Ford Vs. Ferrari? No, Ford Vs. Chevy…

You made have heard about the movie “Ford vs. Ferrari.”  It details the rivalry between Ford and Ferrari, between the Americans and the Europeans in the World Sportscar Championship series in the 1960’s. Where I grew up, we knew about NASCAR and even a little bit about Sportscar racing, but our rivalry was never about Ford vs. Ferrari. Our rivalry was about Ford vs. Chevy.   

The rivalry was not about which car was faster; it was about which truck was better. I remember old men talking about Fords rusting out faster than Chevys. This was usually followed by some retort about Chevys spending most of their time in the shop.   The only people we knew that drove Dodge trucks worked for the government. Dodge was the perennial low-bidder, I guess. 

By the time I was ready to buy a truck of my own, I had heard all the insults. “What does F.O.R.D. stand for? Fix or repair daily.”  “What do you call five Chevys and a Ford? A junkyard and a way home.”  “Give a man a Chevy, and he won’t walk a single day. Give a man a Ford, and he will walk for a lifetime.”  “How do you fix a Chevy truck with a blown engine? Put a Ford engine in it.”  I could go on and on. 

My people were Ford people. This might be because the Ford dealer in our hometown also owned the bank. That made it easier, I suppose, to buy a truck, borrow the money, and pay it off.  One-stop shopping. When it came my time to buy a truck, I bought Fords for two reasons: One, my daddy always drove a Ford; and two, I was living in Louisville, KY, at the time, where Ford had two factories and I had deacons that worked at both plants. Buying Fords and keeping my job seemed to be a good strategy. 

My current truck pulls double duty. It cleans up good enough to be the preacher’s car for funeral processions, but it is also my farm truck. I have a seeder that attaches to my hitch receiver, and I was putting out some seed in my pasture. We had a good rain a week earlier, and I thought everything had dried out. Not so. There is one low, boggy spot in my pasture. Before I realized it, I was off in that low spot, bogging down. 

I felt my tires spinning and thought of words I cannot write in a family newspaper. I stopped, shifted into four-wheel drive, and started forward again. I made it two feet, and my tires were spinning again. I put the truck in reverse to rock it out. No movement at all. I got out to look at the situation. My tires were coated with mud, and my truck was about six inches lower than it should be. If I know how to do anything, I know how to get stuck.  

I called my young friend Jackson, who came as quick as he could. We hooked up the chains, and then he started the pull me out. Except he couldn’t get traction either. He backed up and tried a different angle. I was still spinning my tires. He was about to get stuck, and we figured he needed to get unstuck before he got me unstuck. We were about to call for a tractor when we found another chain. This gave Jackson more length, and he went out at a different angle. He said, “Now, I think I am going to paint your truck,” which translated means, “Your truck is about to be covered with mud.” 

Jackson got a good start and jerked me out of the bog. Mud was flying everywhere. I forgot and had a couple of windows down. The inside of the truck and everything I was wearing got covered with dirt clods. Finally, we made it to higher ground. 

I got out, thanked Jackson, and we started unhooking the chains. Then he said it. I know he couldn’t help it. If I had been in his place, I would have said it too. “Mr. Clay, it looks like it takes a Chevy to pull out a Ford every time.”   

I wanted to respond that technically, Jackson was driving a GMC, which is a Chevy with a different nameplate. Still, he had me.   

Jesus told a story about a man who was stuck in the ditch on the side of the road after he had been robbed and beaten. A Priest and a Levite passed the man by; a Samaritan stopped and helped the man out of the ditch, onto his donkey, and into an inn. There are lots of applications of that story, but at least one is the man in the ditch didn’t care who helped him as long as somebody did.   

In the end, it wasn’t important if it was a Ford or a Chevy that pulled me out of the mud. The important thing was somebody, Jackson came. The main thing is to get unstuck. The name on the truck doesn’t matter as long as you get out of the ditch.