A single dad couldn’t hide his emotions when his adult kids brought back his decades-old truck that had carried his family through some of the hardest of times and most rewarding times.
Donnie Couch, 74, from Lancaster, South Carolina, was a single parent with a small village helping the beloved dad raise his two kids, Tina and Otis, the paid said.
For 18 years, Donnie worked long hours in a nuclear power plant over an hour away, meaning he’d occasionally have to take the kids to their grandma’s house at 4:30am before his shift started.
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The family would ride in Donnie’s reliable “Old Green Truck,” a 1965 Chevrolet C10 that took Tina and Otis through their youth and into adulthood, never letting Donnie or the kids down.
Despite being a single-income family, Donnie, Tina and Otis always had great fun with the truck, which they loaded with their bikes to take on adventures, travelling to state parks and on trails.
As Tina and Otis grew up, they each drove to high school in The Old Green Truck, which still had marks on the passenger door panel from where the leg braces Otis wore in kindergarten once rubbed.
The humility that came with growing up with such a reliable vehicle was one of the main reasons why Tina, now 46, decided to go into the automotive industry to work.
Having continued to work on the truck until 2014, Donnie later accepted that with two weak knees and poor health, he could no longer maintain his beloved vehicle and so decided to sell it.
In a beautiful twist of fate, though, Tina’s line of work meant she happened to know the buyer, who was planning to work on upgrading the truck with his brother in their spare time.
The buyer posted progress photos on Facebook over a number of years, and Tina left a comment to say that, if he was ever looking to sell the truck again, she would take it off his hands.
When that day came, the buyer kept his word, and within 24 hours Otis and Tina collected their cherished old vehicle, which they’d first ridden back in the ‘80s, when Tina was seven and Otis four.
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The siblings drove to their father’s house on January 3, and as soon as Donnie saw his old truck he froze in shock, fighting back the emotion of coming face-to-face with the reliable vehicle that helped him through so much.
Donnie recently lost his brother, Tina said, and the pair were always working on machinery together when they were kids, so seeing his “old girl” made the loss more manageable, she added.
Otis, now 44, gave his emotional dad an affirmative hat tip: “I’m leaving it right there. It’s yours.”
Tina said: “So many memories we all forgot flooded back to the forefront of our souls.
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“Dad’s breathing changed with confusion and hope, he had nervous movements and words as he tried to get closer with the last bad knee soon to be replaced.
“No one had the words ready, but ‘I’m leaving it right there. It’s yours’ was perfect from Otis.
“Dad has already started tinkering with it in the evenings and hopes to continue the needed work.
“He intends on putting his brother’s shop logo on the doors and being the ‘Logistics Manager’ for the family’s motorcycle shop, which has been running since the 70s.”
