Eddie
Eddie is a 1976 Jeep CJ-7, Mostly.... ... . .. .
Eddie, Kane Creek (2002)
In 1996 I was selected to drive up to Camp Loll near Yellowstone and bring some scouts home. On that trip one of the Assistant Scoutmasters (Steve) road home with me. We talked about a lot of things. The subject we spent most of the time talking about was jeeps. My oldest daughter had been harassing me about getting a jeep so I enjoyed the conversation and learned a lot about jeeps on this ride home. At the time I was comuting to work in Salt Lake City and on my way I passed through Kaysville City and kaysville Jr. High. A couple of weeks after my trip to camp Loll a jeep showed up in the parking lot of the school with a for sale sign in it. For the first couple of weeks I refused to look but could still see the jeep out of the corner of my eye. Then I started turning my head and looking. I kept telling myself that I didn't realy want a jeep, I could not afford it and on and on. Then one Saturday my son had a soccor game at the school. After the game I stopped and took a closer look. It was prety nice. At the time I couldn't tell you any more about it. It was a jeep, that is all I knew. I called up Steve and told him that I found a jeep and was wondering if he could come with me and take a look. On our way there Steve asked me a couple of questions. All I could say was "It is a Jeep". Before the van was stopped Steves eyes were bugging out and his jaw hit the floor. I got stopped and he was over checking out the jeep, poking he head here and there ooing and awing and saying things like "hard Doors", "Hard Top", "Not Much Rust". I just kept nodding my head and smiling. Then he rolled out from under the jeep and with a long moan said "It took me 3 years to find that". It was the mother load of transmissions so to speak. The Worner Bourg T-18. I had not idea what T-18 meant. Maybe a mistake. maybe he was saying F-18 like navy Jet. He looked at me and said "If you don't buy this I will!". We kept checking things out. The engine was the AMC 6 cylander 258 with a stock carter carb. The front axle was a Dana model 30 and the rear was the AMC 20. The gears were the sought after 4.10:1 ratio. Everything was pretty clean. The only thing that was noticable for that old of a vehicle was a little oil dropping from the right rear axle. We talked about that and decided that it was most likely from a leaking outer seel and could be replace for around $15.00 for parts. So I called the number on the for sale sign and discovered that the owner was a neighbor of my dad. Somebody I knew. That was good since I didn't have any money for a jeep. We worked out a deal though. I paied $1500 up front then an additional $1500 over the next couple of months. The total was $3000.00 Ok, so you are still wondering were the Eddie thing comes from. Over the years all of our vehicles have been given names. I think this origionated from my youth when we had names for the things we drove. I call them things because for the most part they could not be classified as cars, maybe wrecks but not really cars. My first was a 1968 Olds Delta 88. It was a very big very ugly car with a realy neet large block 400. It could really go. It's name was "La Bomb". The name I remember most though was my good friend Scott. He drove an old Chevy short bed with a racing motor in it. Its name was "Hey the Truck". Scotts dad raced cracker box boats. He was very good and placed 2nd in the 1976 winter nationals. Every vehicle they had, had a special motor in it, including Hey the Truck. We could race and beat just about anything on the road, in a truck. Any way, enough of that. Eddie was named by one of my sons. We went through a number of names like "Put Put" because of the sound he made. For a while Eddie had this small stuffed owl (the kind you get at fast food places) hanging from the rear view mirror. We all called it Eddie the Owl. One day the Owl blew away when I was driving down the highway. Everybody was prety heart broken but most of us continued to refer to the jeep as Eddie. Eddie became very comfrotable along side our other autos, "Antuan" a 1990 Honda Civic wagon car and "Stevey Ray" a 1990 Mazda MPV Van. Unfortunatly both Antuan and Stevey Ray are no longer with us. Shortly after my oldest son got his drivers liscence Antuan was involved in an accident. The accident was not very severe but Antuan never recovered. Stevey Ray lived a full life but sucombed to a bad heart (engine) condition at the fruitfull age of about 137,000 miles. We miss both Antuan and Stevey Ray dearly.