Good Trade: Truck for Truck, 12ga, and $100

Everything has a story. I realized that the gas guzzling truck I spoke about in the last post needed a little more explaining. We'll begin this story almost 3 years ago. Before owning my current truck, I owned a rather large well preserved truck. It only got 10 miles to the gallon. I used to use it to go the dump on occasion and at the time it started running like crud, it was my only mode of getting around. This was a problem. The other problem was Jonny (bad 3rd person ref) didn't have any cash reserves and was being very stubborn about taking an auto loan. After many failed attempts to fix the problems myself, I only made things worse. Why did I try to fix things myself? You see the truck had a carburetor on top of the engine and this was very rare. It was very rare in a bad way, not in a good way like on antiques roadshow. Even more rare than carburetors, were guys that knew how to fix them. I didn't know this then, but I can be concretely placed in the group of guys that doesn't know how to fix them.

One day when I was at the dump I realized that my truck had a secret admirer. This guy came up to me and said "Nice truck. You let me know if you ever want to get rid of it. Okay?" I told him that I was trying to get rid of it, told him the problems, and then told him how much I needed to get for it so I could buy another car. He said "I got 3 guns I'll trade you for it." I explained that although the 3 guns were a very generous offer I would not be able to use any one of them to get to and from work and so I declined. Not being deterred he said "I'll give you my truck and my shotgun, Whaddya say?" I told him that I was definitely interested but he would have to sweeten the pot a little. His truck did run better, but it lacked a certain style. He said "I'll throw in $100 and a truck cap." Now we're talking! I closed the deal and have been driving his truck ever since. My only regret is that I didn't hold out for a back window gun rack to hang the shotgun on.