Bonnie and Clyde #09735

The Story

Here’s an old junkyard truck peppered with windshield bullet holes and it’s been partly shot out too. It sits in an old farm machinery junkyard and this interior view shows the big manual steering wheel and gearshift. The image was made with the late afternoon sun pouring in which put a warm glow on the very rusty dashboard. Looking around inside, I saw the keys still hanging in the ignition from the last day it was running. Someone must have known this was the last stop. They left the turn signal on as well, so this funky old junkyard truck is perpetually making the turn onto Oblivion Road through eternity.

There is a peculiar crank handle at the top center of the dashboard that many haven’t seen before. For ventilation back in the day, you would turn this to crack open the bottom of the windshield that was hinged at the top. Can you imagine all the summer bugs flying in while driving down the road? Maybe the bats at night too? I guess you’d let a back window open and let them go right on through, toodle-loo.

Of course, the image title comes from all the bullet holes in the windshield but Bonnie and Clyde didn’t drive this truck. They weren’t around to drive a 1946 Chevy anyway. Most likely, the bullet holes are due to a six-pack and a .22 rifle on an idle Saturday night. That’s country-style entertainment I suppose, because this old junkyard full of bygone farm machinery is fairly hidden in the farmland outback.

This pickup truck is actually either a 1941 or a 1946 Chevy. Both years are the same because domestic vehicle production was stopped for the war effort which then resumed with the same model. In this interior shot, you can see all the pedals and other controls below the large steering wheel in the darkness. A few other tidbits dangle loosely by their wires. Although the speedometer goes to 100, I really don’t think I’d care to try it. This vehicle was made to work and I’m sure it did a fair share of it back in the day. My guess is it’s been sitting like this for roughly sixty years.

You can see a few other interesting things from this junkyard of real relics elsewhere on this site, such as an old steam tractor in Built To Last #14879 and yet another cool old junkyard truck of similar 1940s vintage with Green Wonder #12537.

Location: rural Blair County, Pennsylvania. Picture and story © Andrew Dierks