull over, hit the hazards, and study the county geological survey to find the exact plot per its original number. We geolocated it to a bend in the gravel road we had already taken many times. Now confident enough to venture boldly, we climbed over a cable strung between two knotty pine trees. We slipped down a steep trail while getting slapped in the face with wet loblolly branches. Finally, the Unibody came into view.

I must admit that I made a grave mistake in the scope of my preparations. Barbara’s cell phone pictures showed the Ford in a clearing, one I had imagined I could back my trailer through and nose right up to the truck. Thanks to the overgrown foliage, 20-percent grade on mossy rocks, and handful of hairpin bends, there was no way in hell I could get a trailer within 200 feet of the F-100.

I jacked up all four wheels and tried to breathe life into the tires. None would hold pressure. How winching it on to the trailer on four flats? That seemed possible, but the thought of dragging it up a slippery slope on non-steerable wheels did not. Getting my wife’s Toyota down to the area was a bad idea without a chain saw and divorce papers at the ready. This adventure seemed destined to be, uh, fruitless.

Looking at the poor Unibody—its severely rotten body seams, missing underhood components, and soggy hot pink shag dashboard—did not invoke any desire in me to risk my wife’s car in pursuit of rescuing it. The widened steel wheels, its 9-inch diff, and general rarity couldn’t overcome my instinct to leave empty-handed. I turned to my co-worker (also named Matt) and said something that might have been vocalized just to convince myself of its truth: “There are so many better free vehicles out there for so much less effort.”

He nodded. With that, we marched our soaked selves up the hill, turned on the heated seats, and headed for a hot Mexican lunch.

On our way home, I was able to stop and grab a few things for my home garden. It made me feel like the day wasn’t a total loss. And who knows, maybe I’ll head back in the spring with a fresh set of wheels and tires, plus a plan to bring home some ramps, forest mushrooms, and a free F-100.