The reason and the goal

I was brought home from the hospital in my Dad’s narrow track FC 150. One of my first jobs was to angle the snowplow on my Dad’s and Uncles FC’s when they went out. My Dad’s 150 narrow track had a Meyer snowplow, 2 of my Uncle’s had 170’s with dump beds and Western plows. I could do the Meyer’s plow with no problem it was small. But the Western snowplows were bigger. My Uncles made a bar that would fit into the plow so I could get more leverage to turn it. I was 5 years old and I wasn’t that big. I needed all of the help I could get. I remember at the end of a full day of plowing my Uncle would give me a nickel. I still have some of those nickels today. So it’s true back then and today. Jeep people are cheap people.

My Dad’s 150 had a factory jump seat over the engine. It keeps your butt warm when it was cold out. To keep the rest of your body warm he had a gasoline South Wind heater. But even better he talked the guy into installing two heaters. It was toasty warm in that truck even at a minus 50-wind chill. My Uncles trucks also had South Winds but only one and pointed at the driver. They did make homemade jump seats for me over the engine, but I froze in those trucks. The FC 170 doghouses let too much cold in.

We lived on a nursery and sold live Christmas trees, a first in the Chicago area. You buy a tree for Christmas and we planted it in the spring for you. Still today I can go back home and see some of those trees we planted over 40 years ago. They split up our farm for a Toll way. They came to my Uncle and asked if they could get rid of the black topsoil from the Toll way on the big vacant area of the Nursery. Soon we had a mountain.

My Uncle until the day he died, was still selling that dirt a few yards at a time, hauling it in his FC dump truck and me having to sweep out the back after each load.

Here may be the real reason I have FC’s. I’m not right in mind. One day like all kids, I’d rather ride in the back of the truck than the front. I was goofing around, the truck hit a bump and I fell out on the road. Luckily I landed on my head. No broken bones but a pile of stitches in my head. That fall may explain a lot of my life. But it’s all been good.

We sold the farm and moved. No more FC’s, no more mountain of dirt to play on, forced to live on a 60 x 150 lot. It was a shock.

When I could get a drivers license I went crazy. Before you knew it I owned 30 cars. I had them hid and parked all over town. My Dad was the building inspector and in charge of things like that. One day the City finally told him to take care of the problem. Of course he knew nothing about the cars. If he did I would have just parked them at the house instead of all over town. Soon I was down to only a meager 5 cars. Today I have over 30 cars again. Most of them are on my property. But the sickness of needing cars was implanted early.

My first truck I bought for myself was an FC 150. I looked and looked. I hounded the Jeep dealer. I want one do you know of any? Finally I got to the parts guy. He knew of one. Low miles but the oil line had broken and the owners didn’t realize it; it had a blown up motor but very low miles. Then came the bad news. The local Monastery owned it.

Now that was a place as a kid you didn’t mess around with. It was out in the middle of nowhere. You didn’t hunt on their property, play on their property or even think of going up to the Church and buildings. Rumors of people disappearing things like that were big in the minds of kids. Plus I grew up going to a Lutheran School. Going near a Catholic Monastery was scary. Funny looking back today but it wasn’t then.

I finally got the courage to go. I took a friend and made sure others knew where I was going in case I didn’t come back. We went up and there was no one to be found. We looked around and went building to building. No one. Then we started to hear a chanting coming from the Church. It wasn’t in English and all we wanted to do was get out of there. As we turned to run a guy grabbed me. I thought I was going to die.

As it turned out it was a caretaker and of all things the last driver of the FC. The oil line broke while he was snow plowing and without an oil pressure gauge it ran until to blew up. They pushed it in the back and there it had sat since.

I bought it for $200.00 and dragged it home with a rope with my 1967 Dodge Dart. That was 15 miles. The rope did break once but the emergency brake worked so no one was killed. I got it home and asked the local Jeep dealer about an engine. A week later and $400 I had a new factory crate engine. We had no manuals, or anything to go by. We took the engine out by picking up the truck with a Case Backhoe bucket. We couldn’t figure out how to time the engine and get the distributor in.

The parts guy at the dealer told me of an old mechanic that could help. It was a 40-mile drive to see him but he did tell us what to do. We went back and did what he told us to do. It fired right up. My friends from then still talk about driving down the road with the doghouse off and seeing the exhaust glowing as you went down the road. I painted it a real cool 70’s metal flake Mopar lime green. It had a Meyers Snow plow.

Well I got a job in California. I sold it to a dealer who then sold it to someone in Wisconsin. If anyone has it let me know? Not too many metal flaked green 150 FC’s. I also hand made the rear fenders. The plow was electric over hydraulic. Sorry I never thought at the time to take down the VIN numbers.

I moved to CA. Worked my tail off and now have time for toys. Right back where I started. I have over 30 cars again and collecting FC’s. As many variations as I can. I’m at 12 different right now and over 20 trucks in total. Looking to complete my FC circle of life