PRETTY IN PINK
Model A pickup a real head-turner
Anna Dean’s love of pickup trucks is born from growing up on a hobby farm in the north Fraser Valley community of Deroche.
Her teacher parents had only a tractor. But their friends drove pickup trucks and would often let Anna and her siblings ride in the back with their hair blowing in the wind. Other family friends had a large dairy farm in Agassiz, and Anna, her sister and brother loved going there because the owners let the kids drive their old beat-up truck around the fields while the adults visited.
As a teenager, Anna joined the military reserve and learned to drive large military trucks, which led to her getting a job as a transit operator with B.C. Hydro in downtown Vancouver at the tender age of 19.
“Driving a trolley bus at three in the morning on East Hastings Street gave me a quick education about drunk people,” she says.
While she was growing up, neighbour Bill Mattson put together an old Model T Ford.
“We had a big gully on our property and previous owners had thrown old farm equipment and other things in there. Bill would go down there and pull out parts and pieces for his Model T and soon he was driving it down the road. That’s something that always stuck in my mind,” she says.
About 15 years ago, Dean bought a 1927 Model T Ford.
“I liked it, but had trouble driving it. I ended up trading the car and a grain wagon for a log cabin package, as I was more in need of a guest cabin than a car at the time.”
After 35 years with transit, Dean retired as director of operations for Olympic transportation for the 2010 Winter Games.
With more time to work on the farm, she began a search for an old truck to use as “yard art” and fill with flowers.
One day, her husband Roy Harvey saw an unusual vintage pickup truck for sale on eBay.
“I found your truck, but it’s too nice to make a planter out of it,” he told Dean.
When she saw the 1929 Ford Model A roadster pickup with its folding convertible top and unusual rose beige colour, it was instant love. But her $14,000 offer didn’t meet the reserve bid and the truck disappeared from eBay.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about the truck, so I called the California Car Museum in Sacramento, which was selling it on consignment for the widow who owned it,” she says.
In the end, she was able to buy the truck for her price, becoming the third owner in the process. Dean and her husband headed south in their one-ton pickup towing a trailer to bring her prize home to her 10-acre hobby farm south of Cloverdale.
“It was everything I had hoped for,” she says.
“It took me a while to learn to drive it. I studied up on it and with the help of Noel Cleveland and Mike Breed, longtime members of the Pacific Model A Club, I figured out the timing so it didn’t backfire and learned to understand the mechanics of it.”
In the past four years, she has entered her pink truck in the Surrey Santa Parade, the Cloverdale Rodeo parade, drove it on car club tours and used it to haul kids around her rural property at her niece’s wedding.
“I love using it because you’re really driving,” she says. “It’s a lot of fun to go in parades, to make people smile and let kids sit in my old truck.”
A dead battery prevented her Model A roadster pickup from starting as she was lined up to participate in last May’s Cloverdale Rodeo Parade.
“My family was there, and I told them they wouldn’t see me in the parade. They said they were going to make sure I was in the parade and pushed me for more than an hour.” They would later say they had more fun than if they were watching because they were in the parade.
As a member of the Pacific Model A Club, she receives ongoing tutorials on maintenance and stores her truck in a special section of her barn — also known as the Model A Ladies Lounge.
It will soon be spring and time for Anna to wake her pink truck from winter hibernation.
“There is a toggle switch to turn off the gravity-fed fuel and I have learned that, each time I park, to turn it off first and then run the engine until it stops. That makes sure there is no gas evaporating and leaving residue in the carburetor. In the spring, it starts right away.”
She’s looking forward to the first drive of the year.
“When I go down the road to Cloverdale in the good weather, people love the truck and wave. I feel connected to the truck. I can hear the engine and change the gears. It’s a great feeling.”