At first, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at? It was 1980….I was 14 years old, and I was ignorant about everything …. I didn’t know shit! …. almost? The exception to that statement was …. I knew when something looked cool. And when it looked cool …. I was interested!
It was my Grandads 1961 Jeep Willys CJ5. It had a 4 Cyl. motor and a 3 speed transmission. No top, no doors, all stock except for the tires. It was beat to hell. There wasn’t a spot on the body that didn’t have a scratch or a dent. My grandad told me the tires were 10 years old … they were the original 78 series Interco Swampers. Man did they look bad ass! He loved Wheelin with his friends.
I asked him one day what exactly was “wheelin”??? That’s what he called off-roading…. I remember exactly what he said …. “we go drive in nature and then we drive over it!”
Seriously….the most honest and pure answer from a sixty something old dude who ” really has been there and done that”! Wheelin appeared ( by the looks of all the body damage on his Jeep) to be a guaranteed way to damage a vehicle and then spend lots of money fixing it! Except, my grandad and his friends did go by anything, they made it themselves if they could. Nobody had money back then.
Yes….that’s my grandad and he was priceless! Almost everything I know about how things work, I learned from him. That included how the world works and everything offroad.
And both of these have served me pretty well all my life.
He had this peculiar way of explaining and or describing things,
I never knew if he was talking about my grandma or the manifold. To him, I guess they were the same thing.he (LoL)
Learning from him how to drive was a serious exercise in demolition derby style grind it to find it. When he wasn’t yelling at me about gears he was screaming…… “hit the damn foot feed grandson!!!!” Just because that pedal is skinny don’t mean that motor ain’t fat, put her to the floor….he would say!
Boy I miss him …. I had no Dads to speak of, but I had him! Years latter he was the best man at my wedding.
When I asked if he would be my best man …. he said …. best man’s are supposed to best friends … I told him he was my best friend and the best man I knew …. he looked at me,I looked at him…..
We started laughing…. he said yes.
He died shortly after my wedding. Nobody knew he refused to do chemotherapy…. nobody but my grandma knew he had cancer. She told me he said he was gonna go out on his terms. And that he did.
For years I went wheelin with him and his grumpy gang of old dudes.
For a long time I just thought he brought me along to get them beers out of the cooler. Until one day he didn’t want to drive anymore …. he made me drive…. what great times I had out on some trail with a bunch of old guys. Listening to every word of every story, then repeating them word for word to my friends. Men were men back then …. They don’t make them like him anymore. I wonder what he would have thought about these SxS’s ?????
Miss ya gramps
My 1980 Toyota Crawler. My first purpose built rock crawler.The only tires I would run were the Interco Super Swamper Tires, in memory of my Grandad. Sold it to a kid 15 years ago, he dint know shit either! LoL