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We've all been told stories over time that were probably little more than fantasies purported to be true. Some of them we would kind of like to believe. Here's one of my favorites,
Pete once told me about when he was a teenager, and that was around the time I was in third grade, decades before I ever met him. Pete was fresh out of high school, and wanted to learn to work on trucks in the worst way. His buddy had a circa 1951 Ford F-1 pick-up truck they used to tinker around on, and he was learning a fair amount that way, at least about 1951 Ford F1 Pick-ups. The buddy, whose name I can't remember, joined the Marines right after flunking out of college after a classic party first semester and out experience. The F1 was parked in the family's back garage and forgotten. Six months go by. Pete gets lonely for his buddy, goes, breaks into the garage, steals the truck and hides it at in the barn of an abandoned farm house outside town (small Illinois farm community). Over the next few years, Pete learned a whole lot about working on the truck, and ended up moving it twice as farms were bought, sold, abandoned, etc. About a month after he took the truck someone in the family went to the back garage and noticed the truck wasn't there anymore, reported it to the police. Not much was done except file a report because the truck was old, the owner wasn't around, etc.
Pete has basically worked the truck from one end to the other, cleaned, fixed or replaced, and repainted where appropriate every piece on the truck he could afford to mess with. What he couldn't figure out easily he looked up and helped out other friends with their trucks and asked questions. He ended up pulling parts out of junkyards two counties away because he didn't want anyone to suspect he had the truck. Word comes in that his buddy is coming home from Viet Nam, Pete sneaks out early one morning, puts a new set of wheels and tires on the truck and took it back to the back garage when he knew the family wasn't going to be there. He left the door ajar so the family would notice someone had been in the back garage.
Pete's buddy comes home from the war and finds his truck fixed up, shining like new, starts on the first try, with no one knowing who did it or how it happened. His buddy figured out it had to be Pete pretty quick, but they kept it between the two of them. Pete figured he learned more than enough on how to work on trucks to justify the expense he went through doing it, and the buddy is happy as a clam at how his old beat up truck has been transformed into something wonderful.
Pete ended up putting some of the tricks he had learned to good use. He went to work for a re-possessor and stole cars legally for a few years. In the summer of 1969 he headed out to San Francisco to join the party, and ended up fixing his fellow hippies' cars and trucks for beer and bud. I met him here in Sacramento, his lady worked for the State and he worked as a handyman for reasonable rates. They're both retired now.
So, you have any warm memorable stories that you've been told and doubt are fully true but don't really want to know if they are?
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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin
"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones
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