Like the hero of the 1976 hit song by Johnny Cash, Gene Kennedy spent seven years putting together a 1929 Ford Model A panel delivery truck “one piece at a time.”

But unlike the auto worker in the Cash song, Kennedy didn’t steal his parts from a factory. He found them, fabricated them or bought them over the course of decades.

The truck – like Cash’s fictional and mismatched Cadillac – is an amalgam made with parts from several different models, but Kennedy’s truck also includes parts from entirely different vehicles. Its taillights came from classic Harley Davidson motorcycles, its rear door is from a 1932 International, and its tires are off a 1940s Ford.

“People who know their stuff will say ‘Wait a minute,’ but it works,” Kennedy said in an interview this week. Parts include ones he’s collected as far back as 50 years ago, when he started into restoring Model As as a teenager in Dayton, Ohio.

“When I was 15 or 16, I started playing around in a garage. My dad was a hobby mechanic. He said, ‘You need to learn about Model As,’” Kennedy recounted.

What Kennedy learned was that Henry Ford’s second-generation Model A, manufactured from 1927-31, were durable and relatively abundant. “Ford was the first to use a lot of stainless steel. It was simple, but rugged technology. He was thinking of making things last. He wasn’t thinking of planned obsolescence.”

Because their manufacture coincided first with the Great Depression, followed by World War II – eras in which cars were prohibitively expensive – Model As were driven until the mid-1940s, when the post-war boom brought a flood of new cars into production, Kennedy said.

Starting about a decade later, a generation of teenagers discovered Model As and rebuilt them as novelties and hot rods. As a teenager, Kennedy restored two Model A pickup trucks.

About 15 years passed, during which Kennedy moved to Alaska and built a home and garage on Chilkat State Park Road, before he started back into Model As, restoring a coupe he acquired in 1980. He rebuilt and sold two or three more, including a two-door sedan and a 1930 dump truck once used by the Alaska Territorial Highway Department in Skagway.

Over the years, Kennedy accumulated parts, piles of them. Although they could be purchased from some West Coast suppliers that cater to car restorers, finding them as cast-offs was more rewarding, he said.

“I found a lot of parts down country roads, in people’s back yards, in old barns,” Kennedy said. “More than anything else, I like going to flea markets and junk stores. One of my passions in life has been finding Model A parts and taking them home.”

They’re also cheaper that way, he said. “The prices are nothing. The guy with parts or a farmer in a field will say, ‘Oh, 50 bucks,’ or ‘Just get it out of here.’”

Kennedy said he’s been through enough Model As that he’s become something of a “birder” in his ability to spot their rusting bodies and parts. “I stopped by the side of the road to pee once and found one pushed back into the woods.”

The panel delivery truck he completed in July represents his most complete restoration.

He discovered the frame on a Douglas lot more than 30 years ago, but its owner didn’t want to sell it. When the man died 15 years ago, a buddy of Kennedy’s acquired it, and when his friend moved from Juneau, he offered it to Kennedy.

“It finally came home to roost,” Kennedy said.

He bought its four-cylinder engine from a former contractor in the Bellingham, Wash., area who had converted it into a compressor used to power a jackhammer. Its coupe body and gas tank came from near the Henderson farm on Allen Road. “It was in the trees there, all in bits and pieces.”

Friends in Juneau provided axles, bumpers and fenders.

Because Model A sedans, roadsters and trucks also used a common frame, placing a panel delivery truck on top of it wasn’t a problem. A challenge, though, was how to build the truck’s “box.”

Ford produced about 4.3 million Model As, but only about 5,000 panel delivery trucks, Kennedy said. He considered attempting to build the box from tin, as were originals, but changed his mind when fisherman Mike Armour offered to help him build it with fiberglass.

Kennedy crafted wooden ribs, tapered to replicate the box’s original, slightly-bulbous shape. Armour, a “wizard of fiberglass,” made panels with the right curve to fit onto the ribs perfectly, Kennedy said.

Kennedy crafted inner fender wells by welding together sections of 55-gallon drum, a process he described as frustrating and time-consuming.

Most of the work, though, he describes as a lesson in patience. “For the last couple years, it’s a wintertime-only project. It’s great therapy. I go for a while to pick at it. Because it’s what it is, a 10-minute job can take 10 days. I run into a part I need, I have to make it, find it in the bone pile or order it.”

Although he has sold his other Model As, Kennedy is keeping the panel truck. But don’t expect to see it on the street often. Kennedy uses the parked car to attract business to his wife’s Tower Road art gallery and figures he’ll use its box as a billboard for his plumbing business.

“It only gets 16 miles to the gallon. Gas was cheaper back then,” Kennedy said.