I had a new gold and beige colored crew cab Chevrolet. It was a beautiful truck. It had everything imaginable on it. This was in the mid 1980s. It still had paper tags on it.

I pulled up in front and center at Holt Caterpillar in Austin one morning. Just as I reached the front door I heard a crash. I looked around to see a one ton welders truck had backed into the drivers door. As I got closer I saw that he had a pair of fork lift forks on the bed of his truck. They extended over the edge of his bed about 4 feet. This resulted in those fork tines stabbing thru my door, seat console and the passenger seat.

The welder was a contract person for Holt and not their actual employee. He had no insurance. He went in and pleaded with the shop foreman he worked for, to get them to pay for the damages and take it out of his future work for them. Of course they didn’t want any part of it.

That left it between the welder and me. I had known his dad for years. He operated a machine shop. He was going to pay me for it.

I put my brand new pickup in the shop and paid the bill. I never looked back. I just wish that welder had.

I was thankful I didn’t dilly-dally around getting out of the truck that morning