A Tale of Brotherly love

_{^{— By Lori Bowling}}

Growing up, the Bowling brothers were pretty darn close. Aged 4 years apart, their mom couldn’t take them to the store together because they were always rough-housing and goofing around and thumping each other on the head.
As years passed, Bill, the elder of the two, went into the Marine Corps and the younger brother, Doug, followed in his father’s footsteps and became a Geologist.
During Doug’s college days, he would do odd jobs like build barns and fences, whatever it took to help pay for college or keep a roof over his head. He bought this ragged and tattered old 1948 Ford Truck to run back and forth to jobs and school.
It was always breaking down on him. It rattled like a bucket of bolts. He didn’t have money to fix it, so he did the best he could with bailing wire and tape, odds and ends of this or that. It had what he called “may pop” tires, because they “may pop today, they may pop tomorrow.”
As time went on and he graduated college, he and his wife and kids got an assignment to live and work with Chevron in Indonesia. He didn’t want to part with this old truck, so he gave it to his nephew in Texas, hoping to get it back someday.
The nephew decided to take it all apart and turn it into a low rider. Parts and pieces were all over the pasture where the old truck lived.
Years passed, and Doug is very successful now in the oil field. He would always reminisce with Bill about his old ‘48.
Bill retired from the Marines and soon after he and I (his wife, Lori) moved up to Lake City to the old Bowling cabins. It was then Bill decided to contact the nephew, get that truck, and redo it.
With a 20-foot trailer in tow, he made the long journey back to Texas to get that old truck of Doug’s. On his arrival he discovered the nephew purchased another ‘48 for parts, so they loaded all the rusted parts and extra truck up, and Bill came back to Lake City.
Bill and I unloaded all the parts, sifting through the rubble, trying to figure out what parts were what, and which would be better to use. Piece by piece and 3 years later, we have a 1948 truck with some extra hidden goodies with Bowling style.
For instance, the breather for the carburetor is an old Grangers tobacco can. Their father, Dewey, smoked a pipe and this was his favorite brand of tobacco, so why not use it for such a cool memory?
Some parts are new, and most are handmade by Bill. There was lots of banging to remove dents, and some super bondo to fill holes came into play. Bill even took the old nuts and bolts and put them in a rock tumbler to remove the rust.
Lots of love and time went into this truck. Last week, Bill loaded the 76-year-old truck back up on the same 20-foot trailer and took it to Louisiana where Doug and his wife reside now.
Doug didn’t know what was about to happen as it was all a surprise. Bill gifted the old 1948 Ford Truck Doug adored back to him. The love between these two brothers may just be the deepest you can get.

_{photos show the dilapidated state of disrepair — merely a rusty husk — the truck was in when Bowling received it.}