Finding Ray 3

When I drove up to Jim Duggar's, he was standing in his front yard with his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face. I presumed that was him and when I introduced myself he confirmed it. I had found him and all in a single day.

"I'm a friend of Ray's," I told him, but his face didn't change. He just looked at me sort of like the other man, studying me, trying to figure if I was a good guy or a bad guy. At least that is what I thought.

He didn't answer. I was uncomfortable and shifted my weight from one foot to the other while I anticipated him saying something.

"He used to live on Steen Hill Road in Carroll County. We hunted and trapped and fished together."

He just kept looking. Suspicious. Cautious.

"I haven't seen him in years, and I figured you might know where he is."

"Why?" he finally spoke after a few more seconds of silence.

He noticed my confusion.

"Why you think I might know?"

"Somebody told me you used to bail him out of jail."

"Who told you that?"

"I don't know," I replied. Then it hit me how fishy that sounded. It even sounded fishy to me.

"You don't know?!"

"I read it in some paper work somebody left on my front porch."

"Somebody you don't know is writing stuff about me and leaving it on your porch?"

How much sense does that make, I thought. How could he not be suspicious?Instead of closing the distance between us, I had managed to widen it, and it had not taken me long to do it.

"Uh, I was writing about him, Ray, on my blog and somebody left copies of some old arrest records and a sheriff's handwritten notes on my porch. The notes mentioned you bailing Ray out of jail in the mid '70s. I'm just trying to find my old friend."

He said nothing. This is not going well, I thought. Then I noticed the old pulpwood truck over by some pines trees at the edge of his yard.

"Wow," I said, pointing at the old Ford. "May I take a look at your truck?"

That broke the scowl. We slowly strolled over and started a walk around while he gave me info on the old junker. It was a 1960 Ford 350 with a 292 V 8. It had duals on the back and the classic short wood rack with a PTO winch for loading logs, short wood. He told me what he paid for it, how many tons of wood it would haul, how he had made a lot of money with it.

"I paid for my ten acres and trailer house with that truck," he told me with pride. "I used to work four days a week and clear around $1,500. That was when pine pulpwood was bringing $40 a ton."

The lovely rack on the back of the old Ford

"Mind if I take some pictures?" I asked. He didn't mind and I started filling my phone full. 

My interest in his truck seemed to bring down Jim's guard. His eyes now said he trusted me, or at least he wasn't suspicious anymore. Then we started negotiating on a price since I wanted to buy the Ford. We walked around and around the truck while I snapped pictures and asked questions. It needs a master cylinder. The gas tank is not hooked up. Two of the tires are flat.

He started at $1200. By the time we had circled the truck a few times and I had asked more questions about it's mechanical condition, we settled on $700. I thought that was a good price IF I could crank it up and drive it home. But to get this thing, I would have to haul it away on a trailer. I don't even own a trailer.

I found out more about Jim. He is from a family of sixteen, picked cotton when he was four years old and started pulpwooding with his dad when he was twelve. Now he is retired, having made far more money than I ever will. I warmed up to me enough that he even posed for a selfie.

Jim Duggar and me on March the 30th

Finally I felt comfortable enough to get back to my original reason for coming here. "Did Ray ever haul pulpwood?" I asked, and for the first time that day, he started talking about my old friend.