Meet Jerry, The 92 Year-Old Wrenching King Of The Small Town Of Sterling, Kansas

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Meet Jerry, the elder statesman of Sterling’s make-anything, fix-anything mechanical gurus — a man whose old Ford F-250 has real soul.

First, a note about prank season in Sterling.

Pranks aren’t limited to springtime here, but it is prank season. The college seniors are in high spirits and wanting to leave their mark. The young livestock are highly visible in the surrounding fields, and some youngsters may find it tempting to deposit them somewhere completely out of context where shrieks and mayhem will ensue. And very specifically, cars (usually small ones) tend to get resituated in unnatural settings and arrangements.

My mother’s own VW Beetle ended up rotated perpendicularly in our garage one time. Another Beetle found its way into the vestibule of the college library. Adhesive notes covered every square inch (including wheels in a fine concentric fashion) of a faculty member’s compact SUV not long ago.

The best ones defy easy comprehension (what-the…?, how-the …???). One bicycle impressively ended up at the very top of a football-stadium light tower before a home game. And one of the all-time greats was this VERY impressive prank perpetrated many years ago on Halloween 1966. The victim was a man named Jerry, the subject of this week’s Sterling dispatch.

What you see in the image above is Jerry’s dark green 1949 Dodge, which he bought in ’53 and used as a plumbing work truck early in his career. . Halloween Night in 1966 was a Monday night . . . conveniently just before the weekly newspaper paste-up and type-setting deadline. . Max, the newspaper editor, was a notorious prankster himself and wasn’t above participating in some of his own news coverage to keep readers thoroughly engaged.

[Editor’s note: Welcome to Sterling Dispatch, a regular feature by David Wilson, resident of the small 2,600-person town of Sterling, Kansas. The goal with this column is to make sure rural American car culture is represented on our site, as I feel it’s largely neglected among mainstream automotive media. -DT]

Jerry and The Propane-Fueled, Flatbed Christmas Truck

Jerry never discards anything of true value. Everything Jerry has – I mean, EVERYTHING – still works, and beautifully.

Jerry is simply a mechanical genius, and at age 91 he occupies the alpha-mechanic position in Sterling. This is an illustrious and influential role, akin in my imagination to American Indian elders, except instead of respect from a tribe, his respect comes from the town’s many impressive people who know how to fix, preserve, and enhance mechanical things. These skills are a big deal in small-town America.

How did Jerry get so wise? Well, he fixed things in the Army, then worked as a plumber, then he was a telephone company network technician building, connecting, testing, and diagnosing things all day every day literally for decades. He sank poles, lifted heavy components, and stretched lines all across central Kansas. There are four distinct and sometimes hostile seasons here, with extremes of heat and cold and wet and dry. Jerry was already profoundly and naturally blessed at making things work, and he worked hard, and educated himself, and he got even better. His workman’s pocket tee is now a super-mechanic’s cape.              

Jerry’s daily driver is “Christmas Truck.” With the entire spectrum of automobiles well within his ability to command, a 1980 F-250 flatbed — propane-fueled and with bitching patinated — is Jerry’s choice.

Christmas Truck is so named because Jerry modified what once was a conventional green pickup by mounting up a red flatbed he picked up secondhand. This upgrade had nothing to do with holiday spirit per se; it was just how the colors, which were more vivid in the mid-eighties than now, randomly worked out. But the ladies planning Sterling’s Christmas parade that year seized the moment and drafted Jerry into towing a float. Because, Christmas parades are better with two-tone, red-and-green things. 

Jerry says he drives it all these years later because it’s still extremely useful. I’d say: Christmas Truck is a vehicle that exudes a discernible soul — one inextricably linked to its driver, dependent on him for spirit. And yet, perhaps — time will tell — somehow separate, distinct.

Jerry tinkering

One expects Christmas Truck to falter almost immediately at whatever point Jerry does — lose power, lower its idle, and sadden its exhaust note — not unlike spouses passing within hours or days of each other. That said, sometimes soulful things . . . take heart and live on.

The Way We Remember Cars Can be Unpredictable

Let’s list the cars that Jerry has owned through the years — something that I like to call his “carnology.” His is difficult to document, I must say, and not due to memory impairment or cognitive decline — trust me, FAR from it. It’s just that sequential neatness and the orderly march of time are not how Jerry organizes his thoughts. Instead, best I can figure based on my time with Jerry, things — and thoughts — from the past that are useful and interesting, or even pleasurable,seem to exist *now* and not in any particular order. For Jerry, the rest of things from the past…don’t exist and, for all anyone should care, never did. They just dissipate and vanish into the ether of space and time. Gone, and for all anyone should care, good riddance.

So, I did the best I could with his cars. This information came from Jerry as a stream of consciousness (these are my notes verbatim):

–36 Ford (bought when in Army 51-53)

–Chrysler, took four feet out of the middle and made a dune buggy. Ran on propane. Got stolen. Had a hemi. Railroad*

–Oldsmobile, after ’53, about ’57. Nice, not as nice as the 98

–Olds 98, really liked that car, bought from funeral home. 

–Pontiac Chieftain, bought in ‘53 and drove for 13 years. No AC. Bought from Sparky Horton, sold for $150.

–Bought a ‘49 with AC and converted it to run on propane. Bev** hated the smell, tanks were in the trunk.

–Oldsmobile two door, bought for Jon***

–Mustang, bought and overhauled with Jon, sold to woman in Alden****

 

*Jerry did explain more about “railroad,” and requested redaction so others do not duplicate his actions. Think:  prehistoric autonomous vehicle. 

**Bev = Jerry’s wife.

***Jon = son

****Alden = neighboring town

Jerry’s and Bev’s first car bought new, 1953 Pontiac Chieftain

There must be a dozen or more vehicles missing from Jerry’s recollection, vanished. Seeking patterns or intrigue, I probed about Jerry’s loyalty to Oldsmobile as a brand. Nope, not particularly loyal. Nothing there. Gone. 

I probed for “one that got away” regret on the Mustang, a car that I personally remember, and admired greatly. Nope, not particularly regretful. (Car-person emotional connections are a difficult thing to predict). The buyer lady from Alden used it as a daily driver, and then sold it herself at some point. No telling where it is now.

Since Jerry and my dad were friends, I also personally remember Jerry’s son Jon’s Olds Cutlass two-door, which was a Cutlass Supreme in the 78-80 A-body era, early in the fourth gen, ubiquitous and highly fashionable among Kansas high-schoolers at that time. It was a fine specimen. 

I don’t remember whether it had a partial landau top or not–most of them did to my recollection, and were preferred to have one. (Partial landau tops are such a WTF styling element looking back now. Maybe my Autopian colleague Adrian, or commenters, will answer the WTF question. Woodgrain, similar in its contrived nature, gets all the nostalgia and has found its way back into our psyche, but landau vinyl has not.)

The Vitruvian Man was the spokesmodel for the 1979 Olds Cutlass Supreme

(Sidenote on the GM A-bodies:  they all seem to have been raptured off the earth–I never see one these days. Old trucks like Christmas Truck are still everywhere around here, but the A-bodies are extinct.) 

I got the impression that for Jerry, the emotional power in remembering both the Olds Cutlass Supreme and the Mustang is mostly rooted in the father-son bonding that occurred while shopping for the cars and working on them together. Which suggests that when the cars of the future have very few moving parts–which is admittedly excellent for operating them–bonding over them will become more difficult. 

I found a picture of Jerry’s old C10 that I admired so much. I didn’t remember it running on propane too.

I was astonished that one specific vehicle didn’t materialize in Jerry’s recollection of cars. But I remember it vividly. On a bone-chilling winter day in the late seventies, I remember Jerry picking me up as I walked home from school and delivering me the rest of the way home. I have no idea why I have this memory, other than Jerry was kind to me and my young-brain took a note so I would eventually be kind too. I remember that Jerry was in a second-generation “action line” Chevy C10 pickup, white on white. I also remember from my youth and from Jerry doing projects with my dad, that he had that C10 a very long time. You’d think it might have come up in our discussion. But it didn’t; gone. So that C10 lingers in my memory, but not Jerry’s. Like I said, car-person emotional connections are impossible to predict. 

Jerry’s C10 downtown with “friends.”  Note the propane tank in front of the tool box in the pickup bed. The angle of the sun and the pattern of shade suggests high noon: lunchtime at the Sterling Cafe. Note also the sedan mid-photo has Halliburton signage on the passenger door–a company car.

Jerry Is In Charge of our Town’s Historical Artifacts

Here, I need to assure the reader that Jerry is neither careless about history, or dismissive about the past. *Jerry never discards anything of past or present value, and everything he has still works.*  In fact, Jerry is Sterling’s de facto historian and works tirelessly at it. He lovingly maintains and indexes an incredible treasure of photographic negatives of our community’s early decades. He has accrued countless artifacts of signage, fixtures, and mechanical doo-dads that illustrate the various phases of our town’s economic history, and he stores these artifacts in multiple buildings that he owns — themselves historical edifices and exquisitely curated exhibits that he opens to the public a few days each year.

Jerry’s role as our town’s historian is incredibly important, and instinct tells me his work in this area – basically demonstrating that our existence over time is worthy of acknowledgment and care – may make or break our future more than any seemingly intractable economic situation outside of our control. It’s a circular thing, as in, some things have a spirit in them, and some things don’t. Things with spirit should be nourished and cared for, if one has the skills. Things that don’t have spirit…should probably be forgotten so we can economize our focus. For lack of anyone else doing Jerry’s work to fix, save, and maintain artifacts, Jerry gets to decide what has spirit. And since Jerry is deciding, it means — in some ways — that the “thing” gets Jerry’s spirit.

 

Some of Jerry’s artifacts

Matilda hasn’t aged much since Jerry took a selfie with her in 1993.

 

Jerry Modified Christmas Truck into a Soulful Thing That Lasted

Jerry bought Christmas Truck in 1985, swapped its pickup bed for a flatbed, and promptly converted it to run on propane.

The cab preconditioner plug, hooked to an electric heater on a $10 lamp timer, for winter

Let’s discuss propane conversion. I don’t have an expansive basis of comparison, but as rare as private-sector propane conversions are here in rural Kansas, one suspects they are even rarer in the world beyond. 

A helpful explanation of modern propane conversions is available here. In very simple terms, a propane conversion involves creating a second, or replacement, fuel supply to an internal combustion engine. The principal mechanical considerations involve storing the fuel, plumbing the supply lines according to best practices, and controlling the behavior of a regulator and/or carburetor to suit the somewhat different properties of the alternative fuel.

It’s not super-complicated, and kits can help. Finding fuel is not the adventure that it might seem to be, if there are campgrounds or U-Haul outlets nearby. But propane conversion is still a rare and curious choice.

In Sterling, I remember that propane conversions proliferated for a time during the gas crises of the seventies, especially among farmers who already routinely used bulk propane to heat their buildings, and for whom heavy consumption of conventional engine fuels in the course of their operations made the multiplier effect of converting to propane work out. 

Jerry’s use of propane predated the gas crunches (see car-nology above), and he uses propane to this day. He was not a farmer, although he did have a side-hustle as a water-softener vendor and he used propane in that enterprise. 

Jerry’s explanation is straightforward: propane is usually cheaper and always better. Cheaper, because propane is doubly-blessed: it is usually cheaper to begin with, and it is not subject to highway-funding taxation. And it’s better because it burns cleanly and with much less exhaust byproduct–so cleanly that engine oil stays honey-clear after long periods of operation, indicative of reduced wear and tear on the engine.

The oil is pristine from Christmas Truck’s less-polluting combustion fuel, propane; Jerry has no idea the last time he changed oil.

Jerry is not an “alt-fuels” guy; he’s a “better” or “makes sense” guy. And if “better” is something you’re qualified to do without much effort or risk (because you are a genius mechanic), you do it.

At some point, though, Christmas Truck’s and Jerry’s identities intertwined. It’s evident hearing Jerry talk about Christmas Truck that there is something of a creator/creation dynamic here. He is loyal to Christmas Truck the way that a person might be loyal to a child, a grandchild, or even the recipient of one’s kidney — any person whose existence is an expression of one’s own DNA. The “better” factor of propane, at least in Jerry’s world, is part of what differentiates Christmas Truck from his many other cars. He really got it right. Christmas Truck, decidedly, has survived the test of time. 

Mod #2: the Red Flatbed

Next, let’s talk about flatbeds. Look, I find the traditional pickup truck form-factor as appealing as anyone. A strong gravitational pull emits from marketing forces on my American self and I find myself coveting a truck pretty much all the time. But when I pause for critical thought, I just cannot “get there” on a conventional half-ton pickup with a bed.

Mostly this has to do with the walls of the pickup box. What good does a chest-height barrier into an open-air compartment do for me when hauling branches, lumber, sand, bikes, canoes, luggage . . . anything?  Not only does the stuff have to get in there . . . then I have to get in there myself to tie it down, or worse, tarp it!  

And now that I am old enough to afford one, and the MultiPro Tailgate that will “help” me, they’re getting much less affordable, and I’m getting much older. Anything I can possibly think of hauling, with the notable exceptions of sports flags or banners on poles, is easier to haul in something other than a conventional pickup. In the lingo of midwestern pragmatism:  “It’s kind of f***ing dumb.”

Well–Jerry has to haul things daily, and while incredibly fit and agile, at 91 he needs to haul smart. The flatbed on Christmas Truck, with a reasonable threshold height and replaceable lumber floorboards that you can screw right into, is SO much smarter. 

Even more than propane, Jerry gives credit to the flatbed for Christmas Truck’s daily-driver status. The combination of these two substantial vehicle modifications has resulted in forty-plus years of soul-building machine performance with more on the horizon.

It’s unlikely Jerry considered vehicle longevity when he did the propane and flatbed mods . . . yet there is a meritocracy of sorts for things that surpass their expectancy, lasting much longer than other things in the same basic category. It is useful to pay heed to such lessons, and worth remembering why.

Jerry’s and Bev’s Souls are in Christmas Truck

Bev died in 2001, on Valentine’s Day, one of what seem, anecdotally, to be an unsettling number of women who came of age in the forties and fifties on the Plains to succumb to cancer. Some in these parts blame atmospheric nuclear testing from the fifties drifting in on the prevailing winds. We’ll probably never know. 

Bev was a dynamic woman of staggering attractiveness throughout her life, including when she was my school bus driver back in ’80-’81. Jerry and Bev were fun, and so, so beautiful together. There is evidence–protecting my sources here–that Jerry’s heartbreak after losing Bev caused concern that he would falter, and go away one way or another, shortly thereafter. It just wasn’t clear how he could go on. 

Twenty-one years later, Jerry is undoubtedly still heartbroken about Bev–I did not go there with him during our interview, not wanting to complicate our smile-filled session together on an unseasonably warm day. 

Yet on he went after Bev died. Jerry has surrounded himself with many helpful things, machines and artifacts as well as people. Mostly, it’s the machines–the soulful old ones–around Jerry that stand out. Mechanical though they be, they are elements of spirit that keep him vibrant and active. They are largely elements of his own creation, meager substitutes perhaps for the spirit and encouragement of a life’s partner, but instructive in the way that they gave him future motive power and purpose to go on. Long live every small town’s alpha-mechanic.

Christmas Truck is one of many soulful things in Jerry’s care. It’s evident to anyone paying attention.

It’s a given that Christmas Truck will function, and function quite well until Jerry no longer imparts his own spirit. What happens to Christmas Truck after that will be interesting, and useful, to observe. Sometimes soulful things . . . take heart and live on.

Bev among friends at our bicentennial parade in ‘76.
Bev
Jerry in his workshop
Jerry’s path …

 

Christmas Truck peeking out

 

As for the truck in the newspaper article about the legendary prank? Well, Jerry doesn’t have any photos of it. What we do know is that, by 1966, Jerry worked for the telephone company as a line-builder, and had access to a gin-pole truck like this one shown above, to extract his truck from its predicament.

 

 

 

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38 thoughts on “Meet Jerry, The 92 Year-Old Wrenching King Of The Small Town Of Sterling, Kansas

  1. “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

    Robert Heinlein

  2. Old guys with Jerry’s knowledge are a dying breed. My neighbor was one such person. He was an army Vet and retired welder from Ford. To say that he could fix anything was an understatement. The man could fabricate anything out of steel. I only knew him for about 12 years, but during that time I learned more about tools and how to fix things than I had my whole life. I miss him like crazy. RIP Lyle Smith Brown.

  3. I’d love to see more like this. Reminds me (somewhat) of the local air-cooled VW guru/parts guy where I grew up. Benny from Bow-Wow (Everett, WA). His patience, combined with encyclopedic knowledge of that ecosystem, got many a young dude or dudette started in their gearhead journey, through the portal used by those of us who couldn’t lay hands on a muscle car or funky old euromobile. In those days you could get a running, driving, mostly safe Beetle, sometimes even with functional heaters, for $1,000 all day long.

  4. Great piece. My dad’s family are all from the Bartlesville, OK area. My grandfather had a lot of brothers, and pretty much all of them were ‘that guy’ — who worked hard with his hands, knew how to make and fix stuff, and who all their friends and neighbors could call on at any time. I feel like I know Jerry.

    I’ll take content like this over hypercar reviews every time!

  5. So very well written, thank you! I want to visit Sterling, unfortunately my ’73 Olds Cutlass sacrificed herself to the iron oxide gods many years ago. It would have been great to take her on that road trip.

  6. You, sir, are a gift to this website and to all of us. Keep up the good work.

    BTW , Bev looks like my Dad’s sister. She was also a farm wife, singer, guitar player, businesswoman, and substitute mom for hundreds of down-on-their-luck kids who stayed at the farm as long as needed for their luck to change and the country food and air was doing them good. We just moved her into an old folks home at 92. She’s worried that some more kids will need her help and she won’t be on the farm to provide it.

  7. I have several friends who run propane on their 4x4s. One always claims it is because it can run upside down unlike a carb. so can FI obviously, so idk.

    1. The fuel injection might be willing to operate regardless of orientation, but liquid fuel isn’t going to cooperate like propane will, once you start turning things upside down.

  8. This was fantastic, thank you!

    You will not have any problems with this site thriving if this is the content you are going to provide!!!!!

  9. That storage system he clearly built himself is just beautiful.

    And makes me wonder what it immediately replaced. Was there a slow evolution of different methods that he replaced all at once? A giant set of stacks he grew tired of shifting about?

    91 years is a long time to refine your views on workshop organization.

  10. Reminds me or the old farmers I grew up around. Sure, there was “junk” laying all around the property. But those guys almost never needed to buy parts, and couldn’t afford downtime for something to be shipped. I wish modern suburban life was more accepting of the need to keep recyclables on hand for future contingencies! (Right, DT?)

    1. Roger that–it’s a fine line between “junk” and “inventory” out here . . . the amazing (and instructive) thing about Jerry is his curiosity and delight. He has mass quantities of stuff, but it’s neither junk nor inventory.

      i.e., a broom-corn seed stripper made of wood; a pedal-powered sharpening wheel; a petite corner lavatory with porcelain handles; and a freaking time machine in the form of ALL. THOSE. PHOTOS. I just lose myself.

  11. Propane?
    My first thought was many decades-worth of the Zambonii (plural?) machines cleaning indoor arena ice across Canada and upper US with most running on propane. Quiet and clean and perfect for indoors.

    1. “perfect for indoors”

      You can generate *plenty* of CO with a propane fired engine. Never assume that because you can run some propane engines indoors that you can run a *particular* propane engine indoors safely.

  12. I love stories like this, sadly they’ll become something lost to the ages soon enough… I just don’t feel the amount of old guys and those like me getting older are going to be around with all this knowledge. As a teenager my dad used to take me to Mr Issac Shifflets garage and I was taught how to reshoe pads on my 68 Chrysler using John Deere shoes.. I would listen and soak up everything that man would say. Decades of parts, books and papers littered his shop, yet he knew where everything was and would tell me to read these notes and do this and that…and bam! Things were fixed. Miss those times, wish we were technically advanced as we are now and I could have recorded those times on my phone for posterity, but those times were decades away.

    Even my Dad in his own right was a heapful of everything knowledge. Fix a car? Yep! Paint a car? Yep! Build a house? You bet! I soaked that up, and as an adult and owning my own shop which I built from the ground up by myself I feel proud that I can carry on all that knowledge like he did.

    Good stuff to read

    1. record what you still have! I only have a few stories from my grandparents and wish I had more. They all grew up in The Depression, and my grandpas both served in WW2!

  13. Great article. Jerry reminds me of my grandfather John who worked as a maintenance electrician after fixing radios for the flying tigers over in India during WW2. I worked at the factory (universal metal products) following his, my uncle’s and father’s footsteps. While I didn’t last I learned tools and specialty parts he made were still in use 50 years later.

    1. I should also note the vast majority of the family inheritance has been hand made tools (and a vintage set of snap on that is worth more than my life) and while I am not as mechanically gifted as my forefathers I do my best to fix what I can.

  14. What an awesome piece of writing. Jerry seems like an amazing person. I especially love his stance on propane. Professional LPG conversions aren’t that uncommon where I’m from (there’s even some factory bi-fuel options on the market); my first car was a converted Renault Espace Quadra and oh boy do I miss cheap, cleaner fuel…

    My uncle converted his Land Rover 80 Series II to run on propane back in the mid-80s. Never bothered to make it road legal since he used it mostly in private land. Every car he had ever since was professionally converted and used regular propane tanks, since he got into it well before LPG was commonplace and there wasn’t much of a refuelling network (modern systems like the one in my Espace have integrated tanks of course). The Land Rover actually outlived my uncle and kept going until around 2010, but ended up rotting in a shed somewhere after something broke and no one had any idea how to fix it.

  15. Having spent some of my most formative years in Caney, Kansas (pop 3500 then, 2800 today) I can relate to this entire narrative. My G’pa only lived to 74 but was absolutely one of Caney’s premier fix-it guy. Anything that needed fixing G’pa could do it. Skilled as a blacksmith, rough framing carpenter, and fine wood projects. He started learning about cars in the ‘aughts. Ground valves by hand. Set timing by ear, rebuilt anything mechanical.

    But enough about G’pa. He was but one of thousands of his generation that built the car universe as we know it.

    What I came to mention was that when I came back to southeast Kansas in 1995 after a 30 year military career, the first wheels I bought was a 1974 Chevy 3/4 with a propane conversion and 150K on the odometer. I paid a whole $1200 for “BUF”. Now the kicker he offered to leave the propane conversion in it for an extra $100. Stupidly, I turned him down. Along about 2001 I replaced the rotted out bed with a nice used 10′(!) flat bed. Added tie downs for my sidecar rig and a nice tool box. Well BUF is now in other hands and still on the streets. He has well over 350K miles on the entire original drive train. So does propane work? Hell yes!

  16. Yeah when I was still in high school a classmates brand new Honda CVCC somehow got flipped onto it’s roof in front of his home one late night. Because of the good snowpack in the driveway it is believed that little to no damage was sustained.
    Hang tough Jerry. Glad you made it this far.

  17. Scrolled down fast to give a like to this article.

    I’ll read it later, since I’m out of time on my bathroom break. But I already know I’m going to love this. You guys are just hitting ’em out of the park.

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