1959 Chevy TruckIt IS my Father's Truck 
I recently inherited my Dad's 1959 Chevrolet truck. He bought the truck in 1974 and we "restored" it in the early 80's. I put "restore" in quotes because if Dad wanted something different, he did it. I have a long list of all the parts on the truck and where they came from. It has a 350 engine. The seats are out of a Cadillac. Remember the fiber optic light indicators on the fenders of Cadillacs? It had those and an electric radio antenna. Dad owned a service station and later a garage so the truck was a shop project for many years. I drove it to high school in the 1980s and it was driven daily until the shifter broke in the late 1990s. He did not have time to work on it so he just parked it in the shop. When he retired in 2000 and closed the garage he moved it to his mother's barn. When my mother died in 2011 he dragged it into the basement of his mother's house and stripped it to the frame. He worked on it until he got too sick to do so in October 2021. He had a lot of distractions and setbacks in those 10 years. He got remarried and ended up spending half of each year out of state. He had problems finding people to do some of the work in a timely matter. The seats were at an upholstery shop for years before he had to finally go get them and take them somewhere else. It was at three different shops before it got painted. My sister and I kept encouraging him to spend the money and get it finished so he could enjoy it. He wanted to do as much as possible and kept saying he could not afford to pay someone to finish it. He finally got it painted in the Spring of 2021 and was making good progress getting it put back together. He was driving it around with no glass and a 5-gallon bucket as a seat.
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In January 2022, it became obvious that Dad was not going to recover. Some of his friends from church asked if they could get the truck and finish it for him. He agreed and they gathered up everything they could find and finished it as best as they could. They parked it outside his bedroom window on January 28, 2022, so he could see it. Dad died on February 19. His wife wanted to take him to the cemetery in the truck but the engine was not running well and the brakes were not that great. (gas had gone bad and wheel cylinders were leaking from sitting so long) His friends brought the truck to the church and parked it next to the hearse. When we returned from the cemetery I could not resist so my aunt and I drove laps around the parking lot. It was my first time driving it in 25 years. One of his friends asked me what to do with the truck after the funeral and that is when it fully hit me that it now was mine. I told them to take it to his house and I would put it in his garage.
Earlier when Dad was taken to the hospital in really bad shape he sent word he wanted to talk to me the next morning. I made it there in three hours but it was two days before I could sneak into the ICU to talk to him. He wanted to know if I was going to finish the truck or if I was going to hire someone to do so. I told him I wanted him to finish it. He spent the rest of our time together going over each part of the truck and telling me what needed to be done. Now the truck is in my garage and my sister and wife are encouraging me to hire someone to finish it so I can enjoy it. We will see.
Thanks for listening.
Curtis
