Leif and his Ford 150 Truck

By the time Leif enlisted in the army in January 1998, he had sold his beloved RX-7 and had acquired a used Ford 150 truck. It was old, but I don't know the year, and the paint was dulled in in bad shape. It may have been brown, but it looked like rust. Since I don't have a photo of it, I created this facsimile.

At one point, as a joke he decided to paint over the FORD letters on the rear tailgate with black spray paint and name it FOOD. Then, later, he tried to paint the entire thing black with spray paint, not having the money to pay for a paint job. It wasn't a particularly successful adventure.

The truck was very useful for hauling things, particularly during their moves, and when he came back to Kansas from Infantry Basic Training in May 1998 (when this photo of him was taken), and he and Nikko moved from Kansas to Fort Drum, New York, they traveled there in the truck, with a lot of belongings and his Yamaha motorcycle strapped in the bed of the truck in back.

He kept the truck during his years at Fort Drum, but at some point before he left there in May 2001, he had the idea of taking the motor out. I don't know just what shape it was in at that point. I don't think it was running. He sold it to some guy but didn't have the title to turn over to him. Once he got back to Manhattan and we located the title, we couldn't find out how to contact the guy he had sold it to. The phone number he had no longer worked and no amount of calling directory assistance or anything else turned up a way for him to get the title to the fellow.

Leif liked trucks. While he was enamored of sports cars and loved them most, he also was appreciative of the practicality of owning a truck. Periodically he would talk about buying one as his "next vehicle."

Leif was the only person I ever knew who regularly made the rounds of auto dealers and test drove cars for fun even when he hadn't a prayer of actually buying one at the time. He also did "research" (unbidden) to see what cars his relatives or friends ought to buy, in his opinion and would come and make recommendations to us.

He never did get another truck. I think he had this one about five years.

Leif - Kamen Rider - Japan, May 1981 - Age 6

Here's one of those coin-operated rides, this one in Japan. Maybe Leif's first "motorcycle ride." Our sons enjoyed the Japanese children's shows immensely, even though they didn't understand that Japanese. One of their favorites was "Kamen Rider Super One," and it featured masked characters in cool, bright colored suits on matching souped up motorcycles. They had special powers, and fantastic belts that had things that lit up and whirred. They went through a series of ritual motions to invoke their special powers.

Our boys had toy versions of the fancy belts, and some masks. There might have been other parts of the toys sets, too, but those are the ones I remember. They loved pretending to be these heroes. They had all the hand motions down, and here Leif is standing on the cycle in the perfect Kamen Rider pose.

I'm sure watching that show had some influence on his interest in riding cycles in his adult years, but he probably would have gravitated to that anyway, because it was fast, thrilling, and dangerous.

Kamen Rider was only one of the Japanese shows they watched with fervor. Peter Anthony and his friend Darren could give me a complete and accurate list, but I remember Ultraman 80, Gundam, and Space Battleship Yamato (or Space Cruiser Yamato) known in English as Star Blazers. They were watching the Japanese genre now known as anime long before they became popular in the USA, and their enthusiasm for it never ended, right into adulthood.