WORDS & PHOTOS: NEVIN PONTIOUS
n the age of information, the internet seems to have a lot of answers to a lot of questions, but there’s beauty in the unknown. And believe it or not, there’s still some things that don’t live on the web; still out there waiting to be discovered. There’s refreshing mystery and meaning to be found in the unanswered, and that is what you get when you find a batch of old film slides at an estate sale—a snapshot into someone else’s world leaving our own imaginations to piece together stories and connect the dots. In this case, the thread connecting the dots is a vintage Scout 800™ truck, the vessel of transportation in which a man named Doc and his family explored the American West sometime in the early ’70s.
The Discovery
These slides were uncovered while rummaging through the remaining piles of brick-a-brack junk at a well picked-thru estate sale in Pasadena, CA. What initially looked like a pile of empty circular Kodak® slideshow trays proved to be a treasure trove of color slides from a cheap Kodak Instamatic camera—forgotten memories cast aside and collecting dust in the corner of a garage for years. This sort of photographic archeology is fascinating as there’s a wild sense of discovery and allure to seeing the visual diary of a complete stranger’s life. The only piece of information available from the people running the estate sale was that a man named Doc had died and his family wanted everything gone. Maybe these slides weren’t lost at all? Maybe they were simply discarded as meaningless junk; a story unworthy of sentiment.
Well, now Doc’s photo albums have been found. And they’re pretty dang cool.
What unravels appears to be the story of “a great American road trip” in an International® Scout 800. A simpler time when the family piled into the truck and hit the open road to see the sights of the West: The Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Zion, and Tombstone. Photos of small-town America in the early ’70s and the landscape flying by the side window. No singular photo stands out to be the pinnacle of photographic greatness, but as a whole, the collection of images reveals that Doc sure loved his Scout truck and it took him and his family all over the place. Now that’s a life well lived.
There’s an enduring quality about these images. The slides are dusty, the photos aren’t sharp, and the scans themselves reflect a sun-faded patina of an era where everything was analog and gritty and that’s alright because that was the way it was meant to be.
The Adventures Live On
There’s something rich about seeing the slides and re-living these second-hand memories. The experiences themselves aren’t ours. But there’s something in them we can all share collectively—a nostalgia and respect that reminds us of our own experiences of road trips and the connection we have to our vehicles, our family, the land, and the road. We’re all a part of that tapestry, the fabric of our collective experience. Down the road 50 or 60 years from now someone else will unearth our own albums and maybe they’ll feel the same sense of pride in being a part of something bigger and maybe they’ll have that same desire for adventure that we have.
Behind the wheel of his Scout 800 vessel, Doc doesn’t seem like a stranger whose film slides ended up as anonymous relics…he now seems more like that mysterious great uncle that we never met, but always heard stories about around Thanksgiving dinner. His adventures in the Scout® truck live on.
It begs the question as to where Doc’s old truck is today. It’s easy to imagine it sun faded with the winch still bolted to the front bumper just how Doc had it. The old gas probably smells like paint varnish and the battery is dead, but with a carb clean and some fresh fuel, she’d surely fire right up. Because as they say, “Scouts Always Come Back.”
Godspeed, Doc.
