Postcard from Canada

A popular homegrown video from Alberta.

The first car I ever got permanent custody of the keys to was a tan 1967 Ford F-100 shortbed with a big old gnarly, grinding shift lever on the floorboards. It had been my grandfather's farm pickup (he died the year before I got my license), and Dad figured when (it's not if, it's when) I had my first fender-bender, I'd do more damage to them then they'd do to me.

(When it finally happened, it wasn't my fault. I was going down Elm Street when the auto shop teacher backed out of his driveway without looking. Caught me in the right rear fender. I signed my paychecks straight over to Dad for the next six months, but he did let me keep my tips.)

I was waitressing the 6am - 2pm shift at the diner that year. It's what got me there and back on freezing winter mornings; and what cruised Main Street (with a load of girlfriends sitting on hay bales in the back end) on summer nights. In my version of American Graffiti, that pickup is what I'm driving (except on the rare occasions I could get my stepdad to part with the keys to his '71 Cougar XR7).

Any one of these coulda been that truck. The guys look damned familiar, too.