THE MODEL “AA” TRUCK

by Reavis E. Dixon

     As a farm boy, I can’t point to a lot that I could ever have claimed to own, but for whatever reason, my parents gave me a calf, when I was about thirteen years old, and aside from caring for the animal, along with the other livestock, I never thought much more about my ownership of the calf. It grew off, along with the other cattle, and then one day, my Father told me that the Animal had been taken to market, and I never thought more of it one way or the other.


         I was fifteen years old in December of 1952, and the time had at last come to journey to the nearby town of Waycross, Georgia, to take the test for my Georgia Learners License. This document allowed fifteen year olds to drive, anywhere outside of the City Limits, as long as the driver was accompanied by a licensed driver. This, in preparation for full licensing, at age sixteen.


        The following December, I turned sixteen, and got my drivers license without delay. That was an exciting time, but nothing could have prepared me for what was about to happen next.


        My Father asked me if I wanted to ride with him to look at a 1929, Model AA Ford, one ton truck that a family member wanted to sell. Dad said that if he liked it, it could be very useful around the farm. We arrived at Brad’s home, and looked the old vehicle over. When he was satisfied Dad paid $95.00 for the truck, and told me to drive it home. It’s yours he said, so you may as well be the first, in the family, to drive it.


       All the way home, my head was spinning about the whole transaction. I knew how tight money always was, in our home, and I just couldn’t figure out how Dad had gotten the money to pay for the old truck. When I asked him about it, he said “Well, remember that cow you raised, and I told you that I had sold it ? ” I acknowledged my re-collection, and he said, “I got $75.00 for the cow, and put the money up for you. I saved up the other $20.00, and paid that myself. I guess, one could say that I was the happiest kid in Pierce County, Georgia.


       I spent many a happy hour in that old Model AA truck. Friends loved it, and we would spend Sunday afternoons cruising the community, doing stupid stuff that made us laugh. One such occasion, occurred that Summer, when my cousins, Bill, Bob, and Sam Highsmith, came from Jacksonville, Florida, for a visit one weekend.


      We climbed into the old truck, with Bill and me inside the cab, and Bob and Sam standing in the bed behind us, we jolted along the dirt road to Lairsey’s store to buy a snack and a soda. We had finished our treat, and headed back toward home, when we spotted three young boys in the road ahead of us. Now I had learned a few tricks with the old Model AA, and I just couldn’t ignore the opportunity to display one.


     While still rolling, I switched the engine off, and held the accelerator to the floor, allowing fuel to pump through the engine, and into the muffler. I turned the ignition back on and the result was a boom which sounded , for all the world, like the discharge of a cannon. Two of the boys in the road jumped the ditch, and lit out across the piney woods at warp speed, completely ignoring the third one who was too small to jump the ditch. His solution was to sail head first into the ditch full of water, and crawl up the bank on the other side.


      We never saw the boys again. The littler one caught up with the others, and soon all three were lost in the saw palmetto and gall berry bushes of the forest.


     The four of us laughed so hard that tears filled our eyes, knowing full well that the practical joke would probably be on one, or all of us, in the very near future.