By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
Who better to appreciate and remember the unique features of their first car that a mechanic? Sharing their stories of first and fond vehicle memories were Tim St. Peter of Gagnon’s Auto RV Sales Inc, Vince and Karen Anderson of G&J Auto Body and Rod Wardwell of Wardwell Services.
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| Tim St. Peter |
The Danger Ranger’s colorful tale
The first vehicle that entered Tim St. Peter’s life was a ‘92 Ford Ranger, and though he’s since moved on with his life, fond memories of that truck have stayed with him over the years.
To say the vehicle had a colorful history is accurate — it was four different colors when St. Peter picked it up for $400.
The Ranger, or “Danger Ranger” as St. Peter’s friends occasionally called it, came with its own set of stories to accompany its miles — including how it became four different colors.
“It was a dark blue originally, a Ford dark blue, but the guy who owned it before me, he drilled wells and would haul it behind his truck,” St. Peter explained.
One day, that big well drill came down on the pickup, crushing the hood and the fender. The parts were replaced utilizing a hood and fender from two other trucks, one red and one white. And while St. Peter doesn’t remember specifically how it came to be, the Ranger was also sporting a fourth (forgotten) hue of paint.
A shop class student, St. Peter brought the Ranger to school and his class worked to spruce it up; St. Peter had a friend that was taking auto body in school, so the truck also received a new paint job that brought the truck back to a unified blue.
“It was a good little truck — I miss it,” St. Peter said. “There was one time I probably had a ton of stuff in the bed of it, between fertilizer and three guys hanging off the tailgate.”
After having the truck painted and patched up, St. Peter decided to install some “new” bucket seats out of an old car and was utilizing the help of a friend to do so.
That same day brought about some big changes for the Ranger.
“I was in Caribou, in front of the post office; a lady backed out and hit me from the front of the fender all the way to the rear, down a whole side,” St. Peter described.
The accident and the damage to the Ranger didn’t bother him too much, particularly since the insurance company totaled the car out and provided him with nearly seven times what he’d originally paid for it.
“I drove it for another two years, put a new door on it because the inside handle broke, and I had it painted,” St. Peter said. “I ended up selling it in the end for like $250, but that was probably one of the best little pickups I had.”
The Ranger’s aesthetics may have never recovered from the accident, but the truck kept on running like clockwork.
“It was all scratched and scuffed, and there was a big dent behind the driver’s door in the pillar, but that was really the only part that was bad,” St. Peter described. “It was all scratched up, scuffed and the Bondo® [a putty used for auto body repair] was cracked from where we’d fixed it and painted it, but it other than that, it really wasn’t that bad.”
“I drove it for another year and-a-half that way,” he added.
The Ranger’s story almost had a happy ending, too.
“The Ranger was probably my favorite car, and one that I wished I’d had gotten back – and if I would have, if I talked with the guy I sold it to about a week earlier,” St. Peter said.
The last owner of the Ranger had sent the truck to the junkyard a week before St. Peter had spoken to him.
St. Peter has looked around the region for the Ranger with no success, and can only assume it was sent to the crusher.
But if anyone spots a blue 92’ Ford Ranger driving around these parts, there’s a chance that just maybe it’s the Danger Ranger.
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| Vincent Anderson |
Times have changed since the old Field Car days
Times have changed since the 1964 Dodge Dart rolled off the assembly line, and Caribou was a very different place when Vince Anderson acquired his very first car — a blue, 1964 Dodge Dart.
“It was uglier than sin,” Anderson said, remembering the old Dart.
Cautiously, Anderson explained that he was only 12 when he and the Dart first crossed paths.
“I grew up on a farm in Woodland, so it was quite common for [kids] to have cars — field cars — and we drove them and helped our parents,” Anderson explained. “That’s just kind of how we did stuff back then — times have changed.”
Defending his old car, Anderson explained that it wasn’t that bad looking — but it certainly wasn’t good looking by the time he was done with it.
Not assisting with the vehicles aesthetics, Anderson accidentally ran it into the sprinkler tank.
“I was young!” he said laughingly, “so yeah, I kind of smashed it up.”
Everyone has memories about their first car, and Anderson’s fondest memories with the Dart are riding through the field roads with his friends.
“When we were kids, we were allowed to do that stuff,” he qualified. “It was a different world.”
His wife, Karen, has her own fun first-car stories — including one very relatable experience for anyone who’s ever learned to drive a stick.
The Subaru and its three nearly bullet-proof cousins
The Subaru was actually the fourth ‘84 Subaru four-wheel-drive station wagon that Rod Wardwell owned, and it earned its name for being the toughest of the bunch.
“It had to be the ‘84s,” Wardwell explained. “I had the one and its three cousins — darn near bullet proof.”
It was about 10 years ago when Wardwell first discovered the might of the ’84 four-wheel-drive Subaru station wagons.
The first station wagon — a yellow one — rotted out; it was quickly replaced with it’s light-tan cousin, which was only semi-rotted out at the time.
The third Subaru cousin was silver, but the toughest of the bunch came last.
“It would go anywhere four-wheel drives would go, and then some,” he described.
It was blue, in good shape, it came from Hawaii and Wardwell has plenty of stories about how this supposed “family car” would put all the other vehicles to shame while out four-wheeling on tough, muddy roads.
In fact, a couple times while four-wheeling in the woods, Wardwell and The Subaru would come across drivers with jacked-up trucks sitting stationary because the road ahead was too rough.
“We’d go around them, stop and wave to them, and keep going,” Wardwell described with approving laughter for the unassuming station wagon’s power.
One particular story involved a hunting trip for partridge, a beaver dam pond, some particularly rough roads and the skeptical driver of a big truck.
In the name of bagging partridge, Wardwell’s friend exited The Subaru and hoofed it across a beaver dam pond — one that the group had previously opted not to drive through.
Well, the friend didn’t want to walk back through the water, so in went The Subaru.
“It was almost like it floated across the beaver dam pond, because we took a stick and it was so deep, I don’t know how we got through it,” Wardwell recalled.
Though The Subaru was in the best shape out of the four, it wasn’t without its imperfections.
The floorboards had some holes in them; Wardwell’s wife and his friend’s wife were both riding in the back seat and quickly found themselves holding up both their guns and their feet as the water poured in.
“The Subaru made it across — no problem,” he said.
While the vehicle had showcased its sea legs, it didn’t earn the distinction of being The Subaru until further down the road.
Now on the other side of the beaver dam pond’s banks, Wardwell wasn’t keen on crossing the water again, (and now admits that he was pushing his luck pretty hard going through it the first time).
But he’d seen that there was a road on the other side of the pond, and the crew forged ahead to find out where it led.
It turned out there was another road just a little further ahead, where they met a four-wheel drive truck.
“[The driver] said not to go any further — that we couldn’t,” Wardwell remembered. “of course, we did.”
Enjoying their successful four-wheeling foray, the road doubled backed and brought the crew back to another nice road where they met that same driver who’d cautioned them not to continue.
Stopping for a chat, the driver asked if they were the same group that he’d seen earlier and if they’d just come through that rough road.
“I said ‘yeah,’” Wardwell remembered. “[The driver] said, ‘is that a Subaru?’ My friend’s wife said, ‘no, that’s The Subaru.’”
Of course, the cautious driver had a follow-up question for the woman — pointing to a rough road with a big pile of dirt in front of it, the driver asked “Now, he’s not going up that other road, right?”
She replied, “Well, if I know Rod and I know The Subaru, we probably are.”
Most of the crew exited the station wagon and, of course, Wardwell and The Subaru showed their stuff.
“I approached the hill, went up and across it, did a doughnut, drove down through the swamp area, went up over the dirt pile, stopped and said ‘are you guys coming with me or not?’”Wardwell recalled. His crew piled back in the little station wagon that could, and Wardwell remembers the driver again cautioning that he wasn’t going to pull them out if they got stuck.
“I never told him, but there’s no way he could have gone over that dirt pile anyway,” Wardwell said.
Later, they found out that the road had been made impassable because it was closed.
Interestingly enough, not even impassable was enough to stop The Subaru.
Aside from the inherent toughness of the ’84 four-wheel drive Subaru station wagons, Wardwell liked the cars for another reason: “You could always fix it with duct tape and bailing wire in the woods,” he said.
Eventually, The Subaru rotted out and followed its cousins into vehicular heaven, but its legendary toughness lives on through its unbelievable feats of force.
(Wardwell advises that, in his professional opinion, drivers should not attempt to cross a beaver dam pond in a vehicle.)
