TIMBER!

?by Chuck Clore

As I follow the stream of traffic into the Home Depot parking lot, I notice I am in a bumper-to-bumper convoy of pickup trucks. There is not a sedan in sight. An occasional SUV breaks the monotony, but the entire area is populated with every make and model of the four-wheel hauler.

The sight transports me back to the midcentury 1960s when dad, Austin Clore, would tutor me on practicality.

“Trucks are made for workin’. That’s just what they’ll do! If you own a truck, you can always find something to haul. Four wheels and a tailgate guaranteed me an income during the great depression. That old truck I owned helped me put food on the table.”

Of course, Dad was talking about a workingman’s truck. In Dad's time, his 1956 Ford F100 proudly bore scars and dents from loads of scrap metal it carried to the salvage yard.?

Uncle Clint's Chevy Apache pickup rumbled down our drive, spitting loose gravel as it skidded to a halt. His three-year-old Chevy looked like Clint had just driven it off the showroom floor. It had nary a scuff mark nor an oil stain, not even on the bed. Side by side Beauty and the Beast revealed two different worlds. According to Dad, Clint's truck was not a bonified truck until it experienced the grit and grime of hard labor. With his one eyebrow raised, that same principle seemed to be applied to Uncle Clint as well.

If Pappy were riding shotgun with me today, he would scour the Home Depot lot of fancy rigs and deem them to be a bunch of rough-tough creampuffs. “All shine and no work.” Advertised as built tough but loaded with after-market doodads, chrome wheels, and more lights than a Vegas strip.

Over the past two decades, I have driven a sporty little black Ford Range 4-wheel-drive Splash with side steps like Dad’s 56 Ford used to have. Next, I owned a cute red Chevy Colorado. Two years ago, I graduated from short trucks to an adult-size Chevy Silverado. It was twelve years old but had been pampered just like Uncle Clint’s Apache. I am sure Dad would scoff at the 20-inch chrome wheels and the tricked-out bed cover.

“Yeah, sorry to disappoint you, Dad, but I am not hauling wrought iron and barbed wire in this black beauty."

Dad inherited his appreciation for rugged hard-working vehicles from his father, James W. Clore, and his grandfather, Charles E. (Big Enoch) Clore. That is Big Enoch standing on the running board of the timber truck. James W. is seated on the gigantic walnut log. Circa 1920, the men were rugged and the walnut trees were nervous. At first glance, I assumed the old truck was a Model-T Ford. Look again. The box on the running board reads NASH.

I only knew of the funky-looking Ramblers from the 40s and 50s that bore the NASH badge. But with a tad of research, I discovered the men from Kenosha, Wisconsin, were making the mass production Ramblers for the Thomas B Jeffery Company as early as 1902.

The four-wheel drive Jeffery-Quad trucks became the Nash Model 671 when Charles W. Nash acquired the company. It was the first vehicle to bare the new NASH name in 1917. The Quad achieved the reputation of being the best four-wheel drive truck produced in America. Nash became the leading producer of military trucks by the end of World War 1. After the end of the war, the surplus Quads were the trucks for heavy construction and logging.

Big Enoch proudly poses on the best truck of his era, before heading to the sawmill with a gigantic walnut log. There is not a lot of chrome on that workingman’s truck. It would look out of place in the Home Depot parking lot.

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A thank you to Cynthia Smith for sharing this 1920 photo. Cynthia’s grandmother, Oveta Clore Fisher, was one of four sisters to my grandfather, James W. Clore. And a special thanks to my sister Delta Mae Owens for helping identify Big Enoch who was gone way before I came on the scene.