My New Jeep Comanche Is More Than Just A Machine, But It’s Also Just A Machine

“I told my wife when I bought the Jeep Comanche that it was gonna be a ‘rest of my life’ pickup,” Bill, the man who sold me my new 1992 Jeep Comanche, told me. “[Cancer] is the only reason I’m selling it. I didn’t have any intentions of getting rid of it at all. Needed the money to pay for a pickup to get to the cancer chair where I’m sitting right now, getting an infusion.” So on Thursday morning, Bill parted ways with the truck after waiting multiple months for me to fly up from LA, because even though he didn’t know me, he thought I’d give the truck a good home. And that mattered to Bill.

When Bill said goodbye to the Comanche, it became clear to me that it was both more than a machine and also just a machine.

You see, this wasn’t just some regular pickup truck to Bill; it was his dream pickup — one that he bought from a man named Jim, who also loved the truck.

“He had other pickups. He was a retired sawmill worker and had a small farm,” Bill told me of the older gentleman he’d purchased the truck from about four years ago. “If [Jim] was farming, he was in his farm pickup. If he was fishing or hunting or looking for coyotes to shoot, he was in the Jeep.”

Jim was known in Bill’s small Idaho town for driving a small red pickup at hilariously low speeds, usually on gravel roads. “That truck spent almost its whole life at 35 mph,” Bill joked. “It was his fishing and hunting vehicle, and also a saddle horse, just to drive around and watch the country … Usually had a rifle beside him on the seat and fishing poles in the back.”

The truck had initially been sold in Lewiston, Idaho, about 55 miles from Bill’s hometown, and after 40,000 miles, Jim purchased it, per the Carfax report. Jim loved it.

“[He talked about it] like you and I talk about it,” Bill said of the now-departed red-truck-cruiser. “It was his favorite. And it was a plain-jane, very capable — if you wanted to drive out in the field or whatever — it would go. It was his baby. He took care of it … real well too.”

 

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Speaking of maintaining the Jeep, that’s what Bill — a heating contractor who sold wood, gas, oil and pellet stoves — always reminded Jim to do. “I sold [Jim] a gas stove and a wood stove over the years. And I knew his kids and son in laws … and yeah, I’ve always known him with this Jeep. That was his signature rig.”

“Take care of this pickup, because I’m gonna own it when you’re done with it,” Bill teased Jim.

“It was just a clean old rig,” Bill said about why he was drawn to the small red pickup. Bill’s first Jeep was a 1967 CJ-5 with a “Dauntless” V6 and four-speed manual, and his family had a 1974 Jeep Cherokee 401 and later a 1976 Wagoneer 401. So it was in his blood.

Jim replied to Bill’s joke: “I got son in laws and I got grandkids; they all want it. So it’s probably not likely you’re gonna get your hands on it.”

But then, about five years after Bill first started teasing the man about the truck, Bill got a call. “It was right after my first go-around of cancer … 2022. [Jim] just called me one morning out of the blue and said ‘you still want that Jeep?'”

“I said of course I do!”

Bill and Jim made a deal. And for the past four years, Bill has been taking care of the Comanche, leveraging some of the skills he learned from his dad. “My dad was a mechanical genius. He farmed and then he built and sold and designed lots of different farm equipment. That’s the [type of] house I was raised in.”

“Fixing a complex problem in the simplest of ways,” Bill told me, was his dad’s philosophy, which is why “he was [regularly] talking with farmers all over the country.”

Bill said Jim sold the truck because “He was having health problems, so he was downsizing stuff.” Bill says Jim put his ranch in a family trust, and though he was going to do the same with the truck, he thought twice about it. “A son in law in town was very unhappy. He wanted it … But [Jim] knew I was gonna take care of it. I’ve always drove older rigs and kept them up nice. He knew that about me and I’m sure that’s why he called me.”

Now Bill has to sell his beloved Comanche for similar reasons.  “That’s the only reason I’m selling it. I wouldn’t have sold it,” he told me. “I told my wife when I bought it this was gonna be a rest of my life pickup. Power nothing, with a radio … it’s just old school and that’s what drew me to it.”

In November of 2021, Bill was diagnosed with Follicular Lymphoma, a type of cancer — specifically a non-Hodgkins Lymphoma that starts in the follicle of a lymph node. He told me he thinks his exposure to herbicides in the 1980s contributed to this diagnosis. Though Bill seemed in good spirits the day I bought the truck from him — he and I shared a great conversation about family, life, and God during our test-drive in the Comanche — it was clear by the tears in his eyes just before we parted ways just how much he’s been through. It’s obvious for me to say that this cancer has weighed on him in a way I cannot possibly describe. Even today, during our phone conversation, he was actively having treatment done. He has to make that drive from his home up to a hospital in Spokane very frequently. He described what it was like taking a shower with no hair on his head, no eyebrows, and no eyelashes: “You don’t know how useful those are until you take a shower without them.” It has been a long road already, and though the treatments will continue, even through tears, Bill’s tone was one of hope and especially gratitude for what he’s been blessed with in this life so far.

 

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Bill had waited two months for me to fly to Boise to buy the Jeep, even though he’d received all sorts of offers from other folks interested. “I’m a man of my word, and I want to sell it to someone who will cherish it,” he told me during breakfast on Thursday morning. That afternoon, after Bill and I shook hands, he told me it was “just a machine,” and I pointed his former Comanche south towards my home in LA.

As I listened to that 200,000 mile 4.0-liter straight six hum underhood, and enjoyed the perfect synchros of that Aisin five-speed manual, I was overwhelmed by the realization I mentioned at the top of this article. This truck that I was now bringing into my life and into the lives of my wife and child is clearly more than a machine. The sawmill worker, Jim, saw it as his “baby,” cruising around Idaho at 35 mph, hunting and fishing keeping the truck in tip-top shape. And Bill himself, after spending five years ogling over the machine, had no plans to ever sell it. Nobody talks this way about their washing machines or refrigerators. This Jeep Comanche is special.

Though to Jim, to Bill, and to me, it is clearly more than a machine, in the context of Bill’s cancer treatments, and the complexities that come with it, the Jeep Comanche is just a machine. Relative to the bills he needs to pay, relative to the family he wants to prioritize, relative to his need for a reliable machine to get him to the hospital, this truck is just an object. In the grand scheme of life, it does not matter.

And yet, Bill is likely reading these words, keeping tabs on an old truck that, a few years prior, was so much more than just a machine. Maybe him reading this means it still is.

With my left hand on the steering wheel and my right hand on the shifter in fifth gear, I stared out into the nothingness of northwest Nevada and — hour after hour — pondered that thought.