On the Road Again: Going to Pick up Myra's Scout II

            Myra was working a week-long shift at the moose check station 90 miles up-river from Galena near the mouth of the Nowitna.  Which meant that a) I had no supervision while surfing e-bay, and b) she could only get a hold of me once a day via satellite phone.

            “Hey babe,” came my wife’s beautiful voice as though she was talking through a coffee can.

            “Well, congratulations,” I replied in as cheery a tone as possible.

            “For what?”

            “You were the winning bidder on a very nice 1972 International Harvester Scout II,” I answered.

            The rest of the conversation went a little differently than what might have been expected.  My wife, while away from home, living in a wall tent in the wild surrounded by bears and wolves, and perhaps more frightening… moose hunters, had just found out that her husband had purchased an old truck off the internet in her absence.  The truck, as further conversation developed was currently in Roseburg, Oregon where we would need to find a storage location for it.  The seller was in the middle of moving.

            “Jason, I can’t believe you did this…” Myra exclaimed, “I have wanted a Scout since college, and I finally have one.  I love you, and will be home in a couple of days.”

            It was the beginning of October, I was working, our daughter was in school, and it was far from being an opportune time to move an old truck to Alaska.  The seller dropped it off at Tom Thumb Storage in Roseburg, locked it all up and mailed us the keys and title.  We threw both into a desk drawer for safe keeping and waited.  It would not be until the next summer when we could finally go and see the vehicle in person.

            Fairbanks was our hub city while we lived in Galena.  All of our business was taken care of there, and so the next August, I headed to town with the keys and the title ahead of Myra.  I would go to the DMV and get the title changed over to our name and get plates in order to drive the truck to Alaska Vehicle Transport’s shipping port in Seattle.

            I got a rental car and headed straight to the DMV from my RAVN flight… which is exactly the wrong time to go to the DMV.  The only good time to go to the Fairbanks DMV is when they first open.  People line up at the door like they want to be first for their favorite ride at the amusement park.  Only the rides at the Fairbanks DVM are no fun.  I got there long after the initial rush and really all that was left was waiting.  In fact, I got there so late in the day that they locked the door behind me as I walked through.  It was a rather ominous act really.

            I went to the paper work station, pulled out the envelope that contained the title and read it for the first time: 2013 International Harvester Scout… I am no Scout historian, but I was pretty sure that I had purchased a truck from the 70s and that IH hadn’t made a Scout in the present century.  A small bead of sweat formed on my forehead, but at least the stress made the time pass quickly.

            The folks working the counter at the Fairbanks DMV are remarkable.  They see half of Alaska every day, some of us not so patient, and do their job with a smile.  The lady I ended up working with consoled me, told me to bring the truck by once it was in Alaska, put a plate out on the desk and asked if it looked okay: JCH 626… I wanted that plate.  It was my initials and birthdate just randomly placed in front of me, and I would never have a problem remembering it.  She told me she just needed to assure it was okay to do that with the manager… came back, put the plate back behind the desk and handed me a temporary paper plate.  At least we would be able to get the truck moved from Tom Thumb.

            The next day, I met Myra at the airport and we flew on to Seattle with the paper plate and keys packed in our luggage for safe keeping.  We didn’t want to have to deal with the keys going through the metal detector in our pocket and then forgetting them at security.  For once, we had thought ahead about making our trip through TSA as easy as possible.

            We landed in Seattle for what was going to be a lengthy layover and casually made our way to the gate where it turned out a plane would be heading to Portland sooner than ours and it had room.  An airline representative sought us out and asked if we would like to go on the earlier flight as it would help them out with the plane we were scheduled on which was very full. 

            “Our bags will get moved to the correct flight?” I asked.

            “Yes sir, I’ll get that taken care of as soon as we are done reprinting your tickets,” the representative assured me.

            We received our freshly printed tickets, shouldered our carry-ons and walked directly onto the flight.  Things were starting to look up from what I thought was a bad omen at the DMV. 

            Landing in Seattle, we were ahead of schedule now and made our way down to baggage claim, excited that we would soon be meeting our Scout after a year of waiting.  I wondered if it was as excited.

            The warning light went on, the buzzer sounded, and the conveyor began moving.  People around us gathered up their bags and began heading to wherever people head when they are at the end of the flying leg of their journeys.  Bags straggled out, people straggled away, and Myra and I stood looking at an empty conveyor.

            Who knew that airlines have little lost bag kits to help people whose bags don’t make it in?

            “We aren’t sure where your bags are, but we think we can have them to you by this time tomorrow,” came the not-very-confidence-building stock answer from the baggage claim attendant.

            “Uh, we’re supposed to drive three hours from here to pick up a truck,” frustration evident in my voice.

            “Oh, well, we should easily have your bags by the time you get back from that,” came the jolly response since she had so easily solved our problem.

            “Our keys are in our bags someplace else in this country right now.”

            “Oh, well that was silly.  You shouldn’t ever put anything important in your luggage.  We’ll give you a call when they arrive.”

            Why did this lady remind me of the rental car woman from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles?

            We got our rental car and went off to check in to a local hotel.  Myra and I changed out of our travel worn clothes and put on our brand-new airline sponsored v neck t-shirts.  Truth be told, Myra made hers look pretty good, and I wish we still had them.

            The bags eventually were found and we went to pick them up the next day… later than what we were originally scheduled to come in had we stayed with our initial reservations, but they were there and in one piece.  It was a hot afternoon when we were finally on our way to Roseburg.

1972 IH Scout

            It was a pretty uneventful trip and we found Tom Thumb pretty easily, and the Scout was parked near the back.  Seeing it for the first time brought back feelings reminiscent of childhood Christmas mornings, though I don’t remember yellow jackets in any of those memories.

            “Where are all those bees coming from?” Myra wondered aloud.

            The previous owner had issues with the locks and keys which resulted in the tailgate being the only door that would open by key.  I crawled through the back window and shimmied up to the front to unlock the doors and pop the hood.  Sweat trickled down my nose. 

            Back outside, I was greeted by more bees, “There must be a nest somewhere out here,” I said while looking around. 

Opening the hood released a torrent of angry yellow jackets looking for someone to receive their fury.  The yellow jacket really is the “little man” of the insect world and always looking for a fight.  And, there was the nest, right next to the battery I had to hook up.

“Found the nest.”

I hate yellow jackets, and am not really too keen about getting drilled by one, but they bring a fight that I am not willing to back down from.  We went out and bought a nuclear bomb size bottle of Raid and introduced the little demons to their maker.

Exorcising the demons

We hooked up the battery, checked the oil, and got the little Scout ready for the road.  It has a 232 AMC strait six and a three-speed manual transmission.  The steering is manual, the windows are manual, the vents are manual, the choke connected to the single barrel carb is manual, and I was immediately in love with the simplicity.  I could just about stand in the engine compartment next to the engine.  For once, if I dropped a wrench, I’d be able to watch its entire trajectory as it made its way to the ground.

I opened the choke, turned the key, and the engine immediately sputtered to life an idled into a smooth purr.  Evidently our streak of bad luck had ended, and we drove off to a gas station to top off the tank as the gauge was currently registering half. 

1970s Comfort

            At the time, Oregon was still a full-service mandatory state.  The young attendant began filling the tank, and the Scout immediately began regurgitating fuel back onto the young man’s shoes.

            “Must be full,” I said, “and the gauge is just reading wrong.”          

            “No problem, cool old truck, mister,” came his polite reply.

            Twenty minutes later and we were on the side of the expressway, Myra pulling in behind with the rental car, the Scout out of gas with the gauge still reading half.  Down the road to a gas station for a couple of gallons and a borrowed jerry jug. 

            Now that Myra and I are students of the International Harvester school of hard knocks, I can explain that many of the old Scouts suffer from venting issues on the gasoline filler necks that causes the fuel to back up and spill over if pumped too quickly.  I also know their fuel gauges sometimes stick if left parked for long periods of time.  Try convincing a gas station attendant in Oregon that he needs to trickle fuel at the rate that molasses runs, and you will soon discover how effective it is to just have them fill a jerry jug that you drive a parking lot over with to put into the tank yourself.

            Other lessons learned… plastic fuel filler necks crack over time (this one was poorly patched with a piece of rubber hose and a hose clamp), truck stops are the best places to eat after laying under a truck because you look like a regular, the linkage on heater controls jam (our in the hot position in August), windows stick shut… then open and tracks must be greased, and every decision while driving an old truck takes time to bring into action (as the woman who pulled out in front of us without looking knows now, our tires locking up and squealing on the pavement louder than either the horn or my verbal encouragements to her).

            The Scout, on the other hand, does take verbal encouragements.  This was a lesson learned while entering I-5 doing 65 (takes work to get that kind of speed with only six cylinders and three forward gears).  Myra’s eyes began widening more and more as the Scout attempted to drift into an occupied lane on its own accord.

            “Stay in your lane, sweetheart, stay in your lane,” I calmly coaxed while gripping the wheel ever tighter.

            Once the three of us came to an understanding, the little Scout with its own personality, seemed to accept us, and the trip became a very pleasant one.  Everyone we met had a Scout story from his or her childhood, and more than one individual asked what we wanted for the 43-year-old beauty.

            The Scout boarded a boat, we boarded a plane, and we met back up in Fairbanks.  A short trip to Nenana, and the Scout got on Inland Marine’s barge to head down the Yukon river. 

The Scout leading the way... as it should be.

            Many more offers have come over the past five years, but when we moved from Galena, the truck got back on the barge and headed back to town.  Now back on the road system, we are hoping for many more road trips in the future… after a few modifications of course.

Happy owner of the 1972 IH Scout