In 1957 my dad had a 1948 Chevy 3/4 ton with a dump bed. I was nine years old and on Saturdays my brother and I got to drive that truck. To help make ends meet, Dad ran a trash pickup service in a small town about 30 miles from where we lived. Saturday was pickup day. My brother and I would get up early Saturday and be ready to go, Dad had worked the night before until midnight at his factory job and then driven 40 miles home. I don't think he ever got too much sleep. The big attraction was that one of us would get to drive to the town and the other would get to drive home. We weren't really driving, but sitting on his lap and steering, it thrilled us. Once in a while he would take a back road for a few miles and let one of us really drive. Now that I realize that the truck wouldn't go over 55 because of the 4:11 rearend it had, I guess it wasn't really all that bad. The other thing we got to do was move the truck between stops. Dad never wanted our nieghbors to know what we were doing on Saturdays. I did the math once and figured he was making over $100 clear for one days work when most people were making $100 a week. It didn't bother me if everyone new what I was doing on Saturday. Dad sold that truck to my Uncle in 1962, he drove it around Hammond, Indiana for several years before retiring it.
That truck got me interested in automobiles and started a lifelong hobby. Over the next 20 years I had several Galaxy 500s, a few Mustangs, five T-Bird convertables, and a couple Pontiac convertables. As I got older, cars were just turning into basic transportation (well OK, fun to drive transportation). About the time my oldest daughter turned 20, she found a gearhead to marry. As any good father-in-law would, I tried to spend some time with him to get to know him. Fixing cars was a mutual hobby. We also went to a few car shows. He noticed that I was always drawn to the hot rodded Advance Design Chevrolet trucks. I told him that was the first thing I had ever driven, and that I would like to find one to build. Since the wife and I live 200 miles from my two daughters, we go there for Christmas. In 1999, at Christmas, when I pulled into their driveway, there was a 1950 Chevy 1/2 ton pickup truck. My Christmas present for that year.
