The Old Truck Rolls to Final Stop After 380,200 Miles

   Given the minuscule mechanical expertise one gains from a journalism degree, I didn’t recognize my truck’s death knell when its engine blew the spark plug from one of its 10 cylinders in late August.

   “I think the exhaust pipe just gave out where it connects to the engine,” I shouted across the truck cab to my wife, Penny. “I’ll stop and look at the next rest stop.”

   I was shouting, of course, because the V-10 engine in our 1999 Ford F-250 suddenly sounded like 10 Harley-Davidsons rumbling onto the interstate.

   Sometime later we pulled off the highway and I crawled under the truck to study the exhaust pipes descending from the engine’s rear. They looked fine, so I popped the truck’s hood for a different perspective. As I peered about, I thought of a scene from the old “Dick Van Dyke Show” where his character, Rob Petrie, is driving an army jeep that suddenly dies. Ol’ Rob jumped out, lifted the hood, studied things a bit and declared: "Yep. There it is. The engine.”

   My diagnostic skills exhausted, we continued home. The next morning, I drove the truck to my trusted garage, self-consciously ignoring pedestrians who swiveled to look as I rumbled past. Once there, I asked the mechanic to assess things.

Jay McAninch drags a white-tailed buck to Patrick Durkin’s F-250 truck during a 2011 bowhunt in Iowa. — Patrick Durkin photos

   “Let’s have a listen,” he said, and I turned the key. He climbed atop the engine, peered about and waved to turn it off.

   When I stepped out to hear his diagnosis, he paused thoughtfully and asked: “How much do you like this truck?” He then confirmed the exhaust pipes were fine, but a spark plug in the least accessible cylinder had blown out.

   And so it was that we had to say goodbye to our truck after 380,200 miles. I ordered it in October 1998 and brought it home in March 1999. I drove it for the last time in early September when leaving it for scrap with the Ford dealership. That’s 26½ years of service, 14 years longer than I owned my second truck and 15 years longer than I owned my first.

   Something tells me our next truck won’t get 26½ years out of me.

   Don’t worry. I won’t get all maudlin over a truck. It’s bad enough when a good bird dog dies and an outdoor writer acts like he’s lost all reason for living. I wrote such a column in January 1991 when my black Labrador died. I’ve felt guilty ever since for inflicting widespread squirming upon my loyal readers.

      Patrick Durkin, right, and friends Chris White and Mark Endris, pause for a photo in 2015 after bowhunting elk in Idaho.

Maybe that’s why I never named my truck, but neither do I name bucks I’ve shot or fish I’ve hooked.

   Still, who can’t respect a truck that carried its owner on 18 elk hunts to Idaho, three elk hunts to Colorado, two elk hunts to Arizona, a quarter-jillion turkey hunts around Wisconsin, 1½ jillion deer hunts around Wisconsin and Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, and 2 jillion fishing trips locally and regionally from northwestern Ontario to Michigan’s two peninsulas? Not once did that truck need service during those journeys, and only twice did it need a mechanic once returning home.

   Plus, the truck seldom rested between hunting and fishing trips. It carried tons of field rocks and old railroad ties for seven years as I built the Great Retaining Wall around our front yard in Waupaca in the early 2000s. Just ask my three daughters, who picked those rocks from a farmer’s field each spring during their high school years in exchange for my hunting access.

   It also hauled scores of sawlogs when friends and family donated felled or wind-toppled oaks, elms, birch, pine, spruce, poplars, cherry, walnut or hickory trees. After sawyers turned those logs into lumber, the old truck hauled the boards home, too.

  Patrick Durkin’s truck after returning from Idaho in September 2015.

Our daughters also liked driving that truck, especially for impressing boys. A ’99 F-250 with four-wheel drive was taller and larger than most pickups in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A truck that size made petite teenage girls like Leah, Elle and Karsyn look bad-ass when pulling into the school’s parking lot or friends’ driveways.

   It kept good company too. After all, when a truck stays on the road for over a quarter-century, it’s bound to give rides to many great people and, occasionally, a mope. We won’t name-drop the few mopes, but the great passengers include my late father, Ed, and my late mother-in-law, Goldie. Dad didn’t need a footstool to climb in, but Goldie went nowhere in our truck without one. Somehow, though, my own mother never needed a ride when my truck was her only option.

   Other regular passengers include my daughters’ many high-school friends; my longtime hunting buddies Tim Watson, Mike Foy, Mark Endris, Mark Beyer, Jay McAninch, Chris White and Dave Burgess; and late-great friends, grouches and confidantes Tom Tilkens, John Peterson and Tom Heberlein.

   I’ve even given rides to famous people and minor/major celebrities, some of them friends and others pleasant passersby on life’s journeys. That list includes Doug Duren, Steve Rinella, Janis Putelis, Jim Heffelfinger, Bob Robb, Denise Parker, U.S. Congressman Mark Green, DNR secretary Scott Hassett, and conservationist and political strategist Martin Hanson. Only Duren, though, regularly praised the truck’s character, probably because he’s a farmer at heart and values old, reliable machinery. Like Doug himself, in other words.

   Still others seemed less smitten with the truck and more charmed by the custom wood-planked box I built for the truck’s 6-foot, 9-inch bed. I built that box in 2008 and brought it into drydock every other year for updates, maintenance and epoxy repairs.

   Therefore, as news spread of my F-250’s demise, some folks asked if my next truck would inherit the 17-year-old hardwood box.

   Yes. The refits and modifications are already under way for its next carrier.