My friend Adam helped me to negotiate a deal on my first car, which was a full–sized yellow Chevrolet Scottsdale truck. I bought it in Missoula, Montana with a loan to buy it for $1,700. I think it was a 1978, but I’m not sure. It was used at a horse stable ranch, which was evident because there was straw between the seats. It wore studded tires, with two spares attached to the bed. The owner welded a horse shoe onto the mechanism that screwed the spare tires to the sides of the bed in order to keep them standing up straight in back. There was a real eight–ball screwed onto the gear shift. The truck kicked ass!
One time I parked it in a loading zone on campus at University of Montana. When I went out to move it, there was a cop writing me a ticket. He asked, “Is this your truck?” He walked around the side of the truck, admiring it and said, “It’s a good truck. I’ve driven it before.” He told me a story about a time when his horse got sick, and he had to borrow this truck from his friend to tow the horse to a veterinarian on the other side of the state. (He never ended up giving me the ticket. We had a nice little talk and then he went off on his business.)
I lived with the truck in Yellowstone Park for a while, where my boyfriend Donovan (named after the Mellow Yellow singer) drove it. Later, my friend Marya and I drove topless in it through the hot Nevada/Utah desert. I played AC/DC in the tape deck and later went drag racing with it in Santa Barbara. And when I moved to LA, I drove the truck down the freeway carrying all of my belongings in the bed, and I passed a car on the shoulder, fully engulfed in flames. It was an omen.
My truck eventually died on the 110 Harbor Freeway, Southbound. I had failed to add water to the radiator. I sold it to a junker in East LA, for $100 in parts.