TEXAS NEIGHBORS | SUMMER 2019 \FORD TOUGH TALES\ LEGENDS: Tori Marnell By Jennifer Dorsett Field Editor If trucks could talk, Old Blue would likely have a few good stories to tell. After all, the 1964 Ford pickup has been around for four genera-tions and more than 50 years. It’s been in Tori Marnell’s family long enough to go from brand-new ride to dependable farm truck to embarrassingly old hand-me-down to hip again. “My dad bought the pickup from a Ford house in Happy, Texas, brand new,” Albert Irlbeck, Tori’s father, said. “We’ve had it ever since. It’s served its purpose several times over.” In 1964, when Albert’s dad brought it home to Tulia, the shiny new pickup was used on the farm. It hauled feed and seed, pulled cot-ton trailers to the gin—whatever he needed. Despite the heavy use, the truck never stopped. Albert’s younger brother inher-ited the pickup and drove it to high school. He then took the truck on another adventure when he moved to Lubbock to attend Texas Tech University. After he graduated, he and the truck came back to the farm. This time, Old Blue was used mainly as a transport vehicle. The Irlbeck family would pull it behind a tractor when they were moving equipment to different fields. The truck was eventually put out to pasture. But when Albert’s twin daughters, Tori and Tara, were old enough to drive themselves to school, he remembered Old Blue. “It sat for about 10 or 15 years, and then my girls needed a way to get to school,” Albert said. “So I re-stored it a little bit, repainted it, and they drove it to school.” Albert and the girls’ younger brother, Scott, spent a summer rebuilding the engine and fixing up the truck, including that new paint job—in the original baby blue WWW.TEXASFARMBUREAU.ORG shade. And that’s how Old Blue’s nickname came to be. “As two freshman girls, we weren’t that excited about an old 1964 pickup,” Tori said. “We were a little embarrassed to drive an old pickup to school, but pretty soon, everybody thought it was kind of cool.” It did have a few kinks, though. The truck has a standard transmis-sion known as “three on the tree,” where the gear shifter is on the steering column. “If you don’t shift the gear right, it gets stuck in between gears,” Tori said. “So you have to get out, get under the hood, pull on a special piece of baling wire Dad had rigged up to pull it out of gear, and then get back in and go.” Scott drove it to school next, after Tori and Tara. Old Blue once again sat in a barn after that, un-used until Tori’s son, Mason, was old enough to drive. “It just kind of happened, be-cause I got to the age where I could drive, and I didn’t have a car,” Mason said. “And my grand-pa said, ‘Hey, I have this truck just sitting here, and your mom drove it.’” After some tune-up, Old Blue was back in action with the fourth generation. “I took it to school one day,” Ma-son said. “And everyone was ask-ing, ‘Where’d you get that truck?’ And I said, ‘Oh, my grandpa’s let-ting me use it.’ People thought it was cool, because it’s so old.” The interior of the cab is nearly pristine, and the paint job of long ago is still holding up. It’s so old now, Mason said with a grin, it’s “vintage.” And vintage is hip. So Old Blue is, too. Mason said it may not have some of the modern convenienc-es his friends’ cars have—air con-ditioning, power steering or a way to charge a phone—but Old Blue’s history and character make up for its lack of luxuries. “Sometimes when I’m driving, I think about how my mom, my grandpa and my great-grandpa have all been in this cab, in the same spot I am,” Mason said. Tori smiled as she reflected on the years of memories with Old Blue. That dependable old Ford is a family legacy. One she’s proud of. It stands for more than just a hand-me-down truck and good story. “My dad is so talented,” Tori said. “He fixed every tractor, every piece of equipment. He could fix anything. To me, it’s a tribute to him and the talent that he’s devel-oped over his lifetime, working on mechanical stuff. Watching him with my son, teaching him about engines and passing his knowl-edge down, I think that’s part of the fun of it.”