Book Review – Truck: On Rebuilding a Worn-Out Pickup and Other Post-Technological Adventures by John Jerome

I picked this book up for the subject matter; a guy rebuilding a 1950 Dodge truck.  If you have read some of my previous posts, you might know that I am a fan of the Dodge Pilothouse era of pickup trucks (1948-1953). I expected a how-to guide on truck rebuilding.  What I got was more of a memoir of John Jerome’s life on a farm in rural New Hampshire. 
Jerome spends a year rebuilding the truck.  He is hoping for a connection to a simpler time.  He spends much of his time in his old dilapidated barn on frigid New England winter days. He disassembles the truck, cleans parts, hunts the countryside for missing pieces and ultimately reassembles the truck.  However, the point of story is not the technical aspects of the project but more the philosophical analysis of his life away from the rat race of the big city and his back to nature lifestyle. 
The book is very funny.  Jerome has a cast of friends right out of The Bob Newhart Show if you are old enough to remember, “Hi, I’m Larry; this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl.”  Although the book spans a year, it is always cold.  Jerome always has trouble getting pieces unstuck.  He never has the right tool.  By the end of a work session he is cold, dirty, scratched, cut and frustrated.  One particular funny chapter has him trying to remove the kingpins from the front suspension.  No amount of pounding with a hammer or heating with a touch will free the stuck pins.  He eventually rigs up a Rube Goldberg to use the weight of the truck to drive out the pins.
A few pages into the book, Jerome finally locates a truck to buy.  He peels off some cash and hands the seller $200 for the truck.  Wait one minute!  If you can buy 1950 Dodge Pickup for 200 bucks in NH then I’m moving.  Something seemed fishy.  I flipped back to the title page.  Aha!  The book was written in 1977.  If I do my arithmetic right, I was in first grade (but I was never good at math).

This revelation got me interested in old John Jerome.  A little Wikipedia research turned up that he was born in 1932 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Wow, he was just about the same age as my parents.  In 1959, he was an editor for Sports Car Digestand in 1962 he became managing editor of Car and Driver.  So, he was no novice to the world of cars.  In1967, he did “drop out” and move to New England.  Besides living the rural life and working on his truck, he managed to write a dozen books and many freelance magazine articles.  Sadly, he died from lung cancer in 2002.  I bet he was a very interesting guy.  Maybe, his little tale will inspire me to work a little harder on the Barracuda and not to grumble about the cold so much.