Going Out with the Ranger
My goal is to go out with the Ranger. Not in it, mind you—which would serve no one—but out together as we shift down, tow less, and go slower uphill.
I purchased a new truck bed this week for our 2011 Ford Ranger. The original bed has been rattling in place for a couple of years, rusted out at the front. I had a bed liner installed when we bought the truck, shortly after we closed on the purchase of the Hancock Inn (now The Inn at Hancock). For the last couple of years, the liner has been the only thing preventing stuff in the bed—driveway stone, or loam from the farm store—from falling through the holes in the floor.
I may not be the only person to have traded in an Acura TL for a Ford Ranger pick-up, but there can’t be many of us. It seemed sensible before coming to New Hampshire, and taking over an inn, to have a workman-like vehicle, as much as a tractor is sensible if you own a farm. Hancock has seventy miles of roads, half of which are dirt roads. The TL would have hated that after years of suburban living and carwash memberships. Our parting was bittersweet, but if you offered me the chance to trade back, I would not (neither would the TL, I’m sure). Certainly not while we’re still in New Hampshire. I love the Ford Ranger. Too bad Ford ruined the model with its newer, beefier designs, casting it more in line with the larger F150s. Ford’s small truck replacement—the Maverick—is front-wheel drive, with a short, four-and-a-half foot bed, and a four-door, SUV cab. By all accounts, a smooth ride. But, not a truck.
Here’s the thing. My goal is to go out with the Ranger. Not in it, mind you—which would serve no one—but out together as we shift down, tow less, and go slower uphill. Until we are both finally off the road. I’m sixty-eight. The Ranger is fifteen, with about 107,000 miles on it. Not bad for age fifteen. It has been around the Northeast many times, back and forth to Kentucky, Pennsylvania, even to New York City. But most of the miles we’ve shared have been around the Monadnock Region. They don’t make Ford Rangers like they used to, and I want to keep it until we become a one car family, which means—you know—when my wife and I shuffle off to the institution.
The passenger side door has rust damage at the bottom. There is a substantial dent over the left front wheel, which happened nearly the day we bought it, turning into a granite post while I was backing up. I don’t see the dent when I’m driving. The gray paint didn’t chip. I can always pick out my Ranger from others in the Market Basket parking lot. I’ve left it alone. Also, the smaller dent behind the left rear wheel where a Massachusetts state trooper crunched me edging along in traffic. We sat for an hour and a half in the breakdown lane of Route 128 waiting for his patrol sergeant to show up, but we parted friends. The inside of the cab could always use a vacuum. The cloth of the driver’s seat upholstery has a tear after years of me in the saddle.
The Acura TL could never have tolerated life with those scars. Now, I have purchased a scrap, six-foot Ford Ranger bed from Florida to replace the original… and it’s gold colored. Under similar circumstances, the TL would have refused to come out of the garage. But the Ranger—bless it—won’t care. Which is the thing you get attached to about trucks. I worried about the Acura’s self-image, passing the latest models of gleaming sedans and SUVs in suburban Boston. I would occasionally tune to the opera channel on Sirius radio to indulge its pretenses. The Ranger may be proud of its Ford Motor heritage, and the replacement bed is a genuine Ford part, but the truck is a mutt today. And like any mutt, all it wants to do is please you.
We have to wait and see how everything looks when Haley’s Garage gets the old bed off the Ranger. I was told the procedure could take a day, maybe two, depending on what they find. I’ll be a nervous wreck, worrying about the downside possibilities, finding out the frame is also rusted out, or that this or that else is also broken. I know the Ranger is getting old. Aren’t we all? If I should be fortunate enough to have many more miles to travel over the next ten or twelve years, I would like us to drive them together.
The waiting room at Haley’s has the feeling of a thrift shop, full of hand-me-down comfort, treated with Luna’s fur, the shop’s attentive golden retriever. A thin wall separates it from the garage and the sound of pneumatic impact devices, metal on metal, and rock radio, perhaps echoing any orthopedic operating theatre. I don’t know. I won’t wait around. I’ll go home and wait by the telephone.
When the Ranger comes out of it, I plan to get the new bed painted the same gray as the rest of the body. I’ll get the rusted patch on the passenger door fixed at the same time. We’ll go to the car wash, use the vacuum, then head to the drive-thru for ice cream. The Ranger and I know every ice cream spot between here and Troy, New York. There are still many others we want to search for.