The Old "49"

In I979 I owned an auto dealership, I came across the opportunity to purchase an old Ford Pickup. AT first it was thought to be a 1949 model, but later we found out that it was actually a 1950 that was built in 1949. We just called it the “Old 49”. Following are a few interesting stories that surfaced until I sold the truck in 2001 On Ebay to a lady in Iowa.

THE Heirs

The sellers had inherited the Old 49 from an uncle. The uncles name was Alous, but had always been know as Lutz. Lutz live on what was known as “river bottom “ land and he seldom came into town. For the last 30 or more years of his life, he depended on a nephew to take care of most of his business. The nephew would take his SS checks to town and cash them and bring the cash back to Lutz. Lutz gave the nephew cash to buy groceries and other necessitates. The nephew himself had an interesting and sad story. He had a gift for woodcarving that could have made him wealthy save the fact that he was shell-shocked from his time in the service during the Korean War. He lived near by in another tired frame house like the one Lutz lived in. Now the nephew was no dummy. He knew how much cash he brought back to Lutz and how much he got back to make purchases, so when Lutz Died, he expected to find the huge cache of cash in the house. When the cash was not easily found in the house, the nephew and his son started digging all around the house. Pretty soon the yard looked like a B29 had dropped its payload of bombs. Still no cash was found. The nephew and his son then decided that the money had to be somewhere behind a hidden board in the house. They came up with the only fool proof plan. They would disassemble the house. It took about a month. Board by board they took the house down to the old tree stumps that it had rested on. They found no money. I saw the nephew many times during the next 10 years until he died and he never failed to mention all that money that some one had stolen. What happened to the money? Who knows? There was a near by neighbor whose lifestyle seemed to unexplainably improve at the time, but nothing was ever known for sure. The nephew inherited the 50 acres of Lutz’s land and his “old 49”.

Lutz Buys His Truck.

I had owned the Old 49 at least 15 years when I heard the story of how he had made the purchase. I was talking with a man who had worked at the Ford House in 1949 when Lutz had bought the truck. Here is his story.
Lutz had let the word out that he was interested in buying a truck. The Ford dealer sent his man down to the river bottom with a new Meadow Green F1 Ford. The salesman pulled up to Lutz’s house and 3 or 4 hounds announced his arrival. He just waited in the truck for a while and soon Lutz came shuffling down the path. The usual greetings were answered with grunts. Lutz stopped about 15 feet away and eyed the truck. He then proceeded to continue his shuffling around the truck, making sure to kick all four tires.
He stopped to lean on the bed and prop his foot on the running board. “What ya holding it for?” he mumbled, staring at the ground. The salesman told him the total price. “Ha!!” “ I didn’t pay that much for my farm!!” Lutz answered. He was told that might be true, but that was the price. Lutz mumbled something else and shuffled back to the house
Mumbling all the way. Not more than five minutes passed and Lutz came out of the house with a bundle of dirty cash in hand. It was the total price to the dollar. Lutz wouldn’t let the salesman leave with the truck so he had to walk to the main road and catch a ride back to town. The salesman said he never saw the truck again until I purchased it from the estate.

©2009