It all started one dark and chilly January evening, by the arid light of a halogen lamp trained on the hulk like a spotlight on a sunken battleship....

Crashbox and I spent a good deal of time rummaging about in the barn looking for an attachment for the air compressor, so we could remove the first layer of eucalyptus leaves, mouse leavings, hanging moss.  Failing in this quest, further diligent searching turned up a water hose that we managed to coax a trickle from, a trickle like that from a drinking fountain. With this and a kitchen scrub brush we spent half an hour on the interior.  We vowed then and there that the first priority would be to Get the Thing Running...and then move it somewhere we could Get the Thing Clean (and refix all the temporary fixes needed in the first phase, such as the tranny cooler dangling by its own entrails, and the transmission spout stuffed with a rag).  This cold, dark, depressing arrangement needed to change before morale could be sparked and the will to conquer, awoken....

I feel very late to the scene.  As conversation goes on I learn exactly how much this old truck was a part of everyone's life at The Ranch, and everyone seems to regard it with the same sort of bemused bewilderment that they would a crazy sheep dog...always there, tolerated gently, but always under the skin, and practically speaking it would be better if we put a bullet through its head....

Maybe that's all it takes for the crazy sheep dog, though...just another fresh attitude, a spark of optimism in someone who doesn't know the history (doesn't know about the dead sheep, all the hundreds of dollars spent in time, frustration and desperation)