By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — Great cars are often worthy of a name and in this case, the name was Thriller. Actually it was Thiller, but we’ll get to that later.
Thriller was two-wheel drive Ford pickup, born in 1972 – about 10 years before Rod Wardwell purchased her. Whatever parts of the Ford weren’t covered in rust were coated with a puke-green paint and “it was completely rotted out when I bought it,” Wardwell said.
The only thing keeping Thriller from leaving pieces of itself wherever it went was a mish mash of rivets and screws that held her together quite nicely.
The euphemism “resourceful” comes to mind. Maybe even “creative.”
Thriller’s previous owner had used an assortment of household items to keep the vehicle running — instead of normal vehicle-style hinges on the hood, for example, Thriller had door hinges.
Like the ones found on most bedroom doors.
But Thriller wore them loud and proud, and as the unconventional repair was placed on the vehicle’s exterior, they eventually took on a shade of rust that really complimented the paint job.
The door hinges did the job, and under the hood was another one of Thriller’s fun facets: a shovel handle.
In order to keep the hood in the upright position, a shovel handle was stashed under the hood to be shoved in place just-so.
To keep the shovel handle nice and warm during Aroostook winters, Wardwell added some high quality down insulation.
Actually, he took the truck partridge hunting with some friends and somehow bird feathers found their way under the hood permanently like some sort of mechanical pillow-fight gone wrong.
Speaking of gone wrong, shifting the truck was a bit of a stretch — particularly between first and second gear.
“The floor shifter was on the column, but we modified it so that it was on the floor; first gear was way back next to the driver seat and second gear was clear ahead where the firewall was,” Wardwell explained, laughing at the handiwork. “Then you had to go back for third gear.”
Eventually the muffler fell off, and it was replaced by a straight pipe.
“That was kind of the thing with the truck — if stuff happened to it and we didn’t need it, we just omitted it,” Wardwell said.
Thriller may not have been much to look at, but her charm was irresistible for Wardwell back in the ‘80s, namely because the truck was $200.
“I intended just to drive it for a month or so,” Wardwell said, and he ended up driving the truck for two or three years. Making the truck even sweeter was the fact that he was able to sell it for another $100.
Back in the 80s, Wardwell’s friends were a little confused as to why he was driving around this rusted, puke-green vehicle when he worked at the car dealership Northern Sales — particularly when he rolled into work one afternoon with a bit of fauna attached to the truck.
As Thriller was this rusted-out two-wheel drive truck that only cost a couple hundred bucks, Wardwell had no qualms about taking the truck four wheeling — which is inherently a misnomer for the old Ford.
But Wardwell and a friend from work took Thriller four-wheeling none-the-less, even on a big hill around town one afternoon — laughing the whole time in disbelief that the little truck was able to make it up and down the hill without incident.
When their lunch break concluded, the pair headed back to work and noticed everyone staring at them out of the front window.
“I said ‘geeze, are we really late?’ and he said ‘no, no more than usual,’” Wardwell said.
Turns out they’d picked up a leafy hitchhiker during their four-wheeling fun — a poplar tree at least 10 feet tall had gotten perpendicularly wedged in the back bumper, so that it waved in the air like some enormous natural antenna as Thriller drove down the road.
“We drove in the back dooryard with that tree caught in the rear bumper — with branches and leaves and all on there,” Wardwell said laughing.
Thriller was always up for an adventure and would get Wardwell and his friends wherever they were going — but stopping was another matter.
For the brakes to work, the driver had to pump them.
“The first pump didn’t work too good, but by the third pump it would work just fine,” Wardwell said.
Headed out to lunch one day, Wardwell’s friend wanted to drive Thriller.
Wardwell agreed, and informed his friend that the brakes needed to be pumped three times; the friend, however, responded with “don’t tell me how to drive.”
If the driver failed to pump the brakes, Thriller’s rear wheel would drag and it would unleash an out-of-this-world screech that would startle anyone near the truck.
Of course, the friend forgot to pump and Thriller let out a screech; again, the friend told Wardwell not to tell him how to drive.
The pair arrived at the restaurant and this time, the friend remembered to pump the brakes.
But it would have been better if he’d remembered to pump them more than once.
“We ran into a vehicle,” Wardwell remembered, laughing at the story. The pair found the vehicles owner in the restaurant; it turns out he wasn’t upset about the no-damage collision, and he even laughed — possibly at both the story and the sight of the truck.
With its colorful history, one of Wardwell’s friends decided to officially name the truck one evening.
Wardwell was occupied doing some work as the friend ventured off to formalize the moniker and returning, the friend said, “come check this out!”
“At the time, Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ was the hottest thing going … and on the tailgate he wrote ‘Thriller,’” Wardwell said.
“ … well he actually didn’t write ‘Thriller’ — he wrote ‘Thiller;’ we tried to make it read ‘Thriller,’ but …” Wardwell said.
Painted on the back of the tailgate with a magic marker, the misspelled name stuck with the truck for the rest of its days with Wardwell.
Having the name of Thriller, misspelling at that, for a truck that Wardwell concluded stories about with phrases like “I was younger and foolish,” and “of course, we were just acting out” — Thriller (or Thiller) was quite possibly the most aptly named vehicle that the region has ever known.
If readers have any great stories about their vehicles, like the story of Thriller, they’re encouraged to contact the Aroostook Republican at 496-3251 for our next vehicle-devoted pages in the fall.
