Big Red (Canada)
Shirley Spring
CALLING LAKE, ALBERTA, CANADA


A cousin gave me a bottle of Red Truck for Christmas. This brought back so many memories. Our Big Red was a 1959 Ford F100, straight 6, 2 speed automatic and when new was driven by a foreman for the early oil industry in Alberta. In 1974, at our cabin at Calling Lake in Northern Alberta, our neighbour was going to take the truck to the dump as he couldn’t keep it running. We offered him $100, which he accepted, and we took off to the dump where we scrounged spark plugs, wire, a rotor and cap. The family, including my younger brothers who were 12 and 13 at the time, were very excited about the purchase. It was a little worse for wear! You could see the ground through the floor boards, the brakes only worked when you stood on them and there was a 3 inch play in the steering wheel. It had a bench seat and no seat belts! The back springs were broken and the oil worker had installed an angle iron back bumper for extra strength. We decided to hack this off and wore out a gazillion hack saw blades. When it was finally removed, the back of the truck rose an inch and a half! My brothers learned to drive in Big Red, and that truck hauled water, fire wood and when we got the stencil done, it was the proud property of the Calling Lake Ski Team. We sold the cabin 15 years later, and a neighbour bought it for $500 and continued to use it as a working vehicle.