Oh, how he loved his truck! He first saw it in 1995 when our friend Steve Angel at Seekins Ford was driving it as a demonstrator. It was a gorgeous new, F-150 red and white club cab. When it came up for sale, Scott bought it.
We were all living in Coldfoot at the time and I remember the day he showed it off. I was sitting in the restaurant and he paraded slowly up and down the length of the parking lot, smiling from ear to ear and waving each time he passed. When he pulled up to a parking space, Grampa went out and circled it and made all the appropriate manly comments. I jumped in for a ride. We headed up the Haul Road for a ways and Scott grinned the entire time.
For the most part Remington, the gigantic Chesapeake he’d had since he was a kid, rode shotgun, sitting in the passenger seat with dignified authority as he gazed out the window. He and your dad liked riding with the windows down so they could better savor the smells, sounds, and feel of God’s great outdoors.
Your dad, Remington, and a red and white truck….they were quite the threesome. They explored every side road off the Dalton Highway, went as far as they could up the Slate Creek Trail, and traveled every highway and dirt road in the state. Over time the pickup became scraped from trips through the brush and dinged from driving up mountains. Countless times he got it stuck at Bonanza Creek and would have to hike out to get help.
The back was always filled with gear: fishing gear, hunting gear and always a portable barbecue. Sometimes your dad would leave to go hunting and return home with the back end filled with moose, or sheep, or bear, or caribou. Lord knows how many fish made the trip from water to freezer or frying pan in the back of that pickup.
You and Amanda were his prized passengers and you probably had your first ride in it when you came home from the hospital. All the backseat gear was shoved aside for an infant car seat and a diaper bag. Oh, how he loved taking you two off on an adventure!
Your dad was a remarkable man. Over the years he had learned almost everything there was to learn about Alaska mammals, geography, habitat and weather. He had a treasure trove of information stored in his handsome head and I was always amazed at how learned he was. I loved traveling with him and listening to him. I am sad now I didn’t take the time to do more of it. One more time….what I wouldn’t give for one more time.
Anyway, maybe it was this love of outdoors that made him such a slow driver. He was the kind of guy you detest getting behind because he poked along like a 90-year-old nun who’d just gotten a license.
When he drove he was always scanning, searching, seeking. He delighted in the most trivial of wildlife appearances and could be as excited watching a family of voles scamper through the woods as spending time glassing a den of fox kits. The red pickup allowed him to travel into the nether regions of Alaska and observe first-hand the blessings of the Creator.
It was in this pickup that your dad carried Remington for the last time. Wonderful, loyal, gentle Remington died at age 17 and your dad carefully wrapped him in an old quilt and, with tears running down his cheeks, tenderly placed him on the front seat – right where he always rode. Scott took Rem to be cremated so he could spread his ashes at the place they both loved: Bonanza Creek.
As old vehicles and people are wont to do, Scott’s red and white pickup began to take on the pitfalls of old age and, admittedly, abuse. He started having to spend more and more time tinkering with it – spending long hours on his back underneath and replacing this or that. All the oil stains in front of our old house were from that pickup.
At the end he still loved his truck, though the seat was sprung and the ignition was falling out and the passenger door wouldn’t open from the outside.
When he piled in it to go somewhere he’d tense up for a few seconds while he waited for it to start. When the engine finally fired he’d breathe a sigh of relief, grin, declare “hey HEY, that’s my baby!” bounce up and down a few times, and pat it on the dash. Then he’d be off.
After 14 years together, last winter Scott and the red and white pickup parted ways. He was out of work and so was Anna and the pickup was given to landlord and friend, Nick LaJiness, to pay for rent. Scott was devastated. He talked about it a lot and never quite got over missing his truck. Someday, maybe someday, he declared to me just two weeks before his death, he’d get it back.
January 20, 2010, was the sad day that your dad died unexpectedly. We worried about you and your sister Amanda. She is 20 and married and has a toddler and will be OK, but you – Scooter, you are only nine years old. Too young to have lost your father – too young to not have in your life this man you so adored and loved.
We all wanted to do something for you, give you something that would always remind you of your dad. Your mom and Grampa came up with the same idea: find the pickup! I thought it would be a difficult task but it took less than 15 minutes. I called Nick and found out who he had sold it to. I called that fellow and explained why we so desperately wanted to get the pickup back. He agreed to sell it and your mom and your step-dad, Jim, bought it.
I wish I had been there two weeks ago when your mom led you outside and you saw that familiar red and white Ford in your driveway. Your mom told me you were overwhelmed and you spent a long time just sitting in the cab. Later you gently washed the windows. You told me it still smells like your dad and there was a picture of a young Amanda in the glove box. There were also still bottles of ketchup and mustard in the side pocket. Your dad was always prepared to build a quick campfire and roast a hotdog, wasn’t he?
You are nine years old and what a gift you have been blessed with. Your dad would be so delighted to know that the pickup is back in the family and that it belongs to you. The plan is for you and Jim to fix it up – to restore it to what it was.
Someday you will use it to climb your own mountains and ford your own streams. Maybe you, too, will have a big old brown dog in the front seat and you will ride with the windows down – savoring the smells and sounds and feel of God’s great outdoors.
And you know what, Scooter? I think your dad will be right beside you.
Love,
Grandma
