Wishful Thinking #13741

The Story

This is an old Ford F1 pickup truck from the late 1940s or 1950 and a 1964 Chevy that have seen far better days. Here they sit like two old pals at some kind of vehicular class reunion. Apparently, the ruined old truck is going to melt right into the ground right where it sits to become a pile of rusty flakes 500 years from now. The A-arms on the front end have collapsed to leave the pickup truck frame sitting right on the ground. Going high, the vines have worked their way over the top to be worn like a fancy natural hat. Leaves probably cover most of the windowless cab in high summer.

A friend told me about this farmer’s barnyard junkyard out on the back roads. One Saturday in late Fall, she took me there to find an overgrown hillside dotted with old cars and farm machinery mixed in with some large trees and high scrub. There were an old barn and other outbuildings at the top. We got the okay to go in from a family member that lived across the road and went on up. It was great to find many cool old truck and car relics to photograph including these two old-timers sitting together on the other side of the barn. They weren’t inside the barn but close enough for junkyard horseshoes: I’ll call this a barn find.

However, these are the kind of barn finds that are better left alone. They’re made of leaver-ite. Leave ‘r right there.

Paint? Who knows what color this old Ford F1 pickup truck was originally, but it surely wasn’t moldy green and rust. My opinion is that it’s all over now, baby blue. Yes, it was pretty far gone and in rough shape like all the cars and trucks sitting around that hill reverting back to whence they came. Every vehicle up there in the barnyard junkyard is pretty much abandoned and left to the seasons to rust away. The old farmer owner is in his nineties, so not much has happened with the property for a while. Essentially, it is abandoned.

If you look closely at the side of the truck dead center in the image, you’ll see that years ago someone took the time to put a small Mack bulldog emblem onto the pickup truck fender. That’s exactly how the title Wishful Thinking came about! The truck fades; the playful dream remains.

There were a couple of other old abandoned soul wagons a few steps away from these two vehicles. I was particularly fascinated by a 1950s Chrysler car in funky condition with the hood popped open and encroaching grass circling the headlight. There was an equally funky old Chevy trailing behind. You can see that pair in Queen Of The Junkyard #13747 and another as Nirvana Or Bust #17743. Those images are done in hand-tinted back and white to suit the character of the old cars.

Location: out in the way back of Bedford County, Pennsylvania. Picture and story © Andrew Dierks.