Old Trucks & Air Conditioning

This column initially appeared in the June 2020 edition of Gaston Alive! Magazine.


It was completed in 1985, but they sold it as a “1986 model”. I didn’t get it until 1993 – the summer before my senior year of high school. That’s when I officially became a truck guy.

My first truck was a Ford F-150. It was a full size pickup, with a dark shadow blue metallic exterior. It wasn’t fancy, but it was functional. Most everything was manual including the locks and the windows. Even the 4-speed transmission was manual.

It didn’t come with a backseat or an extended cab. Even the A/C didn’t work. Come to think of it, I don’t think the factory ever installed one.

It got me through my final year of high school, all five years of college and the first couple of years post-college. It went from Charlotte to Raleigh to Wilmington, and all points in between.

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