PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

All of the homes and apartments have now been demolished, and the paved roads are long gone as well. My dad did not want to go on the gravel roads, but I literally said "Dad, I've taken my two-wheel drive Tacoma on far worse roads in Centralia. We are in a rented Suburban with four-wheel drive..."

This observation convinced him to give it a try!

 

My dad drove down the paved road a bit before turning around and I saw this dead tree; I have no idea what might have killed it...

 

As to be expected, the 4WD was not needed, but I was sad to see my former neighborhood reduced to literally nothing...

 

Ive been to a couple bases that had stuff like that. Kinda creepy. Like walking in to a zombie set

 

TIMBER!!!

Just kidding...

We have no idea how long ago this tree went down or what caused it to fall, but my dad seriously wanted to turn around. I say again that we were in a rented 4WD Suburban with full insurance coverage, and after reminding my dad for second time not only of this fact but that I'd dealt with worse in my 2WD Tacoma (which I actually own and value more than life itself) while exploring Centralia earlier this year, I got him to just drive around the tree...

 

I live for this shit! I've been to Centralia three times this year, twice by myself in February and March respectively, and then a third time with my friends on Memorial Day; I have every intention of driving my beloved Tacoma up to Centralia this October after I get it outfitted in the "Zombie Outbreak Response Vehicle" garb for a photo op!

 

Stevens Road, where we lived, was named for Stevens Creek. The creek was located directly behind a house, with a nice walking trail dividing the houses from the creek. If I remember correctly, the barrier seen in this picture was not there in 1997. One time during in about September or October of 1996, the creek overflowed and flooded our backyard with not only water but a bunch of crayfish; Molly, our then year-and-a-half-old Black Lab, caught one of them and killed it...

Actually, to say Molly killed that little bastard is an understatement. We did not actually see her do it but my dad and I found the back half of a thoroughly dead crawfish with its guts spewing out, and since all of the yards were fenced in and we were the only family living in that 6-house building at the time, the most obvious scenario would be that Molly killed it; I'm assuming that Molly sniffed it to figured out what it was and got pinched on the nose or something, understandably didn't like that too much, and killed it out of anger. Molly loved people and could be trusted with a newborn baby, but she never much liked other dogs and once took down a full-grown Rottweiler, so a crawdad would have been child's play...

That said, the decommissioned fire hydrant seen in this photo is the only clue that houses were here just quarter of a century ago...

 

Stevens Road no longer exists...

 

After going through the pictures I took, I believe the barrier may have in fact been there in 1996-1997, but it simply did not go behind our house...

 

This was Orange Avenue, and the only clues that a residential street once existed here are utility poles and a storm drain...

 

This is roughly where our house, 478 Stevens Road, once stood...

 

@ColoradoTJ
@Plain Jane Taco
@shakerhood
@TnShooter

As stated above, you could stand on the front porch of our house and look straight down Orange Avenue. In this picture, I am standing on Orange Avenue with the Suburban to my right, taking a picture of the approximate location of 478 Stevens Road..

 

I say again that these streets were actually paved in December 2001 and had people living on them (though the WWII houses were long gone), and were possibly still there as late as March 2009; 480 Stevens Road, the end unit in our building and a ranch-style home, was located roughly across the street from that storm drain. This house had had yet to be refurbished when we moved there in 1996 and still have not been made livable by March 1997. Since these houses were below what my dad was entitled to, he was given another house in the same building (476 Stevens Road) to store our belongings that would not fit in our house. This house did not have carpeting installed yet, but it was otherwise refurbished and technically move-in ready. The refrigerator in 478 started leaking refrigerant at some point, so my dad and uncle swapped 478's fridge with 476's using a handtruck. The other five houses in our building, including 480, were occupied at some point prior to December 2001. However, they had started decommissioning the base by then and tore down the houses since they were old and small. Some of the buildings had two 1-story units, and one of these had the dividing wall torn out, thus turning two tiny 2-bedroom/1-bathroom homes into a respectively-sized 4-bedroom/2-bathroom home. It didn't need two kitchens, so the ktichen of one house was turned into flex space. A family with two daughters named Crystal and Sierra got this house, and by 2001 it was also gone.

At some point, it was discovered that homeless people had been living in 480, but nobody legally lived in that house during the time we were. Our house had a tiny backyard, and 480 had a much larger backyard, so my dad created a discreet door between the two yards to give Molly more space to run around!

 

Cape Ann, Massachusetts in September!

 

The security office was located in one of the 1-story homes on Orange Avenue, located on the left if you were standing on our front porch. That parcel of land where the security house stood once stood just out of view behind the ass end of our Suburban...

 

Security were not military guys from what I remember, but they had badges and guns and drove around in a white 1994 Dodge Shadow with US government plates and a police-style lightbar (I know the year of their patrol vehicle because in typical autistic 7-year old car enthusiast fashion, I asked one of the guys; This was in 1996-1997, so it was a fairly new car at the time); I don't think they had full police powers, and I'm assuming they were just highly-trained armed security guards. They were really nice guys, and we definitely felt safer having them directly across the street. Nothing out of the ordinary really happened that required their intervention, though one time they were tasked with chasing off a snake that decided to rest on the sidewalk across from our house. It wasn't a poisonous snake from what I remember, but it was a pretty big snake nonetheless. My mom does not like snakes, and this was an area where there were a lot of kids, so it had to be gotten rid of for the good of the neighborhood...

 

It was barely over ten years ago or so that the US military did away with the DoD stickers on windshields, and my Tacoma was the last vehicle my parents ever bought to get one of these. My parents and I can get onto any military base in the country with our ID cards regardless of what vehicle we are driving (including a rented Suburban with Colorado plates), and I removed the DoD sticker from my Tacoma once they became obsolete, before my dad even transferred the title into my name. My dad bought my truck in September 2009, paid the truck off in late 2012 or early 2013, and signed the title over to me with no questions asked in December 2016. We moved out of the townhouse in Furlong in March 2016, and I know we were still living there when I peeled off the DoD sticker, so it was probably sometime in 2014 or 2015...

In the late 1990s, not only were the DoD stickers still in use, but you couldn't drive a vehicle onto a US military base without stickers even if you had a military ID. In 1996, literally days before we drove across the country to California, my dad was borrowing my uncle's 1994 Ford Ranger because he needed a pickup to move some stuff out of our house that was currently under contract. In addition to that, the Camry had already been shipped and was on its way to California, and we only had the Pathfinder to get around in. My uncle's Ranger was a beautiful truck, this aqua green color, a 2WD regular cab short bed with the XLT trim and custom chrome wheels. My uncle has owned a wheel refinishing business for about forty years and back then he also sold hubcaps and wheels, so he changed out the wheels on that truck at least three times during the roughly eight years he owned it. By 1996, it was on its second set of custom wheels in two years!

He special-ordered it with the 3.0L V6, a 5-speed manual transmission, a 3.42 posi rear, and all options including power windows and A/C. He paid CASH for it and got a hell of a deal since he knew somebody at the dealer. That truck was special in my opinion because it was a regular cab and a stick shift, but it was literally fully loaded with every option you could get on a 1994 Ford Ranger except a CD player (it did have a cassette player). Having a pretty vehicle didn't get you onto the base though. We had moved out of the house in North Wales and I believe we were staying at my grandma's house in Bethlehem, my uncle and his family lived in the Allentown area, and the base was back down in Montgomery County near the house we'd just sold. We pulled up to NAS Willow Grove, and my dad about flipped out when he realized that my uncle's truck obviously didn't have a DoD sticker and had to turn at the last minute; I forget what ended up happening, but we did ultimately get onto the base in the "unauthorized" Ranger after my dad talked to somebody and got some sort of temporary pass.

 

Anyway, so the house on Stevens Road was located just off the base in an area that was fully accessible to the general public. This made it much easier for friends and family to drive into the neighborhood for a visit. One time, I noticed an unfamiliar Dodge Neon parked in front of our house. My dad realized that the Neon didn't have a DoD sticker and found it a bit suspicious that it had been there for several hours. He ended up reporting it to the police across the street, and I don't remember what became of it. Also, I was just talking to my dad and he says that the guys were in fact police officers, but still civilians. They were basically federal police who had all of the powers your traditional police officers had, like the ability to conduct traffic stops and arrest people, but they had no jurisdiction outside of the base or that off-base neighborhood. As such, they did just fine with a glorified K-car as their patrol vehicle!