This old Ford saved me, now it's my turn!

Hi. My name’s Jason and I’d appreciate a few moments of your time. I would like to tell you about the last few years in my life. However, before that, I would like to talk about the 1995 Blue Ford, F-150. Yes, an OBS Ford. Now, before you go running to warn your friends about another Ford guy, let me say, this. I’m not a Ford guy. I am not even a car guy. What I am is someone who loves the richness of the past. And I have always found myself connected to the items that connect us to that past. Throughout my life, I sought these nostalgic pieces of history. I feel a strong desire to preserve them. Sometimes restore them and then continue to use them as a tribute to the people and places they represent. That’s where the Ford comes in. Seven years ago, I owned a small sound-and-lighting company called Balance Lighting Systems. It was a lot of work and even more driving, pulling loaded trailers. One particular gig day, I was on my way to Hot Springs, Arkansas, when my truck broke down. It was terminal. I was out of the options and late for a very important event. I remembered the old truck that my grandfather had.

My grandparents owned the land where they had parked the truck for many years. They enjoyed their sunset years and no longer drove. So I asked and was giving the green light to see if I could get this rust bucket back on the road. This was when I first experienced what “built Ford tough”? really means. When I found her, she was two tires down, 13 bags of trash in the cab, a bed full of oil-soaked tools, and three quarts low in oil. She had been parked on the hill, and moss had grown on her south side. With very little time put into working on it, I threw a hot battery under the hood and turned the key. Nothing. Not even the typical heart-drooping clunk of a stuck engine. I remembered Fords have a solenoid on the inner fender that, when shorted, will engage the starter. I grabbed a screwdriver, popped the hood and crossed my fingers. A spark flew off the solenoid as the aging truck roared to life. After 15 min of idling and fluid checks, I was out of time. Therefore, I jumped in, rolled down the windows, and put the truck in drive. That weekend, I put nearly 350 miles on that Ford. Nearly all of those miles were highway miles, and all of them had me pulling overloaded cargo trawlers. No oil change. No transmission flush. Not so much as a check of the windshield washing fluid. I could not help but smile widely with happiness, as we accomplished the impossible. After that weekend, myself and the old Blue Ford were connected. I committed to bringing the truck back to life. Extensive cleaning and maintenance became my hobby. Over the next 2 years, I fell in love with the truck.

Circumstances being what they usually are, came a point when I had to surrender the truck back to my grandparents. It broke my heart, but at the end of the day, she was not mine, and she had to go home. I resigned myself to the understanding that my time with Blue was over and I moved on.

In Late 2021, I was riding my motorcycle on a lovely fallen day. As I pulled away from the stop sign, a car in the oncoming lane topped the hill ahead of me. They drifted just over the centerline into my lane, and I had to react quickly. I was not going very fast. Maybe ten miles an hour. Therefore, I decided to dump the bike and the gentle impact of the asphalt over the potential head on collision with the car. This worked as planned, and I found myself laying on the road with a 900lb motorcycle sandwiching my right foot between it and the ground. I was pinned pretty good. could not get any leverage to get the thing off of me, and by now I was starting to realize that my foot was badly injured from the weight. I good Samaritan saw me and stopped to give me a hand. Got up, thanked the gentleman and got on the bike, then drove away. The next day when I woke up I realized how bad things were. My foot was swollen and red. Intense and radiating pain rolled up past the knee. I was in trouble. Little did I know everything was about to change?

Over the course of the next few days, the pain and swelling continued to worsen. I started running a constant low-grade fever, and I was lethargic. When I finally found my limit, and called an ambulance. I was taken to the hospital were, honestly, answers were few and confusion was plentiful. Test, more tests, then more tests. So many needles and tubes and the list goes on. Finally the results were in. MRSA which stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Basically, the worst possible infection a person can have. Seems there had been an abase in my foot, and when the bike fell on it, it ruptured. Allowing it to spread rapidly up my leg. I was in surgery later that day. My Dr. was trying to save my foot.

The first surgery yielded no real improvement; therefore, a second surgery was scheduled. What I found out by having a couple of big surgeries only days apart was that your body is in no way able to deal with that kind of trauma. A person weakens quickly. I found myself in the ICU at Baptist Health. I also found myself facing a third surgery. See, time was running out. I had 4 IV’s going, two in each arm. All of them pumping the most powerful antibiotics on earth into my body. And they weren’t having any affect on the infection or the rate at which it was spreading. here were concerns that without warning it could get into my heart or other organs, and if that happened, the entire experience would become a simple countdown.

The Dr. was willing to try one last time to save my foot. On the day, I was in preoperative signing forms and prepared for the surgery when the nurse removed the bandages from my foot. This was the first time I’d seen it since the previous operation. The foot was destroyed. I’m not sure if it was the infection, the massive incisions , or a combination of both, but I didn’t need my PHD to know that that foot was not going to do much walking ever again, even if this surgery was a success. I asked my Dr. I said “shoot me straight, what are my real odds of this working here”, he replied in a dry, unemotional, factual way “20%, at best”. And without hesitation I said “What would it take to cut it off today instead of whatever you were planning.” And what that man said will stay with me for the rest of my life. He said “all I gotta do is go get the bone saw”. I said “Let’s do It” and anew updated forms later I was going in for a right side, below the knee, leg amputation.

I spent the next four weeks in the ICU. Coming so close to death on more than one occasion that the hospital called my family and loved ones and told them to come say what they needed to say. As summer gave way to fall. As I laid there day after day, I started to improve. Eventually getting to the point I was able to be discharged and sent home. I had to give myself IV’s every day for the following 6 weeks. I was on more medications than I could recall. Nurses visited my house daily for several months. But I recovered. I healed. Nearly six months later, I was fitted to my first prosthesis. It was uncomfortable and awkward, but I was able to walk a few more steps. I started to feel like there may be some future left for me, and I committed to doing the hard work of training myself and my new limb to function to a point I could move around the world again. And I did. I was walking and I was driving. I could feel the pull of life, calling me back to a recognizable degree of normalcy.

One night in January, I went to bed. I took off my prosthetic and laid down. That was when I felt a very slight pain in my left foot. This was odd because I had neuropathy in that foot and did not feel much anything, especially at the bottom of the foot. When I investigated this, I found a small blister. When I disturbed it, it ruptured, and I knew at that moment what was happening. Infections are ravenous things. Evolved over millions of years to be the perfect vehicles of destruction, they know like any good figure knows, when they are beaten. A bacteria knows nothing of pride so sacrifice is a foreign concept. In the light of certain death, they will retreat. Sometimes to the fluid that lubricates the locomotion of our bones. Sometimes to the kidneys or intestines’. There are countless places in the body where these assassins’ can hold up and hide out. Away from the prying eyes of the immune system. Patiently lurking, waiting for the next time you are compromised in a way that will allow them to move in and colonize. And once they have a beachhead, the have no intentions of giving up. So, four days later I was again laying on a stainless-steel table being told that we were going to try and save this foot, but all signs pointed to that being a frivolous venture. Three operations later, I gave up my left leg below the knee, becoming a bilateral below-the-knee embolism patient, at 42 years old.

Again, I recovered slowly. Again I slowly heled. Again I went home and again and again and again, all the same. When I say this was the most challenging experience to ever cross my path, I only used those particular words because I lack the knowledge of the words that would adequately describe the fear and confusion that comes with something like that. Violent mood swings, heavy opioid dependence, and addiction. And a body that refused to believe it no longer had feet. I felt my feet well, and I felt pain where the feet should be. For months, I barely slept because my body refused to relax. For a long time, I would attempt to get up from the couch and be jolted back to the realization that I was unable to do so. However, over time, I was fitted for a prosthetic, I put those prosthetics on, and I stood up. I stood and las if I was from Notre Dam, I drug myself around the house. Then to the car. Then, I relearned how to drive, learned how to walk up an incline, and so on. Until I got to a point where every step didn’t fill my conscience brain with decisions to make. For a while, my entire world shrank to the distance between my steps. I stared at the gerund. I didn’t swing my arms. I focused exclusively on the next step. Where to put my heal. How hard to push off. Things that for 40+ years I hadn’t given any thought to. but, over time, this stress diminished. The world began to expand again. I became able to again feel the tug of a semblance of normalcy pull at me, begging me to come back to my life and see what was left.

Then one day my mother calls, and says she has something for me to see. 5 minutes later she turns the corner, driving a 1995 Blue Ford F0-150. It was filthy. It was ugly. Belts were screaming. Someone had tried to primer the bed. The trim was hanging of of it and it smelled like a combination of mice and ay old tuna but, she was there, still running, still wanting to move, and probably feeling the tug of normalcy just as I was. The truck gave me a purpose. As long as I had that truck to work on. AAs long as when I was having a bad day I could go for a drive in my Blue Ford, I could find a pathway in my mind that would lead me back to the possibility of a day where I could be.. Me... again. And so, for the last 3 years, this has been my situation. Until a couple of months ago.

The fold truck has a quarter million miles on it. I see a few bucks each month from a disability check but other than that and Somme odds and ends jobs I pick up, my abundances is in character, not cash. A while back the truck dumped all of this transmission fluid on the ground in the Arby’s drive through. I got it hone and spent the money to service the transmission myself. I did, and everything seemed to be okay, until I did some freeway miles. Then it happened again. I got her home that time and parked it. I’m sure it’s a front transmission seal that has blown out. Which requires pulling the entire transmission out of the vehicle to fix. I’ve called every reputable transmission shop in my area and most of them simply wont take on something that big with that many miles, that ‘s that old. There are other issues that would come into play as well. The rear main seal on the engine should be replaced if the transmission is dropped. IF you do the front seal on the trans, you may as well do the rear. And with that many miles, you need a new torque converter. Every shop that would talk to me about working on it would require me to do a full transmission rebuild, which would run just north of $4,500 bucks. And to be blunt, that’s not going to be possible for me now, or a =t any time in the foreseeable future.

So I’m faced with limited options. Really, I have one. Park the truck. Allow time and the elements to finally have her. And watch her slowly be consumed by mother nature.

or...

If I could convince enough of you to chip in a tiny few dollars, maybe it doesn’t have to be the end. Maybe I can continue to preserve both the memory of my grandfather as well as the catalyst that inspired me to work to overcome what someone would consider a life ending disability. I am very hopeful that it’s the later. I would be honored to continue being able to work on, upgrade, improve, rebuild and remember my old Blue 1995 Ford F150. And I’m asking you to be p[art of that journey with me.

Jason Haynie

Little Rock, Arkansas

Any funds raised through this gofundme will be used to restore my transportation. Once these goals are accomplished I'll happily discontinue this project. If you have any questions feel free to email me via the link on this page.