Grandpa’s ’40
He might not ever try it again, but for one glorious occasion, Mike Klatt was able to put one over on his wife.
The end result was a show-stopping, restored-to-like-new 1940 Dodge half-ton pickup that originally belonged to Klatt’s grandfather. The tale of how the truck was pulled from its long slumber and restored to its former glory is a happy story that both Mike and Dana, his wife, will be telling for years.
“My grandpa had it originally. I don’t know for sure if he bought it new,” Mike recalls. “You bet, I remember it. And I remember riding with Grandpa. He always smoked big cigars and chewed Plow Boy Tobacco. I’ll always remember that … Then eventually my brother [Norby] had it and he didn’t really drive it — maybe on Saturdays to the dump once in a while. He wasn’t the kind of guy that would ever restore it or anything, but I wanted to someday restore it if I could.”
Norby inherited the truck in 1977 and had it until sometime in the 1980s when Mike finally found a way to get it
