Grandpa's Truck

So when my siblings and I moved into this house 9 1/2 years ago we brought with us my Grandpa's truck. That was in 1999. Nobody was driving the truck. The last time it was registered and licensed was 1995. But my dad didn't want to take it to Boise (or maybe my mom wouldn't let him more likely, but nobody (my dad and Trent) wanted to get rid of it. So, lucky for us we had bought a house that had a RV pad on the side of the house so it had somewhere to park. At that time we also had a camper on it. Trent sold or got rid of that a few years later...I'm not sure of the details. I remember once Trent got the truck running and drove it around the block a few times. Then it sat again. It's been there for all these years getting rusty with junk and garbage thrown in the bed. Well, somewhere along the way I had heard that it might be illegal to have an unlicensed/unregistered non-running vehicle parked on your property here in the beautiful city of Sandy. It was parked on the side and kind of considered part of the backyard so we thought it was probably okay but maybe not. Oh well. On with life. Well, a few weeks ago I got a knock at the door. The truck outside said Sandy City Compliance Something or other. Hmmmm. The gentleman went on to tell me that it was against city code and that he tried to run the plates and nothing came up at all. He wasn't sure how long it had been sitting there but he just couldn't find it on record at all. He even called it in to some office or some sort to find it and nothing. He just kept saying he didn't know how long it had been sitting there. I, of course, wasn't going to tell him it had been almost a DECADE. I think he was trying to get me so say because he said that like five times. I just asked what we needed to do. The answer... (here's a list in honor of my sistah)

1. Enclose it in a garage- out of the question because all OUR junk is strewn out all over and we just weren't going to clean it out.

2. Get in licensed and registered- It doesn't run, so getting it running and up to safety and emmissions standards within two weeks....impossible.

3. Get a restore permit that last 6months. Then after that it has to be licensed and registered.-

an option definitely...but don't think the work will be done in 6 months. It needs ALOT of work and it takes money and I think the person (Trent) who's planning on restoring it is thinking it to be a little bit here...a little there type project. Not a 6 month project.

We had two weeks to comply. Phone calls to dad, Trent having heart to heart talks with his wife, a decision was made. Trent spent a day or two working on getting it started. He was quite ingenius with the fuel pump from what I understand. He drove it away and took it to his house. He joked about putting it on the side of his house until he gets a warning. I laughed and said it was a good idea. He might get away with it for another 10 years!

Now we have all this room on the side of the house. It still seems odd when I pull into the drive. It seems so wide open. We really want to finish the fence now.

A few days passed our due date for city code compliance, I was in the living room and the guy drove by our house real slow and stopped for a moment. I thought to myself that it must give him lots of job satisfaction to see our truck gone. Good for him.