Darrell Caldwell’s first love was named Engine Room.
Like many first loves, the bond between Mr. Caldwell and Engine Room didn’t last long, for his grandpa soon sold her. That was in the 1980s and Mr. Caldwell, then just 7 or 8 years old, was devastated. Engine Room was, of course, a truck.
So, when the 45-year-old from Waco, Texas, recently found himself scrolling on Facebook and spied a photo of his first love, a 1972 Peterbilt, he thought he was dreaming, at first.
Memories of his grandpa came flooding back. Memories of him showing up at the house in a semi. The acrid smell of diesel fumes. That rough, raw sound of older engines, no muffler, that “had a certain tone” that engines don’t have anymore.
“One of the greatest moments for me was on my birthday,” Mr. Caldwell said.
“Come on, we’re gonna go for a ride,” Grandpa told him.
“I was beside myself,” Mr. Caldwell told the newspaper of that boyhood memory, being transfixed in the passenger’s seat, calling the culmination of sounds “a symphony.” “He would shift and it was music to my ears.”
Grandpa always had his coffee “and something else special in his mug,” Mr. Caldwell said. “He would sit and talk about trucks” and tell stories about trucking.
Grandpa hauled pipe, and their relationship revolved around Engine Room.
Until, one day, Grandpa sold her.
One day, Mr. Caldwell and his parents showed up at Grandpa’s home and Engine Room was gone. “The truck would be sitting right there on the corner, they had a corner lot,” Mr. Caldwell said. “I did not see the truck. It was a different truck. And I’m like, ‘What’s going on? … ‘Where’s Engine Room?’”
“I got rid of it, I sold it,” Grandpa said.
He bought a new one, and although the boy still got in and blew the horn, it wasn’t Engine Room.
As life went on and Mr. Caldwell obtained his CDL for long-haul trucking, Engine Room faded into a memory, yet he said he “didn’t really get closure.”
His “girlfriend” still lingered in the back of his mind, and whenever Mr. Caldwell browsed for trucks online, he kept his eyes open. Truckers, he knew, liked to personalize their rigs, so he wasn’t sure he would recognize Engine Room, even if he saw her.
Until one day in 2020, he saw an ad: “Looking to find a truck similar to this as a project.”
“When I saw the picture of the truck, I grabbed my phone. I could not believe what I’m seeing,” Mr. Caldwell told The Epoch Times, adding that his grandpa’s initials, “P.C.,” and “Engine Room” were emblazoned on the body. “It’s like a time capsule.”
“That’s the truck!” he thought. “Literally everything is there.”
He posted an old photo of his boyhood self in his Sunday best, standing before Engine Room at the church where his dad was a preacher.
Soon, messages began flying on Facebook and the post blew up. “My life-long buddy owns it!” someone wrote. They tracked down a man who bought it from the same dealership his grandpa had sold it to.
But that man, Mr. Caldwell said, had sold it, too. Now, Engine Room was on some farm somewhere in northern Minnesota.
“I went from maybe there’s a chance to going back to zero,” he said.
That was, until recently in 2023, when Mr. Caldwell received a message from Charles Jarvi, “You’re the guy who was looking for his grandfather’s truck, right? Well, my friend Josh owned it.”
After photos were sent, proving it hadn’t been altered or hit by a tornado, everything started “getting real” for Mr. Caldwell, who describes the moment as divine intervention.
Nick Nelson, a farmer in Claremont, Minnesota, was a hobbyist who’d bought the truck, one of several in his collection, as a keepsake for his farm. They invited Mr. Caldwell and his wife, Amber, to a bash, knowing how much Engine Room meant to him. His story had been spilled all over the internet by then.
Mr. Caldwell didn’t want to go, knowing he would “lose it” in front of a bunch of strangers, yet Mrs. Caldwell insisted.
“No, we’re going,” she said, “You have to, you cannot quit.”
So, the correspondents finally met on Mr. Nelson’s farm. Walking up the driveway of the home, the Caldwells rounded a bend. The sight of Engine Room was suddenly before Mr. Caldwell and caused him to go numb, unable to register the apparition.
She was beautiful. Unchanged. Just as his grandpa had left her.
They bid Mr. Caldwell inside for that special occasion, but he politely refused, still holding hopes of keeping it together in the company of new acquaintances.
“This doesn’t happen every day,” they told him, before ushering out the fellow sitting inside and Mr. Caldwell into the driver’s seat.
When he finally acquiesced, you can guess what happened.
“They cranked it and it fired up,” Mr. Caldwell told the newspaper, adding that he wore the same outfit that he had in his old photo, in reenactment. “I lost it. I was back. I was a little kid again, playing with my grandpa.”
The man fell to pieces in front of everyone, burying his head in his arms on the steering wheel.
Returning to Texas, Mr. Caldwell is still processing the reappearance of his first love. When asked if he would consider buying Engine Room, as a memento of his grandpa, he said he means to follow the flow.
He is open to the possibility if she is “for me to have,” he said. “I’m gonna just let God handle that.”
