My brother turned fifteen in 1971. I was twelve. Neither of us had ever seen an ATV and the only “Grave Digger” I knew of, was a fellow who actually dug graves. Our farm in middle Georgia was 5 miles of swampy roads from the best hunting in the county. The swampland that bordered the Oconee river was full of deer, hogs, duck, squirrel and turkey. The river frequently flooded and receded, leaving the roads inaccessible. Few people hunted this area and those who did, got there by boat. A jeep would have been the perfect solution, only we didn’t own and couldn’t afford one. My brother had the idea that we needed our own vehicle that could make the trip. We got a ride from a friend to Pitts Used Car Lot, where my brother purchased a 1953 Chevy truck for the sum of $75 and drove it home with only a learner’s permit. Our first hunting trip in the truck ended up in an hour long walk back to the house after the truck got stuck in the first mud hole we attempted to navigate. We took our tractor and a log chain back to retrieve the truck and re-grouped once we got home. He said that we needed bigger, knobby tires like our tractor. We found some wheels and tires from an armored personnel carrier that had been disposed of by the local National Guard. The tires were tall, knobby and bullet-proof. Well, not actually bullet-proof, but the rubber was so stiff that they didn’t need air, and wouldn’t deflate when shot. Thankfully we never need needed the bullet-proof feature. We welded the wheels to the rear rims of the truck. To compensate for the elevated rear from the new tires, we replaced the front axel with the front-end from a 2-ton truck from the junk yard. Everything worked perfectly except that the 3 speed transmission wasn’t geared low enough to turn the wheels efficiently. Back to the junk yard where we found a 4 speed transmission that worked perfectly with our six cylinder engine. Soon after we took our “jacked-up” 1953 Chevy out on a hog hunting trip through the river swamp. We rolled through the first mud hole with no problem but while driving through about 18” of water, the back wheels surprisingly started spinning in the mud. We couldn’t believe that those huge tires couldn’t grip the mud, so I climbed through the window to find that our rims were actually spinning around inside the air-less bullet proof tires. I chained the tire to the rim and we were off without a problem. After that day that I can’t remember encountering anything that the truck couldn’t roll over or through.

It seems like every avid hunter today has a truck with 4 wheel drive and an ATV giving them access to the best hunting spots. Forty years ago that wasn’t the case. At least for us.

History books may teach that rural America was once a deprived, lonely place full of simple minded people, but in 1971, on a farm in middle Georgia, every day was an adventure and I watched a 15 year old genius turn $75, and a pioneer spirit, into an all terrain vehicle.