the first jeep

my love of jeeps began accidentally. my first car was a 1983 oldsmobile hatchback that i never really had any interest in working on. my dad, who did all of his own maintenance and repair work, had to talk me through my first oil change, but the transverse 1.8 liter's oil filter, accessible only by crawling under the car parked on ramps was akin to a death defying sticking your head in the lion's mouth sort of stunt. i liked that car, but knew that it was a matter of time before it rolled off the ramps and crushed my chest, not from an impulse created by animosity, but a misplaced sense of comradery. laying beneath a car trying to get to an oily, dirty, greasy undercarriage that looked as alien to me as any sci-fi movie spaceship wasn't a comforting experience.
i was about 23 or 24 when i began thinking about what it would be like to work on and get to know a vehicle that i really was curious about. but how would that fascination take form? i thought briefly about a volkswagen beetle, simple, old, geeky and probably alot simpler to work on than the cramped engine compartment of the olds. but living in the great northeast produced no beetles that were not rusted and rotted out. most were of the vintage that had gaping holes where the floorboards should have been. thirty years of rust and salt over the winters take their toll.
and then one day, i found an ad for a jeep. not just any jeep, but a cheap one. 500 dollars and get this, it was a right hand drive postal jeep. it was on a farm about thirty miles from where i lived and i went to see it. two farm boys were driving it around the farm, but one was getting married and wanted the money, so they were selling it. it was a retired postal jeep, still in its red, white and blue factory configured paint scheme with one major exception- the farm boys had painted a crude large white skull and crossbones onto the hood. years after i painted the whole jeep that outline of the skull and crossbones still showed through.