The iconic Pink Toe Truck joined Bothell’s Fourth of July parade for several years in the 1980s. During one parade, Mills Music band members even hitched a ride on it. If you missed seeing the Toe Truck in the parade, you probably saw it parked in full view as you exited from Interstate 5 onto Mercer Street.

Relative to all this, three years ago, I met a guy named Ed Lincoln who entered Frances Dayee’s Bothell writing class as a “self-proclaimed closet writer.” Ed’s breezy writing style easily reflected his carefree, fun personality, as he treated the class to weekly humorous episodes of his life’s story. The class heard how his dad gave him the job of clean-up kid at his Lincoln Auto Wrecking business. He was 11 years old at the time.

“My tools were a rake, a broom and a shovel,” Ed says.

While Ed worked among the crowded rows of the wrecked cars and scattered parts, his nervous mother worried about his safety, while his dad was quite comfortable with the new, young employee.

It came as no surprise to his parents that at 15, Ed purchased his first car.

“It was a 1931 Model A with a rumble seat,” he says.

With his mother’s help upholstering the interior, he completed the remodel project a year later, just in time to get his drivers license and drive it to school. His car, known to his friends as the Modern A, was lowered six inches and sported wide wheels with fancy hubcaps.

Ed says, “The kids all loved riding in the rumble seat.”

It took me awhile after listening to Ed’s stories, to connect the dots that this was the Ed Lincoln, who, with his wife, Connie, owned Lincoln Towing Company. The fact that this successful businessman had such a playful nature, came to light when he admitted to, and wrote about, the creation of the Pink Toe Truck.

“I can say it was built on a lark from a crazy idea drawn on a piece of paper,” says Ed.

The Toe was built by Ed Ellison, a former body repair shop owner, from drawings a commercial artist had done for Ed Lincoln.

“It didn’t have any specifications so Ellison had to use his imagination and wonderful talent to capture my ideas,” says Ed.

From an old, 1961 cut-off VW bus serving as a base, surrounded by fiberglass, the Toe Truck has become a well-known Northwest character. The truck has been used for birthday parties, trade shows, transporting a bride and groom to their wedding reception and even serving as his daughter’s show n’ tell for school. In 2005, Ed and Connie donated the Pink Toe Truck to Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry in Montlake.

It certainly doesn’t surprise me, that Ed has combined his stories into a book with the clever title of “Life Through The Rear View Mirror,” where he reminisces about…everything!… the time he drove his speedboat in the annual Sammamish Slough water-ski races, pulling his friends up the slough from Kenmore to Bothell; and, how the King County police called Lincoln Towing to winch a safe from the Sammamish Slough near Bothell’s bridge.

A disappointed Ed recalls, “The stolen safe’s contents were kept secret from all unauthorized personnel.”

Ed will be signing his book from 4-7 p.m. Nov. 4 at the Museum of History and Industry. Come meet him! You’ll be thoroughly entertained.

You can also visit Ed’s Web site.

Suzanne G. Beyer is a Bothell resident.