Historic Willits Housetruck

Our goal is to expose the world to alternative lifestyles, through a sense of community. Our truck is called The Aquarius, shes a logging truck from Willits California, with a wooden house built onto the back. Many call this a Tiny House. We embrace uniqueness, and found this to be a time capsule. From its birth in the 1940s, to it's addition in the 1960s, it has survived 70 years to teach us something. Our history is important. Our logging history in California is important, there are very few logging trucks left in existence. A product of the nature of the field, the trucks were loaded down far past their abilities. In the 1960s it was brought to San Francisco and made into a home. There was a push for alternative lifestyles at that time, urban homesteading, or pioneering. The idea came from New Zealand where there is a diverse culture of house trucks, where migrant farmers followed the harvest seasons, this being the most comfortable way to do so. It's a type of shoestring living, you find something, and you make it work. When my boyfriend Harper and I found this vessel, we were living in our car, trying to go to college. We had just come home from East Texas, having experianced the inability to survive in any costly lifestyle out there. We didnt ask for much, just enough. We became resourceful, so we started to look into other means to survival. When you can't afford to live in a house, but a car is too small, what might be in between? An RV was then our mission. However craigslist doesnt offer many running RVs for what little money we had. It was sheer luck that we found the Aquarius there, just as we were passing through stockton. We didnt know much more about fixing cars than basic maintenance, but it was about time we learned. When we came to own this truck, it did not run. Time had rusted it frozen. It took 3 months to wiggle the pistons free, and even then we took the head of the engine off to clean out rust, and unstick the rest of the valves. The carburetor was having compression problems, so we found another White truck of the same year half way across the country, and used that carburetor. It was a Stromberg Aerotype model, they don't make them anymore. We replaced the ignition coil, which is still a 6 volt system, as well as the fuel pump which was original from the 1940s, and surprisingly electric, not manual. We are working to keep all parts original to it's time. In this case, we need to repair what we already have within the truck itself. Hence making do. At first we calculated our total cost to be 4,000 dollars. Now we have gotten half way through, and are to the point where we need only a few more things to restore it's running power, as well as aesthetic things to restore it's iconic appearance.

For opperations:
•$300 starter
•$600 gas tank lining
•$20 timing light
•$40 water pump leak seal
•$15 oil can tin man
•$20 cheap oil
•$50 ratchet set
•$100 new wires

For Aesthetic:
•$150 spray rig
•$50 evergreen car paint
•$200 New windows in cab
•$225 Cab seats

With help from you, and our community, you will be contributing to a piece of vital California History. This will give us the opportunity to give back to the community, in the way of homemade, old time goods. With every in-person donation we will be able to give jars of homemade jams and preserves, as well as bread, and dried fruits. In addition to materials we give back to the community, the proceeds of this project will make it so that we can volunteer our time working for the organic farms not just in California, but nation wide, spreading the importance of healthy and natural organic produce to all reaches of our country. Every dollar contributed helps, please let me know if you would like to be on our post card mailing list.