[This was my first time trying to write down the story of my first car and it’s connection to four generations of my family. It was the beginning of a lot of things at the same time, many of which I didn’t realize until long after they’d gotten underway, and some that I’ve still not fully come to grips with. It’s the beginning of an adventure that I’m still on. I originally wrote this story between January and March 2020 on the forums of thegearheadproject.com. Very few have ever seen it. Few likely ever will. But here it goes…]
This might sound dumb, but hey… (it probably is dumb) it’s true, though.
My first car was born the same month as me. And one further, it was purchased new from a dealership in the same town I was born in. Kinda not a big deal unless you consider this was some almost nowhere town in West Virginia. One step further (still dumb) is that it was bought by my grandmother…so in a way we were kind of related right off the lot (now that’s just dumb, John).
This is really no way to start a build thread, but you want to hear something interesting (aka…dumb): despite being on forums for 20 or so years, I’ve never done a build thread before. So in a way I have no idea what I’m doing here. Just rambling…
But you know, I have been on forums for 20 or so years (you said that already, dummy), and have read hundreds of build threads, and have always wanted to do one. In fact I’ve been taking pictures and notes and stuff all this time in the hopes that one day I’d finally sit down and do a build thread. I’ve got thousands of random pictures of my cars in various stages of undress/exploratory surgery/disrepair/sparkly’ness (that isn’t a real word idiot). My computer probably has a hard time telling if I love my kids or my cars more based on the disproportionate ratio of pics that populate my screen saver mode (hint: your computer doesn’t care).
I’ve wanted to do one of these things for like, forever…(so, do one already)…so I’m gonna do one already. Here’s the story (see…this is why you’ve never done one of these things. It isn’t a story, it’s a build thread! Pictures, car parts, mods, shiny stuff, excuses for wasting so much money…you know. Quit with the stories already!) of my four generation long connection to (good Lord…this isn’t War and Peace man! Just give us some bloody pictures of your Cherokee.) my beloved silver Jeep Cherokee XJ. (…for Pete’s sake already. I bet he doesn’t even include a picture in the first post).
O yeah, here’s a picture…almost forgot.