Bruce's Car Life

It seems that everyone in the world has had some kind  of experience with cars in their life. The automobile hs become a necessity for most of us. But how they affect our lives is different for each of us. For many, owning a car is a necessary evil, it in a relatively expensive appliance, that lasts for a few years, and does its job of getting us back and forth from point A to point B. For others, it’s a status symbol, something to show off , Something to have, one that is just a little better than your neighbors, or co-workers. For others, it’s an ongoing work in progress, something that can always be improved on, the car can be personalized to make it faster, or more efficient, even in the owners eyes, better looking. There are as many scales of interest in cars as there are people and cars. There are a few people out there, like me, that have lived cars since we were young. To us, the car is more than what they are to most. To me, any car, at least of the earlier decades, if you look at them for what they are, they become more interesting. The sum becomes more than the parts. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked if I kick myself for selling any of the many cars I’ve owned. With a very few exceptions, I don’t have many regrets. I have had the opportunity to own, drive, work on and experience these cars, then pass them on to someone else to enjoy. As I’ve sold cars over the years, I’ve actually tried to find many of them a good home. As I’ve owned each car, I have learned a lot about it, good or bad. It makes me gain more interest in each car. There have been a number of things, people, books and cars that have helped me in this ride over the years. This story is about these things and the cars that I have had the chance to experience in my life. 

It seems that as far back as I can remember, I have been interested in cars, all cars. I remember when I was about twelve years old. What I really wanted for Christmas or my birthday was subscriptions to magazines like Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. I read them cover to cover. When I saw a car that I really liked, I would go to the local dealer and get the brochures for the models I liked. These would hang on the walls of my bedroom.

Even when I was really young, I remember cars that at least with their styling, affected me. The first I remember well was a new 1959 Chevy Impala. I thought the tail lights and the cat’s eye grills in the front of the hood were a cool thing at the time. A few years later, a neighbor next to us had a 1960 DeSoto. I really liked the tail lights. The same neighbor, in 1964, bought a new Mustang. I really liked it. Later, after we moved to Bellingham in 1965, our next door neighbor was a Buick fan. He had a new 1965 Rivera when we moved in. I thought it was beautiful. He next bought a 1968 Rivera to replace it. It was also a nice looking car. Another family friend bought a new 1966 Toronado. I thought it was not only beautiful, but technically a marvel at the time. I also loved the second generation Corvettes as well as the Jaguar E types.  

This is the story about the cars I have owned over the many years of that interest, along with some other stories. Let’s break 

this first part down to the locations I lived in at the time, as that seems to be a good point.

Chapter 1, The earliest Years. 1953-1965

My very early years, in which I lived in Yakima and Kennewick, Washington, From the fall of 1953 through the summer of 1965. Of course, none of these cars I actually owned. 

The first car I can remember first hand was when I was really young and living in Yakima Washington. I was born in the late fall of 1953. I understand that it was shortly before that, that my parents bought a 1949 Ford coupe. I barely remember it except the interior. I do remember standing on the back seat when I rode in that car. Then, in 1956 that they bought the first car that I really remember well, a used 1953 Studebaker coupe. It was a six cylinder with a column shifted three speed transmission. I distinctly remember a lot of family trips and going camping in that car. I believe it always ran good, but had a problem with a death wobble shimmy that would occur at highway speeds. I remember my parents having to turn one direction and hitting the brakes hard to get it under control. They seemed to really like that car. In 1960, they decided to buy their first new car. Also, a first, it was going to a four door sedan. I guess at that time, parents were afraid of kids opening the rear doors and then falling out. I guess all of us kids were by then old enough to not do that. The new Rambler was also a six cylinder and a three speed, but this one had an overdrive. As my parents were really cheap when it came to cars, none of their cars up to that time, had even a radio. For my parents, a car was just an appliance used to get from point A to point B. 

It was shortly after that, when I entered first grade, that my mother went back to work teaching. That meant that my dad would need a second car for work. I barley recall the first car he bought. It was about a 1956 Pontiac coupe. I recall it as being a pretty fast car for the time. It also had lots of options. The reason I don’t remember it very well is because my dad only had it for a month or so before he totaled it. The replacement for it was a 1959 Fiat 1100 sedan. After we got that, my mom actually drove it and my dad started to drive the Rambler. I do recall a time when we got rear ended real badly in that Fiat, but it got fixed. We had both those cars after we moved to Kennewick, and they were still what they had when we moved to Bellingham in 1965.

Chapter 2, Bellingham. 1965-1973

This next stage in my story, is during the time I lived in Bellingham, Washington, with a short time in California and Clallam Bay 1965 through 1986.

Pretty much as soon as we moved to Bellingham, my parents decided to replace the Rambler with another new car. This time they bought a new 1965 Datsun station wagon. It was just about the first Datsun I had ever seen. They were not a common car yet. About the same time that we got the Datsun, my dad totaled the Fiat. My parents replaced it with a VW beetle. They had nothing but problems with the beetle, and so after about six months, they sold it and my dad brought home the first car that I was really interested in, a 1963 Pontiac Lemans coupe. In those years, Pontiac, as well as all other GM makes except Cadillac, decided to make small cars. Each make came up with an interesting car to bring to market. The Pontiacs Tempest had a front engine, rear transaxle, with four wheel independent suspension. While the other makes each came up with their own designs. The Chevy Corvair had a flat six in the back, the Buick Special had the first production V6 and the Olds F85 had an aluminum V8. Pontiac cut a bank of cylinders off of their famous 389 V8 and made a big 4 cylinder. In the final years of production, they came out with a sporty model, called the LeMans. It was available with either the four cylinder or a new small 326 cubic inch V8. The one my dad had was the four cylinder, but a higher performance model with a small four barrel carburetor. It also had a four speed transmission. It was a good looking car with good power and handling. I don’t think I ever actually drove that car, but I really liked it. My older brother would take me for rides in it. Sometimes he would even street race it. He would surprise some Mustangs and Camaros. 

After my dad had to replace the transaxle housing for the third time, (thanks to my brother’s street racing I’m sure), in late 1967, he decided it was time to get a car to replace it. I remember him bringing home a leftover 1967 Pontiac Tempest four door sedan with an overhead cam six that he was going to buy to replace the LeMans. My dad was good friends with the owner of the local Pontiac dealership in Bellingham, Clint Sands. Back then, if you were interested in a car, they would let you take it for a day or two to see how you liked it. He went back in one day to finish the deal. Much to my surprise, he returned home with a new 1968 Pontiac Tempest coupe with a 350 V8 and an automatic. It was a brand newly styled car, and was great looking, then and even now. 

It was in that Tempest and the Datsun wagon in which I learned to drive. My father was always willing to take me out to practice driving. Of course, after I turned fifteen and a half, I got my permit and could take drivers education. This would have been in the spring of 1969. Back then, the cars that were used for driver’s education were cars that were loaned to the school by local dealers, and they were cars they thought would appeal to the young drivers. The car we drove for most of my classes was a 1969 Olds 442 with a bench seat and an automatic. The only other car we had to drive one time was a 1969 Pontiac T37 with a six cylinder and a three speed on the column, just to learn how to drive a stick. Those were the days!

In the early spring of 1970, I got my driver’s license. My parents had a plan for my sister and I to drive their cars. Since we both got our driver’s licenses at close to the same time (my sister waited until she turned eighteen, so she didn’t have to take drivers education) the new plan applied to both of us.  Before we could get our driver’s license, we had to be able to prepay for six months insurance. So, for me, about four months after turning sixteen, I finally had the money to pay for my insurance. They then allowed both of us to drive their cars, but we had to pay by the mile. Every couple of days, they would write down the mileage on both cars just to verify we hadn’t driven to much more than we had logged down. How it worked for me was, I would tell my parents I was going to a friend’s house a couple of miles down the road. I had it down on both cars that I could unhook the speedometer while still driving down the road. We would then drive around all day, put some gas in the car so it wasn’t obvious, then re-hook up the speedometer while still driving home. I never paid much for mileage.

On day in the winter of 1969, my dad came home complaining about how the Datsun had very little power and was not running good. My dad knew very little about auto mechanics, so I told him that I could fix it. Up to that time, I had a keen interest in cars, but no real experience in doing any repairs. I went out into the garage with some tools my dad had, and proceeded to remove the head off the car. I sent the head out to a machine shop, where they serviced the valves. I then proceeded to remove the pistons, hone the cylinders and replace the rings. Once the head came back, I reassembled the motor. To my surprise, it ran better than it had for years. Looking back, I’m sure the valve job was what was needed, not so much the rings, but it was good experience for me. When I put the motor back together, I didn’t have a torque wrench so I had just tightened down the head bolts as tight as I thought they should be. A month or so later, it blew the head gasket. This time, when I reinstalled the head, I rented a torque wrench. Lesson learned. In the years we had the car after that, it always ran great.

One of the neighbors found out about me fixing my parents Datsun, and inquired if I would remove the head off of his sons car and get the valves ground and replace the head gasket. I said I would. It was a 1966 Datsun 1600 sports car. It was very different than the one my parents had, but I did get it done and got paid for the repairs. 

In 1974, my dad complained about his 1968 Pontiac Tempest having weak power and also that it didn’t have power brakes. It came from the factory with non-power four wheel drum brakes. I removed the heads from the 350 V8 and sent them out to have the valves serviced. I also found the lifters were uneven in their lift. I replaced the cam and lifters, reinstalled the heads and installed a power brake booster. It ran like it was a new car. My dad was also happy to have better brakes. I started to feel like I could perform repairs on the cars I picked up. 

In the winter of 1970, I decided I needed to buy myself my own car. My brother had a car he was willing to sell cheaply. It was a 1966 Chevy Corvair Convertible. It had the 140 horse four carb motor with an automatic. It was in kind of rough shape for a four or five year old car, but it was not only pretty cheap, but my brother would finance it. It was fun driving around in the middle of the winter in clear cold weather with the top down. Boy, did it have a good heater. After about a month and the first payment was due, I decided I couldn’t afford to make a payment on a car with no real job, so I sold it for about what I paid for it.

My second vehicle was a 1948 Dodge pick-up. I paid $35 for it. It ran OK, but was painted pink with house paint using a paint brush. My best friend, who was going to the tech school half days taking an auto body class, and I painted it at his parents’ house. We painted it Porsche 914 green with the fenders, bumpers and roof painted black. It looked great. Even many years later, I saw it in a wrecking yard, the paint still looked great. It wasn’t without its problems though. It had almost no oil pressure and the motor made weird noises, the gas tank leaked if it was filled more than half full, and the tank was behind the seat in the cab, so it really stunk. Also, the suspension was really worn out. But it looked good. I drove it for about a year before I decided to go another direction.

I sold my 48 Dodge for about $200 and also sold a racing bicycle I had, and bought a 1968 Kawasaki 350 Avenger motorcycle. I was not real experienced at motorcycle riding, especially street bikes, and didn’t even have my motorcycle endorsement at the time. It was cheap transportation, and fun to ride. I recall after I had the bike for a couple of weeks, I was riding home from a church activity in the rain. I crossed a railroad crossing where the tracks crossed the road at about a 45 degree angle. The crossing was made out of wood. The bike slipped out from underneath me and we both bounced down the road a ways. Neither I nor the bike, were damaged much, but it scared me into taking things a little more carefully. I also got my motorcycle endorsement right after that. I rode it until I graduated from high school in 1972. Just before I left to go gillnetting in Alaska, the day after graduation, I decided that since I would be gone all summer, I should sell the Kawasaki. I sold it to a friend, but took in a Honda S90 in trade. Most people are familiar with the Honda Trail 90, it was a small motorcycle that was a step through design, with no clutch. The S90 had a similar motor, but had the gas tank in the usual position and a clutch. We loaded the S90 on the boat, and took it to Alaska with us. The boat I ran, sank on the way to Alaska, so the other boat, that contained all our belongings, went on up to Alaska to fish, while I returned home to Bellingham.

When I returned from Alaska, about the first thing I wanted was a car. My best friends parents had 1958 Chevy Biscayne coupe that they wanted to sell, so I bought it. It was originally a six cylinder with a three speed on the column. The motor had worn out a few years before I got, so my friend had installed a 283 V8 in the car for his parents. When I bought it, it was in pretty good shape, except the column shifter would get stuck. That gave me an excuse to install a floor shifter. During the first few months I had the car, I worked at a gas station. That gave me access to a lift and cheap parts. I put in a new clutch, pressure plate and throw out bearing, replaced the wheel bearings, put on dual exhaust with glass packs and put on chrome reverse wheels and the widest recap tires we had at the gas station. A story I remember about my Chevy, was one time, towards the end of the summer, a friend of mine and I decided we would go to a family reunion for his family. He and his family had moved from Canada when he was really young, so they were Canadian citizens. So the reunion was held just across the border. We took the Chevy to the reunion. On our way home, there was more than an hour wait to cross the border. As we edged slowly towards the border, we started to talk with a couple of girls from Seattle who were traveling along the same route with their parents. We eventually made it across the border. By that time, we were getting thirsty, sadly, we didn’t have any money, and so we ducked off the freeway into the rest area. As we were there, we noticed that the girls from the waiting line were there also, parked right next to us. They asked if we wanted to race down the freeway. We looked at the Ford Falcon they were in and laughed. I started up my car with the cool dual exhaust and glass packs, backed out of the parking stall, revved up my motor and side stepped the clutch to make a cool burnout. Instead of a cool burnout, there was a loud bang and the car just sat there. I had broken the spider gears in the differential. The girls just laughed at us and left. We had to hitchhike home. We then went back and towed the car home. I then found a replacement differential for it through a friend, rented an axel puller, changed the third member, and got the car back on the road. I figured, lesson learned, don’t side step the clutch again, there are better ways to do a burnout.

A few weeks after that, my best friend and I decided we wanted to drive around the San Juan Islands looking for old cars we could buy. If only we could afford them. A couple of the neighbor kids wanted to go with us. We told them that if they bought the gas, we would pay for the ferry. They were good with that. They were both smaller guys, maybe five foot five and so. So we came up with the good idea that we would drive onto the ferry with those guys in the trunk. As soon as we got on the ferry, and everyone else was out of their cars, we would let them out of the trunk. On that day, as luck would have it, they put us right up as the front car on the boat, in full view of the passengers as well as the captain of the ferry. This meant that we couldn’t let them out of the trunk. It was a really warm day, and by the time we got to the furthest island, San Juan Island, they were less than happy with us. Everything seemed better as we started driving all over the island. One thing I noticed, that I hadn’t noticed before, was that every time I hit a good sized bump in the road, there was a clunk coming from the back of my car. At the end of the day, we found a good spot at the south end of the island to camp. When we headed out in the morning to go to one of the other islands, I kept hearing a howling sound coming from my car. With that, we decided to just head towards home. When we got to Anacortes, I stopped into a service station and asked if they could check the rear end for oil. They put it on the lift, and put in the nozzle to do that. As soon as they got a little bit in, the oil started to run out of a good sized hole in the cast housing in the front of the rear end. The mechanic pulled a huge wad of gum out of his mouth, shoved it into the hole, finished filling the rear end, and told me I would have to take care of that problem soon. When I got home, I rented an axel puller to take apart the rear end to try and see what was wrong. Come to find out, when I replaced the third member, I hadn’t thought of cleaning out the broken teeth. When I hit a bump, one of those teeth would ride up the ring gear. When the clearance was too tight against the front casting, the tooth just forced its way through the casting. I ended up having to find another third member. This time I cleaned out the bottom of the case. For the most part, it ended up as a pretty cool ride, but it was starting to have low compression in one cylinder, so I knew it was time to move on. I always wanted something else anyway, especially a Pontiac, as I had become a fan of them.

Another car I was always interested in was the car my neighbor across the street, Cal Matthews, owned. At the time he was probably in his early forty’s. He was working at Western Washington State College, now Western Washington University. The car he drove back and forth to work was a 1963 Chevy Corvette roadster. It was really dark blue, almost black, with both a soft top and a hard top. It had a 327 and a four speed. It was stock down to the full wheel covers and big mufflers. I really loved that car. When I was a senior in high school, he had purchased a new Lincoln sedan for his job. That meant he needed to sell his Corvette. He knew I always liked it, so he offered it to me first. He wanted $1750 for it, of course, I had no job then, and couldn’t afford it. A few months later, he still had the car, and reduced his price to $1250. I still didn’t buy it. He did sell it a few weeks later to a girl. She had her boyfriend do some work on it. I heard he created a fuel leak in the engine compartment and the car lit on fire and burned up on Cornwall Ave. in Bellingham shortly after she bought it. 

In the spring of 1973, my dad was working at a Chevy dealership, Gribble Chevrolet, in Ferndale that was changing hands. The new owners didn’t want any of the used cars they had on the lot, so I had my pick of any of those cars for cheap, or even less. The first car I got was a 1959 Ford station wagon that I got for free. It burned so much oil, we nick named it the “Blue Cloud”. We beat it to death behind the tech school in an old gravel pit. It was a big hit with everyone at school as we drove it on every break. We beat on it until the transmission gave out, then I sold it to a friend from high school who had a 1959 Ranchero, he wanted it for parts.

I then bought a 1964 Pontiac Gran Prix with a 389 and a four speed for $50 from the dealer. I sold it to a friend for cheap, and together, we made it into a street racing car. We rebuilt the engine and got it working well, but never changed how it looked. We won many a street race with that car. A few years later, we ran it in a demolition derby. What a waste.

The next and last car I bought from the dealer was the only one I had to pay much for. For my $625, I got a 1967 Pontiac GTO Convertible. It had a 428 (I know that was not supposed to be an option), a four speed, and every available option. It even had what was supposed to be a factory alarm system. In the driver’s side front fender, right behind the headlight was a key lock, similar to a trunk lock, that operated the alarm. I really wanted a Pontiac, and that was a great deal, but after a few weeks, I decided it was way too hard on gas, so I sold it for $750. Before I sold it, I had sold my 1958 Chevy to a friend, so I was suddenly without a car. 

A neighbor of mine had a 1964 Triumph Spitfire that had a problem. It had so little power that he couldn’t even get up the hill to get out of the neighborhood without getting a run at it. He offered it to me for $225. I bought it and took it home to look at it. It had two SU carbs, one that fed the front two cylinders, the other that fed the back two. In their design, they left out any crossover between the front two and the back two cylinders. I found that there was a locking screw loose, so only one of the carbs operated when the gas pedal was pushed. I tightened that screw, and the car ran great. I had that car for about a year. It got great fuel economy, and was a good handling car. I remember taking a guy for a ride in it on a nice summer day while I was in Everson at a friend’s house. We went out on one of the main roads. This road had a locally famous S curve. The speed limit around the curve was 25 mph. I asked the guy with me, who had never ridden in sports car before, how fast he thought I could go around the curve. He said 35? I said how about 70? We went flying into the first corner, hanging on for dear life, we came out of the second corner completely sideways traveling down the road with screaming tires at about 60 mph. We were both scared out of our wits. He wanted out right there as soon as I got stopped. I talked him out of that, but I think we drove back to my friend’s house about 25 mph the whole way. It was a fun car, but I always was on the lookout for something else.

Back in those days my friends and I would scour the local car lots for cars in the back rows that were cheap. There was a used car lot on State Street that we found had a 1962 Ford Convertible for sale. It was cheap because it would be needing a top real soon. We looked at it. It was a black Sunliner XL with a 406 cubic inch motor and a four speed. It had bucket seats and a factory AM/FM radio. We beat the guy down to $75 for the car, but decided we wouldn’t pay more than $50. I guess I should have bought that one.

Since we had so much fun beating the 1959 Ford wagon to death, when I was offered a 1958 Chevy pick-up for free, I took it. The same as with the old wagon, we spent about a week beating the tar out of it. Its final day was when we rolled over onto its top in the gravel pit. One of the guys who was with us was Lou Parberry, whose dad owned Parberry metal and recycling. They had a roll back truck designed to pick up wrecked and junk cars. So when we had pretty much destroyed the truck, we thought we would go and get the roll back truck. Then, while we were going to get the truck to haul it away, one of the many spectators lit it on fire. I nearly got into deep trouble over that one. That truck was given to me by a friend in Everson’s dad. They lived on a large farm. My friend and I made ourselves a race track there that was about a half a mile long. We picked up a 1953 Studebaker coupe that we stripped out and made into a race car. We raced that car until his dad finally put a stop to it. 

My brother had been working at the same Chevy dealership that my father worked at before it changed hands. When he worked there, my brother had purchased a new 1973 Corvette three months earlier at dealer cost as a salesman there. I got to drive it a few times. It wasn’t exactly what I would have ordered, but it was a nice car and it was brand new. It was a coupe with a 350 and an automatic, and it was fire engine red. I would have preferred a convertible with a four speed. Since my brother got it wholesale and had paid some money down, when it was only three months old, he owed about $3000 on it. He had decided to get married and then move to California. When he did, he found out he couldn’t really take much with him in the car. He asked me if I wanted the car. He said I could have it for just taking over the payments, the payments were about $80 a month. I decided that after the payment and the cost of insurance, I’d better not. He put an accessory luggage rack on it and took it to California with him.

As I said, I was always looking for something that was nicer and more reliable than what I had. Since my dad was still selling cars, just at another local dealer, I was always looking for a nicer car. One car that he got in on the lot in 1973 was a 1969 Mercury XR7 Convertible. It was unusual in that it was a high trim level car, being an XR7, with leather interior and a convertible. But it had a three speed floor shifted transmission. Since they weren’t sure if they could sell it, I bought it for cheap. It was a fun car to drive, I remember one time my family got invited to a picnic with the neighbors at a resort on Lake Whatcom. I got there late in the afternoon. The resort wanted me to pay to get in. I wasn’t going to pay, so instead, when leaving, I did a big burnout in the Cougar. Evidently, my mother heard a squeal of tires and said “that must be Bruce”. I had to borrow the money for the car from my dad, and after a month, when my first payment was due, I sold it. At least I made pretty good money on that one, and I still had my Spitfire. 

Since I was going to tech school, learning electronics, and wanted to get into the service business, I wanted a van. During my travels around, I found a 1962 Chevy Corvair van. The one I found was $50 and was in good shape except a bad transmission. I also found an early 60s Corvair coupe with engine problems. I Got that car for free, removed the four speed transmission, took it to the wrecking yard, and put the transmission into the van. Now I had a pretty good van, at least as good as a Corvair van could be. 

Chapter 3, California, the first time. 1973

My friend Alvin, the guy from Everson, and I were attending tech school, but were both getting tired of Bellingham. My brother had recently gotten married and had moved to Santa Cruz California. So we decided to load all of our positions into Alvin’s 1957 Oldsmobile and we headed out to Santa Cruz. Before we left, I sold the Corvair van to my neighbor, the guy I went to Alaska fishing with, and left me dad to sell my Spitfire. He sold it a couple of days after we left, so when I got to California, about the first thing that I did was to buy a car. My brother was working at a Chevy dealer there. One day, he brought home a 1968 Pontiac Ventura wagon, and said I could have it for what they allowed in trade, $325. It was in really good shape both inside and out, and had low miles. The only thing that didn’t work was the AC, and being from Washington, who needs that. After a few days in California, I decided, I did. My brother got a mechanic at the dealership to fix it for cheap. I was set. I did get another car through that dealership that I had for a short time and sold. It was a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda notch back with a slant six and a three speed. I didn’t like driving it and just sold it for a profit. After a few months. After living in Santa Cruz for a few months, I was beginning to realize that I wasn’t going to find a job in the electronics repair industry that I was after. One day, while returning from lunch with my brother to the car dealership where he worked. There was a guy there from GMAC auto financing. He was saying that he had to get a repossessed car from Santa Cruz to Wichita Kansas. He seemed to be at his wits end. The car had to be there in three days, and it was only about a week before Christmas. My brother offered my services. I ended up driving a 1973 El Camino SS from Santa Cruz to Wichita ay high speeds. I made it in plenty of time, in fact, they also had me drive a 1972 Buick Skylark from Vail Colorado to Wichita as well. When I returned to Wichita for the second time, instead of returning to Santa Cruz, I decided to stop off first in Bellingham for Christmas. That was the end of that time in California.

 Chapter 4, Back to Bellingham. 1973-1974

I returned to California to get my things, then returned to Bellingham, driving my Pontiac wagon up with all my stuff. After I got home, I bought a 1962 Chevy Bel Air sedan from the car lot my dad worked at, for really cheap. I didn’t need it, so I sold it to another good friend, the guy from our trip to Canada. He put a lot of time and money into the car. He installed headers, dual exhaust, a posi differential and real magnesium wheels. One day, he decided the motor was making more valve noise than he liked, so he and his brother took the motor out and took it all apart. They never put it back together. There, the car sat in their driveway for months. My sister came home from England, where she was going to school. Shortly after when my sister and her boyfriend got married, they needed a cheap car. My dad and I bought back that Chevy for almost nothing, I bought a good 327 out of a wrecked Camaro and installed it. It was actually a rather quick car after that. Even if it was a four door, it had a hot 327. They drove it for more than a year until they moved to South Africa. When I had come home to Bellingham for Christmas in 1973, I had met a woman. We shortly after that decided to get married that spring. What a mistake. When we got married, I still had the wagon, and she had a 1968 Chevy Camaro RS with a 327 four speed. It was a nice looking car, but had its problems. The transmission was hard to shift and popped out of gear. Since by then, I was attending Skagit Valley College, and they had an auto mechanics department, I got that taken care of. I just had to take out the transmission and then put it back in. After that, I found out that in the 20,000+ miles she had driven the car, she had never changed the oil. I decided to take care of that, I changed the oil and filter, but after I did, the car started to burn a lot of oil. It was about then that I bought my first electronics repair shop in Clallam Bay. For that purpose, I needed a van. I bought a really good 1961 Ford Econoline from a friend and former boss. 

Chapter 5, Clallam Bay. 1974-1975

So when we moved to Clallam Bay, we had the three vehicles, the van, the Camaro and the Pontiac wagon. After a month or so there, we decided we needed a new car, and it was time to get rid of the Camaro and the Pontiac. I soon after sold the Pontiac to a neighbor.

On a weekend trip to Bellingham late in 1974, we traded in the Camaro on a new Honda Civic. It was my first time buying a new vehicle. It was a fun car to drive and got great mileage, but was maybe the worst car I ever owned. When it was about a year and a half old with less than 30,000 miles on it, it was just worn out. 

While we lived in Clallam Bay, I had two other cars. One was that Chevy Bel Air my sister had been driving. After she moved away, my dad didn’t know what to do with it, so he gave it to me. I ended up selling it to a logger in town who gave me $300 and a really nice chain saw for it. He bought it and decided it would like it better if it was jacked up in the back, as was popular then. He drove the car to the local gas station, put a floor jack under the gas tank, jacked it up in the air to a level he liked, then put muffler clamps around the smaller bottoms of the rear shocks, Job accomplished, at least as far as he was concerned. He drove it to Forks, got drunk, and while driving home, one of the shocks broke, he went in the ditch, he got arrested for DUI, the car got impounded and someone stole the engine out of the car overnight while it was in the impound lot. 

The other car I got was a really clean 1960 Cadillac Coupe De Ville. Someone just gave it to me because it didn’t run. I got it running, but really had no plans for it, so I planned on selling it. I didn’t sell it, but ran it in the Forks demolition derby. It didn’t do well and got hauled away after the race. 

Chapter 6, Back to Bellingham. 1975-1986

Late in 1975, we moved back to Bellingham. We went back to the dealer where we had purchased the Honda. The salesman was a family friend and, I think, felt sorry for us. He allowed us a pretty good trade in for our Honda when we bought a 1973 Mercury Cougar XR7 coupe.

By then, my real interest was in older collectible cars, I had subscribed to Hemmings motor news and read it over every month. I really wanted another convertible. I had been working in Ferndale, and regularly drove by a gas station just off I-5. Sitting by the station was a 1965 Rambler American 440 Convertible. After a few months, I decided to go in and ask about it. I was told that the owner of the car was traveling up from California in the car, and that it had started running real bad. He left it to be looked at, and just never came back. The gas station owner sold it to me for $100, but with no title. I drove it home, but it ran real rough. It was a straight clean car that even had a good top. It was a 232 six with an automatic. I removed the head. It had a blown head gasket and had been driven that way for a long time. That had caused a bad nitch between the third and fourth cylinders. I found a head that was on a car I got for $25 on the Lummi reservation, again with no title. The head was good and after that the little Rambler ran well. I never did do what was required do get the title resolved. I did buy a 1964 Rambler coupe that I was going to try to use as a title for the convertible, but never did. After a few years, I sold them both to a guy who wanted to do what was required. I don’t know if he ever did get a title.

Shortly after I got the Rambler, I was talking about it to the guy who owned the TV and appliance store where I had my repair shop. Come to find out, he was really into convertibles. He had three at the time, one of which was a 1967 Chrysler. He had decided he only wanted to own Chrysler products from then on. He told me he had a 1966 Ford Mustang Convertible he wanted to sell. It was red with a white top and interior. It had a 289 and a four speed. He wanted $4000 for it. It just so happened that my father in law had been talking about wanting a Mustang Convertible. I told the guy this. He said if I sold the convertible for him, he had another older convertible that needed work that he would sell me really cheap. I worked on my father in law, and one weekend, I drove the Mustang home to let him drive it. He did end up buying it. That meant that I could get the older car he had for $50. He still had not told me what it was. He took me to his house. He had a huge shop building where he stored appliances and his cars. By that time he had also picked up a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Convertible and a 1964 Imperial Convertible. The car in the back that he sold me was a 1959 Cadillac Convertible. It had a flat tire and needed a battery, but was in really pretty good condition. It was red with a red and white leather interior. The bad things about the car were the carpets, the exhaust, the top and a poor paint job. I put in new carpets, fixed the exhaust for the most part and cleaned up the paint as well as I could. I then just never drove it with the top up, it’s top brought new meaning to the term “ragtop”. I had it for about three years and drove it a lot in the summer and on weekends. 

A good story from that time has to do with my ’59 Cadillac. During that time, Myself and my friends would spend time on the weekends looking at the back lots at car dealerships, looking for anything interesting we might be able to buy cheaply. On one weekend, we were driving through Dewey Griffin Olds, Cadillac and Honda in my Cadillac. The owner, Dewey, came out and flagged us down. He was a collector of old Cadillacs. In fact he had a beautiful 1957 Convertible in the showroom. He said he wanted to buy my car, but wasn’t willing to offer much. We did become friends. I would sometimes stop by and we would talk about cars. On one of those occasions, I told him about a car that a guy I knew in Clallam Bay had. I had never seen the car, most of the people who lived there hadn’t either. There were just rumors about the car. What the rumors were, was that the guy who maintained the phone company in the area had an old Cadillac. All I had heard was that it had a stainless steel roof and animal fur carpets. When I told Dewey the story about this, he really lit up. He assumed it must be a very rare 1957 or 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham. Made for only two years, they were the most expensive cars made in the US at that time. He said to me, let’s go, he had a shop truck brought around, I suggested we take a few parts, he got those loaded up, and we jumped in the truck and headed out to the Olympic Peninsula. We got to Clallam Bay and called up the owner of the car. He agreed to let us see it. He said he was also willing to sell it. We met him at his house the next morning. We pushed it out of the garage. It was an absolutely stunning car. Totally original, with very low mileage. It hadn’t been run in many years. We installed a new battery that we brought with us, and I installed new points. It started right up. I had the opportunity to drive it and look it over really well. It had features that were way beyond its years. It had a 390 cubic inch motor with three two barrels, air suspension, memory seats, an AM/FM radio, fur carpets, a mini bar in the glove compartment, magnesium wheels and a power trunk that opened and closed by push buttons in the glovebox. It even had all the rare included accessories. When I started it up in the morning, since it was cold, it sputtered and the motor died. I reached through the open driver’s window for the key to restart it. Before I had the opportunity, there was a clicking behind the dash, the gas pedal went down a little, and the car re-started itself. I guess if the car was in park or neutral, it would do that. We originally planned to drive to home, but decided then to have it shipped home. We were concerned about something happening on the way home. Even then, I wouldn’t have wanted to leave it anywhere un-attended. After he got it home, he sent it out to be fully restored. Dewey died a few years later. I never found out what happened to the car, but what an experience it was to work on and drive one of those cars.

One of the good things about my chosen profession of electronics repair, was my ability to get into many homes. Over the years, I found many interesting vehicles in back yards and garages. Some of those I was able to purchase. During those years working in Ferndale, I had the opportunity to pick up some interesting cars. 

One customer I did work for had a 1956 Studebaker coupe in his driveway behind some other cars. I had made service calls there a number of times, and I had actually inquired about the car, but got little response. One time, their TV required some more serious repair. When I gave them an estimate for the repairs, they seemed concerned about the cost. The repair consisted of mostly labor, so I asked if they wanted to trade off the repair for the Studebaker. They said yes. I really didn’t know much about the car except it was a Hawk series from the mid-fifties. I did the repair, then, went over to get the car. I was surprised when I found out that they were the original owners of the car. They had the old small title for the car that was used only until about the late fifties. I also found out it was a 1956 Power Hawk. It had about 60,000 miles on it, but it didn’t run. Studebakers V8s were famous for a plastic timing gear that would fail, and that was the problem with this car. It was a fairly easy fix. I drove it around some, but decided it was a bit more of a project than I wanted, so I sold it for a pretty good price to a Studebaker collector.

On another call, a customer had a whole back field full of cars. A couple of cars were early sixties Ford Convertibles. He had a TV that had a picture so dark, that it could only be watched at night with all the lights off. He told me that if I could get him a watchable picture, I could have a 1961 Ford Sunliner Convertible he had. I remember, I had to get really creative with my picture tube re-juvinator, and a booster, but I did end up getting him a better picture and myself a red 61 Ford Convertible. The car had been sitting for years with a rotten top and with an old car hood on top of the roof. I figured I wasn’t getting much of a car, but the body was nice and straight. When we went to pick it up, we removed the hood off the roof and opened one of the doors. The car was completely full of old magazines and newspapers. We removed them so we could get in the car, and we could leave them there with him. We were surprised that the paper goods had evidently absorbed moisture and the interior, except the dash pad, was in amazing shape. I also found out that the car hadn’t been licensed since 1964. It had 30,000 miles on it. While we were towing it home, what was left of the top just blew right off, leaving nothing but the top frame. After we towed it home, I found out that it had a 352 V8 and an automatic. Since it was 1977, the car hadn’t moved in about thirteen years. It started right up after I put in a new battery and new gas. It did have a bad freeze plug, so that was replaced. The automatic transmission worked, even the brakes worked. This turned out to be a really nice car. It really needed only a new top and a nice dash pad to be a really nice car. As luck would have it, I had a garage that I rented to store all these projects, especially the convertibles in. After I had owned the Ford for about a year, I lost the use of the garage. Every other car except the Cadillac and the Ford could be parked outside until other options were found. I took the Cadillac home and put it in my small garage at home. That left the Ford. I had a friend who had a large garage at his house with not too much in it, so I asked him if I could park the Ford there for a week or so. He agreed. I went over to get the car about a week later. He told me he had bad news. It had gotten cold one night, so he let his Black Lab dogs into the garage for the night. They had gotten into the car and chewed the upholstery down to the springs. I sold the car for $200 as a parts car. What a disappointing outcome. 

Another car I came across at a customer’s house was a 1966 Rambler Ambassador. It was just like new with less than 10,000 miles on it. The elderly original owner had it until he had recently gotten into a wreck. He had damaged the front fender. I guess he then figured he shouldn’t drive any longer, so the body shop guy ended up with the car. He was my customer, and had fixed the car and wanted to sell it. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I did know someone who would be interested. The guy told me that if I sold it, he would give me the car he had bought for parts for it for $50. He had bought a 1965 Rambler Marlin for the front fender, then found out it was different. He had taken the four barrel carb of the Marlin, and so it was sitting there otherwise complete. I sold the Ambassador to my friend’s dad, and towed home my new Marlin. The Rambler Marlin was an unusual car in its day. It was based on the Rambler Classic line, but had an odd fastback roofline. The roofline was odd in that while other cars with a fastback roofline were more flowing back from the roof to the back, the Marlin was designed to still have good headroom in the back seat. I put a Holley carb I had onto the 327 V8 and it was a good running car. It was one of the first American cars to have disc brakes and was actually ahead of its time. It was a fun car to drive, but was a hate it or love it design. I likewise drove it around for about a year, then sold it to a Rambler collector.

In 1978, my old 1961 Ford Econoline Van was starting to get worn out. I had purchased it for my shop van back in 1974. When I got it, it was an off white, the original paint color. It had some steel roof racks on it for years, so there were rust trails running down both side’s front and rear. It was not to pretty when I got it. During the Thanksgiving weekend in 1974, my friend and I decided to paint it at his house. He was working at a body shop, so was able to get a gallon of paint they had sitting around. It was Ford medium blue. We worked hard that whole weekend, and the end result was a really good looking blue van. Fast forward to 1977. While parked at the local electronics parts supplier, someone backed into it. I got an insurance payment for the damage, so with the money, my friend and I decided we would do a first class repaint of the van, inside and out. I decided I wanted to paint it a VW iridescent green. We spent weeks prepping it for paint and fixed any body imperfections. We bought a gallon of the expensive green paint. When he shot it, my friend found out that the paint needed to be sprayed over a silver base coat. Of course in our case, the van was blue with dark red primer spots all over. When we got done, it looked horrible. You could see all the primer spots all over the body and we ran out of paint, so the center of the roof was still blue. There wasn’t much we could do to make it better, so I just drove it as it was until I found something better. It really did look OK, if you didn’t look to close. Back to early 1978, when a business that I done things for, had a 1971 Ford Econoline E350 for sale. It was an extra-long one ton van and had a new motor in it, and they wanted $800 for it so I bought it and sold my old van.

Late in 1978, I went to work selling cars. I started out selling new Pontiacs, Buicks and Mazda’s, but I really hated that. After about a month, I was put in charge of the used car lot. I was in my element there. Since I no longer needed my 1971 Ford Econoline Van, I was still doing electronics repairs out of my house, but I wasn’t doing in home service. I asked the owners of the dealership if I could put my van on the lot to sell it. They were OK with that. I put in the corner of the lot, and put it on the inventory list for $1100. One day, after the van had been on the lot for a couple of weeks, a guy came in to look at it. I was busy at the time showing a motor home we had in for sale, so the other, part time guy, showed the van. When my customers left, I went onto the office. There was the other salesman with the guy who was looking at the van. The sales guy asked me if I would take something less for my van. Before I could respond, he told me that the guy had talked him down to $2400, would I be willing to take that? The guy really needed an extra-long van. He was starting on Monday laying carpet and needed something that would carry twelve foot rolls of carpet inside. I guess I had the only old van that long for sale in the area. I told him that I could take that much for it. He proceeded to tell me that he thought he could sell his car in a hurry to get the money together. I told him I might be interested in a trade, what did he have? He showed me just about the most perfect original 1969 Mustang Mach I I’d ever seen. It was an unusual car in that it had the most basic drivetrain. It had a 351, two barrel, three speed, and single exhaust. I told him that I would trade him straight across. He said he would have to think about it overnight and he would let me know in the morning. I don’t think I slept much at all that night. At about nine the next morning, he drove in with the Mustang, and we exchanged titles. I drove that car as my regular driver for about four years. As of today, that is probably the car I regret selling more than any maybe any other.

I really took to selling used cars, no matter what kind car you had on the lot, it was the only one like it. We had about fifty cars on the used car lot at any one time. Without any paperwork, I knew the year and model of every car, as well as how many miles it had on it, the engine size, the transmission, the options the car had and I had driven each one home at least once, to get familiar with it. I also knew off the top of my head how much we paid for each car, any repairs we had done and how much they cost and how much we wanted to sell the car for. I sold more cars in three months than the previous guy had sold in the previous year. There was just one problem.

Since this was in 1978 and 1979, people were trying to get rid of gas guzzlers. So when the new car lot took in an interesting car such as a muscle car, they didn’t really want them on the used car lot. Instead, they would offer them to me for what they gave in trade. I picked up some amazing cool cars. The problem is that I would spend half my paycheck on cars to take home. I did eventually sell them, but I really didn’t want to. Cars I picked up during that time were a 1965 Chevy Impala SS hardtop with a 396 in beautiful condition, a 1972 Olds 442 with a 455, a 1967 Buick GS400 with 30,000 miles, and a 1973 Jeep CJ5. Every one of these were picked up from the original owners. There were more that I had for such a short time, I really don’t remember them all. After just less than a year, I decided to return to electronics repair full time and quit selling cars for a living.

I then, in the summer of 1979 went to work for an electronics repair shop. At that time I still had a number of cars, including the Cadillac, the Ford Sunliner. The Mach I, the Cougar and the Rambler. When winter set in, I decided I needed a winter beater for work. I bought a 1950 Chevy pick-up for $50 and drove it to work for a couple of years. I also sold off all the convertibles. I was then given a 1950 Ford Custom sedan for a Christmas gift from my wife that had been in my wife’s family for years. I worked on that car a lot, I replaced the interior, rebuilt the suspension and made it into a good daily driver. I also picked up a couple of other 1950 Fords that I took good parts off of then sold, a1950 Business coupe and another 1950 sedan.

After a few years of driving the Cougar, we got tired of the fuel economy, so I decided that installing a 302 would help me get better fuel economy. I bought a 302 V8 from a wrecking yard that was supposed to be good with low miles on it. I changed it out. The car then had no power, the motor was pretty much worn out and it got even worse fuel economy. We were getting tired of that car anyway, so I sold it. 

A friend of mine who owned a body shop had sold a car to an older woman in Lynden, and had taken in trade a real low mileage 1962 Buick Special sedan. He made me a good deal on it, so that became our new family car. The car actually looked almost like new. The guy painted it before we got it. It had the small 195 cubic inch V6 and an automatic. It had around 30,000 miles on it. In the year or so that we had it, just about everything went wrong with it. My father had to go to the hospital on the day before Christmas Eve in 1980 to get triple bypass at Swedish Hospital. On Christmas Eve, we decided to go down and see him. We jumped into the little Buick. In North Seattle, it developed an odd vibration, then soon after the oil light came on. We pulled off at a gas station, but since it was Christmas Eve, no one was working in the service shop. I opened the hood and found that both motor mounts had broken. The motor had then fallen down onto the front cross member. The front assembly of a Buick motor was the oil pump and the oil filter. The weight of the motor had landed on the oil filter and had opened it up. I ended up borrowing my mother’s car and returning on Christmas day with a trailer to retrieve the car. I then had to replace both motor mounts and the oil filter. We eventually sold the Buick to a friend who loved it. I think we must have fixed everything, as he had very few problems with it. 

Our next family car was a 1973 VW Super Beetle. It had receipts with it when we bought it for a tremendous amount of work, a new motor, all new suspension, wheels, tires, upholstery and paint. It was a nice car to drive, and other than not having any kind of an operational heater, it was a pretty good car. A few months after buying the car, my wife hit a horse with it. It went to the body shop at a local dealer. While it was there, there was a nasty flood. The dealership flooded real badly. It seems the dealer moved most of their cars to higher ground, but our VW never got moved. A friend who worked at the body shop said he saw the car floating around the parking lot. As much as the dealer tried and tried to fix it after that, they could never make it run good. We eventually traded it in for a 1977 Impala coupe. My wife and I got divorced shortly after we got that car, so it became her car.

During those same years, I seemed to go through a lot of cars. I guess I was looking for something I would really like. I got be friends with a guy who rebuilt wrecked cars for a living, so I told him that I wanted a truck. In late 1979, he found me a 1977 Chevy ¾ ton four wheel drive pick-up that had been wrecked pretty bad, but could be fixed. He said he had seen the truck and there was no frame damage. When we got it to his shop to check it out. We measured it and found out the wheelbase on one side was eight and a half inches shorter than the other side. It took almost six months to get the truck finished. I did drive the truck for about four years after the major repair to it.

Over the years, I had been involved in a couple of demolition derbies. The first on when I lived in Clallam Bay. I built the 1960 Cadillac Coupe de Ville into a derby car for the annual Forks festival. I didn’t drive it, I handed that task to my brother in law who was a lot more aggressive than I was. He pulled the car into the ring, hit one car, and the flex plate went out. It never moved after that. A few years later, while living in Bellingham, we decided to retrieve the old 1963 Gran Prix that we used to street race into a derby car. It hadn’t run in years, and was seized up. We got it running and entered it into the annual Skagit Speedway derby on the fourth of July. What I learned about that car was it didn’t work to run a car with a manual transmission. It had a four speed, and after the first hit, it died and wouldn’t start again. With that kind of luck, you might think I’d have given up, but no. In about 1982, I picked up a 1969 Chevelle two door hardtop that was real rough and had a cracked block for free. A group of us got together got together and fixed it up. One guy worked at a body shop, he got it painted, it looked great, at least from a distance. Another friend had a tire shop. He gave us a set of Cragar SS wheels that the chrome was peeling off of, they again looked good from a distance. He also had a set of B F Goodrich Radial T/As that were off of cars with real bad front end alignment, They also looked good until you looked closely, where they were down to the steel cords on the inside. From a distance, it was a great looking car. We ran it in the demolition derby at the Northwest Washing Fair in Lynden. We took first place for the best looking car, then came in first in the main event, then loaned it to a woman there that wanted to run in the powder purr event, she took first place. It was a fun time. 

I also had a number of just project vehicles during that time. Some I finished, some I didn’t. I had a 1965 Ford Econoline van I got with no engine in it. I installed the 351 V8 out of the Cougar, and an automatic in the back of the van, but never finished it up. I also picked up another 1960 Cadillac Coupe De Ville, got it running and just sold it to someone who wanted it more than I did. In about 1983, I had a friend whose wife really wanted my Mach I, so I decided to sell it. He gave me a fair amount of cash and a 1962 Chevy Nova Convertible in trade. The Nova had fresh paint and a good top, but needed carpets and the little 194 cubic inch six was really tired. I put in carpets and put some Rislone in the oil and drove it to work for over a year. About every three months or so, the poor thing started to sound horrible again, I would add a quart of Rislone and it would be good for another few months. It was a fun little car that was easy on gas. At one point, a friend decided he wanted the Nova to totally restore and put in a V8. He offered me some money and a rebuilt 1973 Honda Civic. The Civic had new just about everything, so I thought it would be a good car for work, it would get great gas mileage. Just like the earlier Civic I had, it was terrible. You couldn’t keep oil in the motor, it had so much blow-by. After a few months, I decided I needed to move it down the road. It just so happened that as I was walking out of work, I met a guy who had a 1973 Ford Econoline E350 custom cruising Van. He needed a small car and was moving out of state. He told me the van needed brakes and I told him the Civic had the oil problem. I guess we each thought the other guy’s problems were less than what we each had and we did a straight trade. I drove the van for a few days, then took it to a friend who was a mechanic who owed me a few favors. He agreed to do the brakes for me, something I would normally do myself. He gave me a call a few hours later and told me that I had to come and look at the van. I went over to see what he was concerned about. The frame on the passenger side was so rusty that the mount for the front axle was completely rusted away and with the end of an old leaf spring holding the axle in place. It was dangerous to even drive. He did do the brakes. I had decided that ever since I got rid of the Nova, I had been going downhill. I guess I just needed to cut my losses and start all over again. 

A group of us used to meet each morning at a drive in restaurant that belonged to a friend of mine from high school. One day, I happened to drive the van. A guy who was also there every morning, but I didn’t really know, said he really liked my van and that he wished he could find one like it. I told him I wanted to sell it, but he should know something first. I took him out to the van and showed him the front end. He said he could live with that, and that he wanted to buy it. He offered me $1000. He said he was expecting a check by the end of the week, and he would pay me when it came in. That Thursday, he came up to me and said the check wasn’t quite as much as he had hoped. He would only have $900 to give me. He asked if I would take his old Chevy Malibu wagon in trade for the other $100. I actually would have just taken the $900, but said sure, I’d take it. I figured that his old Malibu wagon that needed work had to worth something. This was in 1983. The next day, I drove in with the van and the title and he arrived with the Malibu and his title. We exchanged titles and he handed me the money. I went to see what I had gotten myself into. The Malibu wagon was a 1976 with less than 60,000 miles on it that he had purchased new. Other than needing front brakes and being filthy dirty, it was in great condition inside and out. I installed new brake pads and did a thorough cleaning. It was a good car. I drove it for six months or so then sold it for $1500. About a week after the guy got the van, I saw him in the restaurant with the van, he had gotten a job hauling broken concrete from Lake Samish to Ferndale, and since he had a one ton van, he loaded it up completely every day, then drove on the freeway with probably well over a ton of concrete in the back. I never heard of him having any problems, but cringed each time I saw it. 

In 1983 I also bought a 1978 Saab 99 Lambdagard Turbo from a friend. At the time, it was a pretty exotic car. It had Pirelli P7 tires on it and no power steering. With the small steering wheel it had, it was a handful to drive in town, but with the Lambdagard suspension, the handling was amazing when driving fast. In cleaning out the car after I got it, I found where a roll cage had been mounted to the floor at one time.  I drove it for a few months, but it was really only good for really fast competition driving. I sold it to a guy from Seattle who wanted to race it. On his way home the transmission went out. The guy realized he had bought it as is, and had it fixed in Seattle.

After I sold the Malibu wagon, I need another commuter car. I bought a 1973 Mazda RX3 wagon. It had a howling rear differential. I found a guy who had a wrecked one that he was going to haul away. I gave him $20 and exchanged rear ends. I then drove it back and forth to work all that winter. I had always been interested in rotary engines, and had the chance to drive them while I sold cars as we were a Mazda dealer. This was the first one I had owned. It was a fun car to drive.

In that period of my life, I also decided I wanted another motorcycle. So in about 1979, I bought a Honda 450. I worked on it and rode it for a few years. Mostly to work in the summer. Then in 1983, I sold it and bought a really nice 1978 Yamaha 650 Special. I was never very happy with the way it ran. but, I did ride it for about a year or so. In 1984, I traded it for a fixed up 1953 Ford Pick-up and bought a built up 1980 Suzuki GS100GT. I had that bike until after I moved to California in 1986. Another bike I had for a short time was a 1983 Yamaha 920 Virago. A friend from work was going through a divorce, and was going to lose it to the bank. I paid it off, rode it a few miles, didn’t really like it, and sold it. I also had a 1979 Honda XR500 off road bike. A good friend of mine also had one just like it. We both hung a mirror on them, added a brake light and a bulb horn, and got them licensed for the street. I didn’t keep mine to long before I traded it for a 1966 Ford Econoline pick-up. Another one of my favorite vehicles. I mentioned that I had traded off my Yamaha 650 Special for a 1953 Ford pick-up. That pick-up was a custom truck that was made by a friend of mine. It was fitted with a 400 cubic inch V8, automatic, ¾ ton front and rear axles, a lift that made it almost eight feet tall and fitted with 38” monster mudder tires. It wasn’t very practical, so I just sold it.

In the fall of 1983, I got a call from my brother. He was getting married in Carmel California in a month or so, and wanted me to be his best man. I agreed, and got an airline ticket to San Francisco a couple of days before the wedding. When I got the airport in San Francisco, my brother picked me up. He was at the time the sales manager for the local Porsche Audi dealer. The car he picked me up in was a Euro spec 1984 Audi Quattro. It was a slightly detuned B class rally car. It was, up to that point in my life, possible the fastest car I had ridden in. My brother was also a rather crazy driver. The day of the wedding, it was one of my brother’s friends who came over to the hotel in the Audi to pick me up. This guy was a friend of my brother who was a formula one driver. The mix of that car with an experienced race car driver was an experience I will never forget. I had no idea a car could go around a corner that fast under control. What an experience.

It was in early 1984 that my wife and I split up. Since it had been in her family for years, she got the 1950 Ford in the divorce. It was never driven again. About twenty years later it was sold as a parts car. She also got the 1977 Impala. I got my 1977 Chevy pick-up, my Mazda RX3 and my Yamaha XS650. I decided that I needed a nicer car, so I picked up a 1977 Camaro that was getting repossessed from a friend of a friend. The guy was behind in the payments, so to hide the car, he tried to paint it black with a spray can. I went with him to the bank to pay it off and get the title. When there, I found out that all he owed on it was a little over $200. I figured that made it a cheap car, I might as well make it look better. It looked awful painted black the way it was, and had overspray everywhere. I had a friend who owned a body shop who owed me a favor, so I stripped off all the trim parts and had him paint it yellow. I also found a rear spoiler for it and got it painted with the car. I spent days cleaning and polishing the trim. When I got the car back and got it put back together, it looked amazing. I also sold my Chevy truck to a guy who had been trying to buy it from me for a long time. About that same time, I decided to get a newer car. It seems that where I worked at the time, pretty much everyone there was either in their late twenty’s or early thirties. That being the case, and with them all being car people, they were getting new cars that fit what they wanted in a car. One guy got a new 1984 Toyota Supra, another got a 1984 Chevy Camaro Z28 and eventually another guy got a new VW GTI. I decided to join their ranks, and leased a new 1983 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. It was my second new car, and although it was a last year’s model with no miles on it, it was still a new car. It served me well for the three years that I had it. I also needed a pick-up to replace the one that I sold, so I bought a rather rough 1974 GMC ¾ ton 4X4. I had it painted and had a flatbed built for it. I sold it when I picked up the Econoline pick-up

I always seemed to have a couple of project cars as well. I picked up a 1963 Ford Econoline van with a 302 V8, and an automatic in it as an un-finished project. I finished a lot of it then also sold it un-finished. At the same time I also got a 1963 Ford Ranchero. I used it a little, but liked the Econoline pick-up so much better, so I sold the Ranchero. During that time I also picked up a 1969 Ford Country Squire wagon that was given to me because it didn’t run. I replaced the points and it ran fine. I ended up giving it to an employee so she could get to work. I also traded a new, high end, VCR to a friend for his 1973 Olds Cutlass Supreme Coupe. It was a nice car with all options, but I was getting to where I just had more cars than I needed, so it went down the road.

My second wife was out driving around one day in 1985, and spotted a 1969 Mercedes 280S sedan at a car lot. She really wanted it, so I worked a deal out and bought it, another terrible car that had no good points. I knew a guy who owned a clock shop, and had a cool clock for sale for a lot of money. I gave him the car, he gave me the clock, and he took over the payments on the car. I still have the clock in my house.

In one of my stupidest moves, my second wife and I separated for a couple of weeks. This was before I got the Mercedes. I wasn’t going to give her my Thunderbird, and she wouldn’t drive the Econoline pick-up, so I traded in the pick-up on a 1977 Mercury Bobcat, and gave it to her. We got back together shortly after, but sadly, my Econoline pick-up was gone.

Chapter 7, Back to California. 1986-1990

Not long after that, we moved to Sunnyvale California. When we moved, we only took the Thunderbird and the SuzukiGS100GT. As soon as we got there, I realized I would need a second car, so I traded a Nakamichi cassette deck to a neighbor for a 1969 Chevy Impala hardtop. It did a good job of getting me back and forth there for a few months. We then moved to Carmel California. I sold the Chevy after my work bought me a 1986 Ford Aerostar van.

Shortly after I moved to Carmel, I got involved with the local fire department as a volunteer. That was a great time in my life. Not only did I learn how to fight fires and learn emergency medical service, I quickly took the training and became an engineer in the fire department. That meant I was able to drive and operate the fire trucks. What a rush it was to be in the driver’s seat going to a call in a fire truck. My favorite truck was our first out truck, a 1959 American Lafrance 900 series, open cab truck. It had been re-powered with a 6-V92 Detroit diesel and an Allison automatic. It was a blast to drive. 

One of the full time guys at the fire department and I became good friends. His wife’s car was a 1966 Pontiac Catalina Convertible that was in rough shape. It had no reverse in the transmission and the top was bad, but it was a solid, rust free car. When his wife insisted that he buy her a better car, he sold me the Catalina for $300. I put it in my garage and proceeded to tear it apart. One of the first things I did was to buy a 1966 Pontiac Executive wagon that I found for $200 that had a weak motor, but a newly rebuilt transmission. I removed the transmission and any other parts I thought I may be able to use, I then donated it to the fire department for practice. It worked out great. I later did the same thing with a 1966 Pontiac Gran Prix. That car gave me a near perfect bucket seat interior and other interior parts for the convertible. I had that car longer than any other to date at over eighteen years.

Likewise, other people donated cars to the fire department. One car that was donated was a really nice 1965 Mercury Monterey Breezeway sedan that didn’t run. It was one of those cool models with the rear window that rolled down into the trunk. When I showed interest in the car, they gave it to me. I replaced the points and then drove it for a while before giving it to my brother in law.

The 1983 Thunderbird was leased, and while I was in Carmel, the lease was up. It was replaced in 1987 with a 1986 Lincoln Mark VIII LSC. This was a very nice, comfortable, sporty car. I had it for about three years, then gave it to my second wife in a divorce settlement. 

One of the guys in the fire department that I knew had a 1974 Fiat 124 Spider that he drove until one day when the motor gave out on him. So, knowing my interest in cars, he offered it to me for free. I decided that I would install a Mazda rotary engine in it. I picked up a rotary motor, then realized I would need a lot more than just the engine to do this, so I picked up a good running, wrecked 1974 RX3 wagon. I took anything I thought I might want off of it, then sent it to the wrecking yard. One day, while I was going through this project, I was driving through a neighborhood near my house. I saw a guy along the road with a small pick-up with the hood up working on it. I stopped, it was a Mazda REPU rotary engine pick-up. He was trying to get it running, with no luck. I bought it for $200. I had it running in a few minutes after I got it home. I installed a header and a Holley carb on it. It was an amazingly fast little truck after that. Having a second running rotary vehicle was a big help in building the Fiat. I was lucky to have a neighbor who had a full machine shop in his garage. He helped me make parts needed to make the engine fit. It took pretty much all winter, but I got the car done. It actually worked quite well. I drove it around for about a year. One day when I was driving it, I ran into a guy who really liked it and offered to make me a trade. I ended up trading the Fiat for a 1966 Flxible 40’ diesel pusher bus that had been just started to be converted into a motorhome. The seats were all removed except the drivers seat and RV doors had been installed. I did drive it some and actually used it to move all my things from the house I lived in in Prunedale to Mountain View. When I moved to Mountain View, I had no place to store it. I had a friend in Carmel that had a construction company that had a storage area way up in Carmel Valley where he said I could store it as long as I needed. He even drove it up there. I never saw him or the bus again.

At the shop I worked at, we needed a van for service calls and pickup and delivery. Lucky for them, I had just acquired a 1969 Ford Econoline van that had a bad three speed transmission. I had found a replacement transmission and changed it, so it was a good van. We used it for work for over a year, then the shop went out and bought a new 1988 Ford Aerostar cargo van.

Like I had before, I got to wanting a motorcycle. Shortly after moving to California, I had sold my Suzuki GS1000GT. The first bike I had after that was a 1987 Yamaha FZ700 sport bike. When I got it, it only had about 300 miles on it. A guy had bought it and it got away from him and he crashed it. I got it for about $1000. I bought it with a bunch of plastic damage to the fairings and the windshield. After putting on about $600 worth of parts, it was like new. It was a real fun bike to ride and I had it for a couple of years. The next bike I bought was a 1986 Honda XL600R on/off road bike. A good friend from the fire department, Billy Ray Smith, had bought the bike new. He now had to have his right hip replaced. That meant he could no longer kick start a motorcycle. He made me a good deal on it. It was a great bike. The other bike I had while I lived in California was an interesting story. The service shop I worked at was close to an Army base, so we got a lot of soldiers coming in for repairs. One day, a soldier came in to get something fixed. While he was in the shop, I noticed he had a motorcycle frame in the back of his truck. I asked him about it. He took me out and showed me his project. It was a 1969 Suzuki 750 that is known as a water buffalo. It was probably the first large water-cooled motorcycle. It was known to be rather heavy, but had a three cylinder, two stroke motor in it. It was really unusual. He told me his plans to fix up the bike, they were pretty ambitious. I told him if he ever wanted to sell it, to bring it by. A couple of months later, the same guy came back in. The bike was finished. It had clip on bars, a bullet fairing, upside down front shocks, BMW aluminum wheels, flat side Mikuni’s, three expansion chambers and one of the coolest things I’d ever seen, two drive chains side by side driving the rear wheel. He told me he was getting shipped off overseas and had to get rid of the bike that day. I was almost afraid to ask him how much he wanted for the bike, but I did, thinking he was going to want a lot. He said the first $200 takes it. I couldn’t get to the bank fast enough. I had it for about six months. It wasn’t real fast, it didn’t handle that well, but it looked really cool and sounded like three 250cc dirt bike coming down the road. 

One day, I decided to go and visit my brother in law in San Jose. That was about a 60 mile trip from where I lived. I headed out in my Pontiac convertible on the freeway. I got about 20 miles up the road, when cars started to honk at me and give me dirty looks as they drove by. I looked in the mirror and realized that my car was putting out a major smoke cloud. I pulled off at the next exit, pulled into a gas station and checked the oil. It was down about three quarts. I purchased three quarts and poured them in and headed back home. I decided then that the motor was even more tired than I thought. At that time, my wife was gone with the Lincoln, so the Pontiac was my main transportation. I was driving around, and noticed a 1967 Gran Prix sitting in a field. I asked about it. The guy said it ran good when it was parked, but someone had stolen the battery and the starter. I took a chance, and bought it for $100 and towed it home. I took the starter out of my car and started it up. It seemed to run good. I pulled the 389 out of my convertible and replaced it with the 400 out of the Gran Prix, than scrapped the Gran Prix with the 389 just sitting in the engine compartment. I ends up that the 400 was recently rebuilt and served me well for years. I did eventually put a 389 back into the car years later.

The last car I purchased when I lived in California was a 1974 Triumph Spitfire. The person who owned the car had the car completely rebuilt, but now, you couldn’t drive it more than about twenty five miles an hour because of a horrible vibration. The guy who had worked on the car had then rebuilt the transmission, balanced the driveshaft and checked the rear end. He had finally given up. The car was in great shape and even had a factory hardtop on it. I got it for $225. I decided to drive it and see what was wrong. I found that the vibration went along with motor speed. Then, while I was driving it, it just quit moving. The motor was running, it just wouldn’t move. I shut off the motor and it wouldn’t turn over, the starter would just spin. I got home, pulled the engine out, and found out the guy had never tightened to flywheel bolts. When it quit moving, was when they broke off. I replaced the flywheel bolts, torqued them down, put the car back together and never had another problem. Shortly after that, I moved to Salt Lake City. When I moved, I only took the Catalina Convertible and the Spitfire with me.

Chapter 8, Salt Lake City. 1990- 1996

After I got to Salt Lake City and got settled in, it was in October of 1990. I decided that I should get something that was a little better for inclement weather. I traded in the Spitfire on a 1974 Chevy Blazer that was in pretty good shape. I ended up doing a lot of engine work to it, but made it into a really cool Blazer. Someone had put in a 327. I added headers, an RV cam, an intake, a Holley four barrel, a B&M floor shifter, a serious stereo and a high end alarm system. I owned this during the time when I worked evenings and weekends at both A&E automotive doing car electric repairs, they helped with the engine work, and AV specialists installing car audio and alarms. Thus the stereo and the alarm.

While working part time at the stereo store, I got to know the owner. Besides owning the stereo store, he owned a large used car lot across the street. He sold both nice cars and the “buy here, pay here” cars. 

I had the opportunity to pick up a couple if interesting cars. One of the full time installers was into Pontiacs, especially, GTOs. He sold me a 1970 GTO with a 455 and an automatic. It was in really good shape, except a rod knock. I pulled the pan and checked it and replaced the bad bearing. It ran great after that. The problem was that the guy I got it from moved out of state before I got the title from him. I ended up selling it for much less than it was worth with no title.

The other interesting car I got was from the car dealer. It was a 1978 Pontiac Trans Am. It wasn’t perfect, but was all there. It had a Pontiac 400, automatic, and had T-tops. It was gold with black striping with gold tint on the top of the windshield and gold tinted T-tops. It was a fun car to drive, and I had it for about six months. I sold it to a collector that wanted to fully restore it.

In spring of 1991, I decided I wanted a nicer, newer car for everyday use. I found a 1988 Mercury Sable. It was a lease return with somewhat high miles. I got a deal on it, as there was a problem with the paint. The problem with it was that the person who leased it must have chewed tobacco. There were big spots all down the driver’s side of the car where he must have spit out his chew. It had eaten the paint right off the car in those big spots. At that time, I had become friend with some brothers that owned and worked at a Corvette shop called Geoff Watson Corvette. They did show paint jobs for customers even if they didn’t have a Corvette. On one visit, I had the opportunity to drive a BMW that they had just painted Black Cherry. It belonged to Karl Malone. I guess they had become friends. I never got to meet him. One of the guys there owed me a favor, so he and I fixed the side of the car and repainted it. After a good wax job on the entire car, it looked like new.

When I got married for the third time, in Utah, my wife had a 1984 Ford Granada, I had the Pontiac Catalina and the Sable at that time. I guess the first thing I decided I needed was another motorcycle. I went to a dealer that fall and got a good deal on a 1980 Suzuki GS850 dresser. It was a nice bike, and was good transportation back and forth to work. My wife’s family were in the process of putting in a mobile home park on some family land in the town of Morgan, about 60 miles away from where we all lived. We were constantly hauling materials up there for setting it up and building storage sheds at all the mobile home sites. My father in law had picked up a 1986 Ford Bronco that he seldom drove. Once, for about a week, when his Dodge Pick-up was laid up, we used the Bronco to travel up to the jobsite and to pull the trailer full of materials. Since I usually drove, I decided I really liked that Bronco. It was a fairly low end model. It had a four speed transmission, and, I was surprised to find out, a 300 cubic inch six cylinder. After a week of driving it, I asked him if he wanted to sell it. He decided he would, and I did. This started my ownership of a few Broncos over the years.

I still had my Catalina, and had gotten involved with the local chapter of the Pontiac Oakland Club International, or POCI. Through the club, I met lots of other Pontiac fans and made some good friends. One day while driving home from work on State Street, I spotted a 1964 Pontiac Bonneville four door hardtop on a used car lot. I stopped in and checked it out, but they wanted a lot of money for it. I kept my eye on it every time I drove by for months. Then one day when I drove by, there was a sign stating that the car lot was closing, everything must go. I went in and ended picking up the Bonneville for $300. I drove it back and forth to work for about a year. It needed exhaust work and some tuning, but it was a really nice, driver quality car. I also picked up a 1964 Pontiac Gran Prix, thinking that I might combine the two to get a nice Gran Prix. I decided I liked the Bonneville enough that I eventually just got rid of the Gran Prix.

My step son Michael was getting ready to take drivers education in a few months, so I thought I would look around for a car for him. By hanging around the shop with me, he had taken quite an interest in cars, and like me, Pontiacs. On day, again on State Street on my way home from work, I spotted a Trans Am sitting at a transmission shop. I kept my eye on the car for a few weeks, and when it didn’t seem to go anywhere, I stopped in to ask about it. I found out it belonged to someone who worked there, it was a 1976 and it had a 455 and an automatic in it, the motor had a bad rod knock. Other than that, and old paint, it was a pretty nice car. I got it for $200 and trailered it home. It was to be Michael’s first car. It just so happened, that a friend of mine had given me a good 400 motor out of a 1979 Trans Am he had wrecked years before and he had just been keeping around. He had run out of a place to keep it, so he gave it to me, knowing my interest in Pontiacs. That worked out great, we replaced the bad 455 with the good 400. I then sold the bad 455 for enough to pay for the car. Michael and I found a set of original snowflake wheels and he worked for his grandfather in trade for some new white letter tires for it. We also started to search out any other parts we needed to make it complete. 

When Michael turned fifteen and a half, he went out and got his learners permit. His first driving experiences were with his grandfather in his 1986 Chrysler Fifth Avenue. After a week or so, he asked if I would take him out to practice driving. I said I would, and we got into the Bonneville to practice driving. From the first time he drove it, he wanted it. He said it drove so much better than the Chrysler. He absolutely loved that old car. When he got his driver’s license, He asked if I would trade him the Trans Am for the Bonneville. I decided I would. The Bonneville became his first car, and I just sold the Trans Am for a pretty good price to someone in the Pontiac club. He drove the Bonneville for about six months. One night, he called up and said the car had a driving problem. I got there to look at it. The front lower A arm was torn right out of the frame, destroying the cars frame. To this day, he says he doesn’t know what happened.

During the time we worked up in Morgan at the mobile home park, there were two car dealerships in the town. A ford dealer that butted up right against the mobile home park, and a Chrysler dealer a few blocks away, that belonged to a relative of my wife’s family. We used to go over by the Chrysler dealer quite often to eat lunch. I noticed that there was a big Dodge tow truck in the back of the used car lot. One day, we happened to stop in to the dealership for something. When we were there, I asked about the tow truck. They said it was their old tow truck for the dealership. It hadn’t been used in a few years. They wanted to sell it, but it had brand new tires, so the price had been more than anyone had wanted to pay. I believe they wanted $5000 for it. It was a 1966 Dodge 2 ½ ton truck with a 361 and a five speed. It only had about 27,000 miles on it. They said it ran and drove well and that it had $4000 worth of new tires on it. They finally agreed to let me have it for $1500, with the new tires. I bought it. It was a lot of work to drive, and was really big and tall. For the most part, it just sat around the house, but every once in a while, someone would make me mad while driving back and forth to work. If that happened, I would drive the tow truck to work the next day. Nobody pulled out in front of it. I never did tow a car with it, but I did straighten up a steel fence at work that was bent over that no one had been able to straighten out before.

While building sheds for the mobile home park, we had to erect some sheds right along the fence shared with the Ford dealership I kept looking at a little early sixties Ford Falcon that was parked right next to the fence. One day, I went into the dealer, and asked about the Falcon. I was told that it belonged to an older couple who decided to quit driving. When they quit, they didn’t know what to do with their car, so they gave it back to the dealer they bought it from when it was new. It was a 1963 Ford Falcon sedan with about 60,000 miles on it. It had the 144 cubic inch six with a three speed on the column. It was just a driver, it had a couple of minor dents and the paint was tired, but it was so original, and the interior was good. I asked if they would sell it, they said they would, but warned me that the engine was bad. They had one of their mechanics look at it, and he said the motor was seized solid from sitting. They sold it to me for $50. Since we had brought in a load of materials that day for work, we just put the car on the trailer and took it home. I had it running great that evening. It was a great commuter car. It was fun to drive and got great fuel economy. I drove it to work for about a year.

In 1996, I bought a boat, since we were planning a move to Washington to live on an island, I thought it would come in handy. The owners of the company I worked for had a boat they used on Lake Powell. They were getting a new one and sold me their old one. It was a 24 foot Bayliner cabin cruiser. Since I had that, I figured I should find a truck to tow it around with, since it was pretty heavy. One day, again on State Street, again at a used car lot, I saw a nice looking 1973 GMC Sprint (a GMC El Camino). It said on the windshield “454”. I thought that would tow my boat, so I stopped in to look at it. I opened the hood, there sat a small block Chevy motor. It had lots of chrome and aftermarket parts on it, but it wasn’t a 454. I asked the owner of the lot what made him think it was a 454? He said it had too much power to be a small block. It was a very nice vehicle with a new paint job, but they wanted $4000. I ended up trading them for my tow truck, they even paid all costs. I got the Sprint home, found a bunch of loose parts and a broken TV cable. I fixed all that. I am not real sure what all was done to that car, but it was probably the fastest accelerating car I ever owned. I never towed the boat with it.

Mt wife and I decided we needed a minivan, so, since I had good luck with Ford Aerostars in the past, we started looking for one. This was in 1995, so I was trying to find something a couple of years old, preferably with all wheel drive. I put out the word that I was looking. A couple days later, my brother in law, who sold cars for an Isuzu dealer called me, they had just taken in a really clean 1987 and if I bought it that day, I could have it for what they gave for it. I had been looking to spend up to around $10,000 for a used one. I bought this one for $1300. We had it for years, and it was one of the best cars we ever owned.

I had a few other vehicles during my time in the Salt Lake area. One that I picked up had belonged to the elderly father of a neighbor. It was a 1974 Pontiac Catalina sedan. The owner had hit something with it real hard and bent the frame on the passenger side. The car had less than 20,000 miles on it, and so everything else was in great condition. I got it for $50. It had a 400 cubic inch V8 and a 400 turbo transmission that were both like new. I removed them and anything else that I might be able to use, then had it hauled away. That left me with a like new motor and transmission to put into something.

My father in law had bought one of his grandkids a 1984 Buick Regal. They ran it out of oil and destroyed the motor. It had a Pontiac 301 motor in it. I looked at it and decided that the 400 I had should fit. It turned out to be a lot of work, but I did get it in and working. It made for a quite powerful Regal. It didn’t last too long, a few months later, it got totaled out. That left me with a good transmission to find a home for.

After I got the Regal put together, I drove it to work for about a week to make sure everything was working well. One of those days, I was talking about the project with some of the guys at work. I mentioned that now I had a transmission I needed to find a home for. One of the guys I was friends with said he had a Chevy at his house that had been sitting for years. It needed a transmission. He said he would sell it really cheaply. I said I would come over and look at it. It was a couple of weeks before Christmas, so it got dark really early. When I got to his house, we went into the back yard. There was a 1974 Camaro. Come to find out, the car was his high school graduation present. The transmission had gone out years before. So it just sat there in the yard. He unlocked one of the doors. I reached for the center of the console, and found a hole. I asked what transmission it had. Had said it was a four speed. It was torn apart in the trunk. I also found out it had the most powerful 350 available in that year. It also had less than 50,000 miles on it. I asked him how much he wanted for the car, he asked if I would give him $50. I gave him $75 because that was how much I had with me. I came over on Saturday with the trailer and picked it up. When I got it home, I found it to be a really clean car that was in really good shape. The only problems were the transmission and water must have gotten into the trunk and rusted out one quarter panel behind the rear wheel. I decided I would spend the $500 I needed to get a four speed from a wrecking yard. I headed out on a snowy day to go all the way to a wrecking yard about 50 miles away that had one. A few blocks from my house, on State Street, was a transmission shop. I decided to see if they offered anything. It would be better than a long drive in the snow. I asked, they said they only worked on automatics. I thanked them and headed out the door. One of the young guys who worked there, chased me down just as I was getting into my Bronco. He said he overheard me asking about a four speed transmission. I told him I was looking for one. He said his brother has just taken a four speed out of his Camaro he was setting up for drag racing. He had the transmission there, and if I had cash, he would sell it to me. He needed to get his girlfriend a Christmas present. I asked how much he wanted. He said $35, I couldn’t pay him fast enough. I drove a few blocks, and got a transmission, with a Hurst shifter for $35. I put it in the car and was driving it around that weekend. I had my friend at Geoff Watson Corvette put on a quarter panel for the cost of the panel, then had it painted at Maaco in trade for a high end VCR I had. By the time I was done, I had less than $200 in the car. I drove it a bit, then sold it for $4500.

I showed the guy at work who sold me the Camaro the car when I was done. He said his dad also had a car he wanted to get rid of. It was in their garage. It was a low mileage 1975 Cadillac Seville. The motor just quit running one day. I bought it also, but could never get the fuel injection working. I believe the main computer was bad, and it was no longer available. I sold it as is to a guy who had one that ran, but wasn’t in nearly as good condition as the one I had.

I also picked up a 1985 Chevy Sprint (A Geo Metro before Geo). With a hole in the block. I bought a motor with almost no miles on it from a wrecking yard. I was able to take out the existing motor and replace it with the new one by myself without the use of a hoist. They were that small. I sold it to a woman at work who needed a cheap car.

Another vehicle I had was a 1986 Dodge custom van. My father in law had taken over the payments on it from his cousin who decided he couldn’t afford it. We decided to go in half and half on the van and to use it for traveling. I put in a real high end Alpine stereo and a TV/VCR combo in a console that I built for the back seat passengers. I also had to replace the AC compressor and get the AC working. Before we went anywhere with it, he gave it to his son for taking over the payments. A lot of work for nothing as far as I was concerned.

My oldest step daughter finally got her driver’s license when she turned eighteen. We let her drive my wife’s old Granada. It had been a trouble free car for us, but every time she drove it, she said it would overheat. We finally got tired of hearing that and said she couldn’t drive it any more. I drove it to work for a couple of weeks with no problems, then sold it to one of her friends who also never had any problems with it. But she did want a car. The car she really wanted was my Ford Falcon. I would take her out in the evenings and try to teach her how to shift the three on the tree, but she could never figure it out. I would also take her out in my Camaro with the four speed, she did fine with that. She also had no problems with the Bronco. She still insisted on buying the Falcon, so I sold it to her cheap. She drove it one time on her own, then sold it for what she paid for it. She still needed a car. I finally agreed to sell her our Bronco. I had been looking at some used Utah Highway Patrol Mustangs, and decided I would sell the Bronco and buy one of those. There was a lot in Salt Lake City where they disposed of government vehicles. I had found a couple of those that appealed to me. The day I was to turn over the Bronco to her, I went to that yard on my lunch hour. They had nothing I wanted that day. I was depressed, I had promised my Bronco to her and now my Mustang dream was going away. On my way back to the shop, I cut through a parking lot. There in the parking lot was a really clean 1971 Pontiac Le Mans Sport for sale. I called the owner, it was a California car with a 350, automatic and AC. He wanted $2400 for it. I talked him down to $1800. I had to fix a few things to get it where I wanted it, but it was a good car. Much more about that car later. The Le Mans was the car I owned for the second longest behind only my Catalina.

A friend of a friend of mine had a car that I had heard about. It was a 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge. The guy who owned it contacted me and asked me if I wanted to buy it. I figured it was way beyond my budget, but went to look anyway. In this guy’s garage was a totally bare, white GTO body shell with a show quality paint job. He had evidently wrapped the car around a telephone pole about ten years earlier. He bought a parts car, then took all the parts off both cars. He then took them to a body shop and had the body fixed by using the best parts of both cars. They then painted the car and returned it to him. It then sat in his garage for about nine years. He had the 400 motor under a work bench, it was all together and he said it ran great. There was also the Muncie four speed and box after box of parts. We found two complete interiors and all the glass. He said his wife told him it had to go, so I got it all for $1500. It was a smoking deal. I returned with a trailer. It took two trips, one for the body and another for all those parts. Everything went into my shop. I spent the entire winter trying to put it all back together. It was a huge job. The last things I had to do was put in the motor and the interior. I put in the motor, then for the first time, I tried to turn it over. It was seized solid. I was told the motor was in perfect shape and had always been stored in the guy’s garage. I pulled off the intake and the heads. It was a total mess of rust. I went back to the guy I got the car from. He said he had no idea how that could have happened. He had a friend who was supposed to be a master mechanic, and was the president of the local Buick GS club. He got him to agree to help rebuild the motor. I took the heads over to a machine shop and had them completely rebuilt. He took the block and had it bored 60 over, then installed the new pistons and rings. The bottom end of the motor was good. I think when the guy installed the pistons and rings, they were too tight. I did get the car put together, but it always started hard and turned over really slow. When it did run, it overheated. When we decided to move, I sold it for probably ¼ of what is was worth if it would have run better. I just didn’t have the time to take care of it. I believe the next owner had to find a new replacement block to fix it. Another car that could have been much more that it ended up.

About the same time, I picked up a recovered stolen 1985 Toyota Pick-up. It was a good truck, just missing lots of trim, the nice wheels and tires and the stereo. I got it all put back together and sold it to a friend of mine’s son. He drove it for years 

Chapter 9, Friday Harbor. 1996-2005

When we decided to move to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island in Washington, we weren’t sure where we were going to live. My parents had quite a bit of property on the island, so we asked if we could park an RV there. They said we could, so we went shopping for an RV. We looked at a number of large motor homes, some we liked and some we didn’t. The one we had liked the best was a Suncrest we had seen at a dealer. It was a front engine, 35 foot, but we really liked the interior layout. It happened that at that time, my wife bowled on a league with a woman whose husband owned a big RV dealership. She said her husband, Ardell Brown, would give us a good deal on a used RV. We went in there. He also had a Suncrest in stock. The difference between the one he had and the other one we liked was that this one was a very limited model they made. It was a 36 foot with a 454 in the back under the bed. Independent front suspension, air ride, four wheel disc brakes and other things that were kind of unusual. Inside, it had a washer and dryer, a trash compactor, a garbage disposal and a 9000 watt generator. When we test drove it, it turned over 11,000 miles. He made us a good deal on it, and even took in our GMC Sprint in trade. He told me he didn’t know what he would do with it. Some years later, he became one of the largest classic and muscle car dealers in the west. I often wonder if that Sprint had anything to do with that. A few months later we moved to Friday Harbor. I initially drove the motor home up, towing the boat during the summer. We stayed for a week, then left those and flew home. When we later moved there in September, I drove a rental truck, pulling the Catalina, my wife drove the Aerostar and a friend from my work drove the Le Mans. It was time to start a new chapter in our lives.

On our first trip to Friday Harbor after we got married in 1991, we stopped to eat at Vic’s drive in. While we were there, I saw a picture on the wall of the drive in showing the cars and members of the local car club, the San Juan Cruisers. Looking at it closely, I saw that someone had a collection of Pontiacs. I asked to owner of the drive in, who was the guy with all the Pontiacs. He told me it was Mike Pinnow, who owned a car service shop in town. I decided that I would stop by and talk to him. His shop was called M&W automotive. They serviced, and also rented cars. We talked Pontiacs for a while, then I left. A few weeks later, while I was at a cruise night in Salt Lake City, I saw a 1964 Pontiac Catalina 2+2 with a 421 and a four speed. From our conversation, this was the exact car Mike was looking for. I took down the information on the car and called Mike. He bought the car in Salt Lake and drove it home. We became friends after that.

As soon as we moved to Friday Harbor, Mike brought me to the monthly car club meeting of the San Juan Cruisers, so I could join. Being a small car club on a small island, it was different that any car clubs I had been involved with before. They accepted anyone, with any kind of car or any kind of interest. I was involved in the car club for about eight years, nearly half as the president. I met a lot of interesting people through the club.

When I got to the island, I thought I would just use my little Aerostar for service calls. It didn’t take long for me to see that I would a real van. One day, after work, I was sitting around talking to my landlord. I told him I was going to need a van real soon. He said he had one he could fix me up with. He had an electrical contracting company on the island, and had just replaced one of his older vans. He said I could just have it, but it needed a little work. It was a 1975 Chevy ¾ ton van, and it ran and even looked good. The power steering barely worked, and it was all over the road above about 35 MPH. I didn’t have an area to work on it yet, so I took it to a guy who I had become friends with who owned the local tire shop. He tightened up the power steering belt, and replaced all four tires that were separated with some take off tires he had. He didn’t charge me, and it drove great after that. The only problem with that van was the horrible fuel economy. 

Very shortly after we moved there, Mike asked me if I was interested in buying a very rusty, low mileage 1972 Pontiac Le Mans Sport he had picked up. He only wanted the Rally II wheels off of it. He sold it to me cheap. It had a 400 cubic inch motor with a 400 turbo transmission. My 1971 Le Mans had a 350, 350 setup. I parted out the 1972, keeping the parts I wanted, and selling the rest. I installed the 400 motor and the 400 turbo into my car. I also put on an Edlelbrock aluminum intake and an Edelbrock four barrel, headers and some chrome dress up parts. It all really woke that car up. It was still an ugly brown with a cream colored vinyl top, but it drove great.

A friend on the island called me one day and asked me if I would be interested in a 1980 Ford Mustang that didn’t run. It was cheap, so I bought it. Looking back, it was an interesting car in that it had a really good factory fake convertible top. It actually looked like a real convertible top. I’m not sure how many of those were made, but I’ve heard just less than 2000. I guess it was a $655 option. I got it running, offered it to my son Dan, he didn’t seem interested, so I sold it to my employee.

As we had to travel off the island quite often, my wife and I had thought about getting a car just for that. A smaller car that got good fuel economy, and was nice to drive. About that time, A 1988 Pontiac Firebird Formula came up for sale at M&W auto. By this time they had expanded into more car rentals and sales and less repairs. The car was in really good shape and fit the criteria we were looking for so we bought it. It was our off island car for a couple of years until I sold it to a club member who really wanted it.

I have always liked sports cars. so I was always on the lookout for one to pick up. One of my favorite car stories from that time comes from a service call I made to Orcas Island. I received a warranty repair call on Orcas for a customer with a Sony TV. I made the trip over to Orcas a few days later to a house that was down at the end of a long gravel road. When I pulled up, I noticed there was a Porsche 914 in the driveway. While I was repairing the TV, I was talking to the customer. I asked about the car. He said it was a 1974 914 two liter. He said that he had purchased the car new when living in Oakland California and it still ran good and it was still licensed and insured, but it was very seldom driven. He also asked if I was interested in buying the car. I said, maybe, how much did he want for it? I had to order a part for his TV, so he said he would think about it and let me know next week when I returned to finish the repair. I can back the following week to finish the repair. When it was completed, he told me he had decided that if I wanted the car, he would sell it to me for $3500. That was probably a good enough deal, but since I was just starting out on my business, I really couldn’t afford it right then. I thanked him and went on about my way.

About a year later, I got a call at the shop from a customer, wanting to know if I was the guy who had fixed her Sony TV over on Orcas Island about a year ago. I said that I likely was. She then asked if I might still be interested in the Porsche they had. She said they had tried a little to sell the car, and had considered offers, but didn’t like the people who had responded. She then said they had decided to let me have the car for free if I still wanted it. I said that would be a generous gift and that I was coming over to Orcas in a few days anyway. I could pick it up the. She said that would be good. When I got there with a friend to pick up the car, she stated that they had taken the car out for a final drive and were concerned about the condition of the brakes. They wanted me to come back next week, so they could get the brakes redone before I took the car. I told them that I could take care of that. They signed over the title and handed over the keys. A free Porsche was still a good thing, even if it needed brakes. I even got another 914 later on for parts for $100 on the island, but it was only good for a parts car. I did sell a lot of parts off of it. 

After I got it home, I did have to replace the rear brakes, I used some parts off the parts car. I also had it painted original Porsche orange, since I wasn’t crazy about the original white. It was a really fun car to drive and the handling was absolutely amazing. I had other sports cars in the past. I thought that this was the most fun sports car ever.

After a fun year or so with the Porsche, I had the opportunity to make a service call on San Juan Island. Again, at the end of a gravel road. This guy happened to have a 1973 Datsun 240Z in his driveway. The car looked good, although it had been obviously sitting out in the weather for a while. I talked to the customer about the car. He told me a great story about the car. He had decided in 1972 to buy a new car. He went to the dealer in the summer and drove a new 1972 240Z and decided that was the car he wanted. By the time he went back a few months later, all they had were the new 1973 models. That was what he bought, but he was disappointed with the power of the newer model. When he spoke to the dealer about this, he was told that the carburetors had been changed to meet the newer smog specs. He actually got the dealer into installing all of the 1972 spec equipment on it. He soon after found out that each year when it had to be smog tested, it would fail. He also found out that by misadjusting the carbs, he could get it to pass with it barely running. He would then put it back to where it was and drive it all year. 

After a great conversation, he did say that he wanted to sell it, but that he wanted $4000. He said he had a guy who was interested, but they couldn’t get it to run, so the guy went away. The first thing I did was to remove the gas cap and smell the gas. It was probably the worst smelling gas I’d ever smelled. I told the guy what all would need to be done to get it running, and ended up buying the car for $300. I trailered it home, removed the gas tank and had it rebuilt, rebuilt the carbs, replaced the gas line and installed a new battery. After the repairs, the car ran and drove great. After driving for a few miles, I decided that it was so much more fun in general to drive than the Porsche, that I sold the Porsche. Looking back, the Porsche was about as fast, but you had to work harder to make it go fast. The Porsche was also better handling, but when it came to comfort and ease of having a fun time, the Datsun was far and away better. I came to understand how the 240Z absolutely killed the British sports car market in this country. What an absolutely wonderful car to drive and to look at. 

One of the things I really appreciated about the 240Z was the steering. It was rack and pinion and not power assisted, but it was so fast and light with near perfect balance. One day, while driving around the island in the 240Z, a guy came up to me and asked if I was interested in another one. He said he had an almost identical car that wouldn’t start. I said I would take a look. What he had was a 1974 260Z with new gold paint. He said he would sell it for $300. Although it did look like my 240Z, it had the terrible carbs on it, it had the five mile per hour collision bumpers and factory AC. I trailered it home, quickly repaired the adjustment on the electronic distributer, and got it running. The car was a totally different driving car than the 240Z. I’m not sure why, but the steering was heavy and slow and so was the car. I absolutely hated it. I sold it to a guy who wanted a sports car. I drove the 240Z for a few years. Although it was a very complete and original car, it needed restoration. One day a guy came to our bowling alley and saw the car out front. He had to have it, so I sold it to him for $4500. That would have been in 2002.

As soon as I sold it, I missed having a sports car. One of my customers had a Datsun 280ZX in her driveway that was kind of beat up, but never seemed to move. One time when I went over to do some service for her, I inquired about the car. She had bought the car used when it was a year old in Seattle. She said she very seldom drove it, and that it only had about 12,000 miles on it. I looked it over. It was a 1980 280ZX 10th anniversary edition with every thinkable option on it, and everything worked. She decided she wanted $1000 for it. I offered her less, that just made her mad. It took me about a month to get her to even let me buy it for the $1000. It was also a really nice car to drive, but although it had low miles, it had spent its entire life out in the weather and had been some minor fender benders over the years. After I moved off of the island, I had a friend do the body and paint back to original with all the correct emblems and pinstripes. I won a best of show trophy at an all Datsun show with the car. I drove it for a few years then sold in to a guy in the Midwest.

Another vehicle I had while on the island was a 1964 Corvair Van. I saw it in someone’s yard while out doing service calls. It wasn’t in bad shape, and it brought back memories of the one that I had years before. I contacted a friend who knew the owner, and he said I could have if I wanted it. It needed very little to get it running. It was about this time that another friend and I decided to start a pirate radio station on the island. It was quite a hit with the residents, so the Corvair Van became the 102.5 FM van around town. That lasted a while, until the FCC shut us down. I then sold the van.

After a few years without a motorcycle, I started to want one again. When we first moved to the Island, I didn’t have a lot of extra money to spend on one, so I looked at a few that were in my price range. The first was a 1978 Yamaha 650 special that didn’t run and didn’t have a title. I got it running, but never pursued a title. I rode it around a few times then just sold it as is, without a title. The next bike was a mid-70s Kawasaki 350 dirt bike, also not running, also with no title. As before, I got it operable, barely rode it and then sold it. The next one I came across by accident. I met a guy over at a friend’s business that had just moved to the island from California. He wanted me to come over and install a satellite system at his rental house. When I was there doing that, I saw a motorcycle out in his back yard that was on its side. I asked him why the bike was on its side. He said that it had fallen over, and that he couldn’t pick it back up by himself. I offered to help him pick it up. He wasn’t more than about 5 foot 4. We went out and stood the bike up. It was a beautiful 1926 Honda 1000 Goldwing with all the dress up parts of the era. It had less than 10,000 miles on it. He told me that when he was loading up to move, a friend offered to sell it to him. He bought it, then when he got to the island, he discovered he was too small to handle that big a bike. I asked him if he wanted to sell it. He said he had little use for it and sold it to me for $1000. It was a really nice bike, and really well equipped, but not real good for just around the island riding. I had another friend that really wanted it, so I sold it and took in a Suzuki GS 650 in trade that had less than 1000 miles on it. I likewise rode it a little, then sold it. I guess the perfect bike just hadn’t come along yet. I also had a customer who knew I liked motorcycles that was leaving the island to move back to Kansas. He owned a Honda CX500 that was in nice shape. He had planned on taking the bike with him, but it wouldn’t fit in his truck he was using to move. He stopped by on his way out of town and offered it to me for $200. I bought it, but it didn’t thrill me, so I sold it. 

In 2004, I had become friends with a guy on the island who was a local character. We would sit in the bowling alley restaurant in the mornings eating breakfast, and spend time talking about just about anything. I knew that he had a Kawasaki Concorde motorcycle, although I had never seen it. One morning, he came in and told us that he had gone over to the mainland to get his motorcycle serviced. When there, he had looked at their used motorcycles. He saw a used 1997 Honda 1500 Goldwing, and really liked the looks of it. He took it for a ride, and traded in his Concorde right then and there. He had ridden his new Goldwing in that day, and he told me that if I wanted to ride the nicest bike I would ever ride, I should ride it around the block. I did, is was a nice bike not nothing mind bending. About three weeks later, he took that bike over to the place where he bought it for service. When there, he spoke to a guy who happened to be there, who asked him about his bike. The guy was a previous owner of the bike he had just bought. He asked my friend how he liked it. Of course, he friend gushed about how it was the nicest bike he had ever ridden. The guy asked him if he had ever ridden one of the newer 1800 Goldwing’s. My friend said no, he hadn’t. The guy said he was there trading in his 2001 1800 Goldwing, and that he should take it for a ride. He did, and proceeded to buy it on the spot, trading in his 1500. The next Monday, he brings it in. He tells me I need to ride it around the block. Now, it was mind bending. It was like nothing I had ever ridden before, fast, smooth, luxurious and beautiful. He saw that I really liked it, and told me he wasn’t really planning to ride it a lot, so anytime I wanted to ride it, I knew where to find it, and I could use it anytime. The first time I went over on a Friday to get it for the weekend, I brought it home and had it parked in my driveway. My wife came out to look at it. Now, up until that time, I had had any number of big bikes in the past, but not like this. I had asked her many times if she wanted to go for a ride on those previous bikes, she wasn’t interested. As soon as she saw this bike, she asked if I had a helmet she could use so we could go for a ride. There just so happened that there was an extra helmet in one of the bags on the bike. We went for a ride, and decided right then that we wanted one of our own. I still rode his around while we tried to find one we could buy that was in our price range. Eventually, my friend decided to cut back on some things and sold me the bike. We owned it for eight years and had some great times on it. Eventually, my wife started to have some hip problems and was no longer comfortable riding on the bike and we sold it.

I did pick up a couple of bikes after that, a 1976 Goldwing in amazing condition that hadn’t been started in years. I took it home, flushed out the fuel system and rebuilt the carbs. I then put in a new battery. It started right up, but it really didn’t do much for me. I also had a customer who had a 2000 Suzuki 600 Savage that was lightly wrecked when it was almost new. It had been sitting for about 15 years. I bought it and took it home, put a battery in it and it started right up, even with the gas in the tank. It had always been stored inside and was in amazing shape. I installed new parts to repair the damage. I rode it some, but after having the 1800 Goldwing, neither bike was very interesting. I also picked up a 1978 Honda 750F with very low miles from a friend that had been sitting for years. It was also in great shape. It just wasn’t that much fun compared to the big Goldwing. I sold it to a collector, as it was a very desirable bike.

One thing I learned after I moved to the island was the restrictions with the ferries. People who live on the island could, at that time, buy a book of ferry tickets. The book gave you five standard tickets. If your vehicle is under 20 ft. long, you can use a standard ferry ticket. If it is over 20 ft. you need to pay more, and a standard ticket no longer works. If your vehicle is over 8 foot 4 inches tall, the price to get on the ferry doubled and you could also no longer use the tickets, not even if you wanted to use two of them. All this became important when purchasing a van. To save money and to stay out of the oversized vehicle lanes, your vehicle, including any ladder racks had to be less than 8 foot 4 inches high. When the new vans from both Ford and Chevrolet came out in the 90s, because of design changes, they were hard to keep under that height. The old 1976 Chevy I had was, even with a ladder rack, just under the 8 foot 4 restriction. I decided that that was the series of vans I needed to stay with.

A friend of mine that owned a heating and air conditioning company on the island had decided to move to Alaska, so he wanted to sell his 1989 Chevy van. He offered it to me at a good price, so I bought it for my new company van. I only needed one van at that time, so I sold the old one. After a few years with the 1989 van, I hired an installer, so I needed another van. I decided to go out and find the nicest van of that series I could find. I found a real nice 1995, the last year for that body style. That became my van. I also picked up a 1988 Dodge van and a 1996 Ford Aerostar cargo van. By the time we built the bowling alley in 2002, I had sold all the vans except the 1995 Chevy.

During the years on the island, I seemed to find cars that needed some work. On the island, cars that didn’t run were worth a lot less, because automotive repair on the island was somewhat limited and expensive. That allowed me to pick up a number of cars that I would get for cheap or even free, then take home and repair. I then usually just sold them, occasionally, I would find one I would keep for at least a while and drive.

Among these cars were a 1978 Toyota AWD station wagon I got for free that had a bad head. I had a friend that had a similar one with a rod knock that was going to the wrecking yard, but I got the head first. I replaced the head and sold it. I also picked up a 1978 Toyota pick-up for $50, that had a $100 floor jack in the back. I put front brakes on it and sold it, and got a good floor jack out of the deal. I also got a 1978 Ford Granada that didn’t run for free. I got it home and found there were major engine problems. I gave it to someone else. I also got a 1989 Chevy Blazer with a bad motor. I then picked up a 1986 Chevy Astro van for cheap with a good motor. I took the motor out of the Astro and put it into the Blazer. It ended up being way more involved than what I wanted to get involved with. I gave the Blazer to a friend for his daughter. 

It was about this time that we decided it was time to get a newer minivan. The 1987 Aerostar had serviced us well, but was getting to have a lot of miles on it. I had been happy with the Aerostar vans we had owned up to this point, so I looked for another one. I found a good deal on a 1994 Aerostar from a friends dealership in Bellingham. What a terrible vehicle it was. It had major engine problems and it was on its second engine when I got it. We drove it for maybe a year, then hauled it to the auction. One of the worst vehicles I ever owned.

There were other vehicles I picked up that I kept for a while. One was a 1988 Dodge Dakota pick-up. It was a really nice, low mileage truck that had come into the local car lot. I was really hard to start. The owner of the car dealership took it to one of the mechanics on the island. He told here it need the carb rebuilt and the accelerator pump replaced. She spent about $400 to get it repaired. When it came back, it was still as hard to start as before. She asked me if I wanted to buy it cheap, really cheap. I bought it, and took it back to my friend that worked at the repair shop she had taken it to. The guy who I knew there was the guy who had the Goldwing on its side in his yard. I told him that the truck was hard to start still. He looked on his bench, said he had forgotten to install the accelerator pump, opened the hood, installed the pump and I never had any further problems with it. I told my friend the car dealer about it and offered to let her buy it back for what I paid for it. She declined, and never used that shop again. 

Similarly, the car dealership got in a 1984 Lincoln Continental that was a low mileage car. It was loaded with options and was a pretty car. It seemed to have a problem with the battery going dead if it wasn’t started on a somewhat regular basis. One day, a guy came over from one of the other islands to look at the car. At the time, they were really busy, and just handed the guy the keys for the car. He went out to start the car, but the battery was too low to start the car. He came in and asked if they had a way to jump start the car. Since they were busy, they just handed him a battery and a wrench and told him he could replace the battery if he wanted to test drive the car. He went out to do just that. At one point, he came in and told them that the battery cable ends didn’t seem to fit right. They gave him a set of pliers. This should have been a warning to them, but they didn’t go out to see what the guy was doing. What he did was to hook up the battery backwards. With a car with all the electronics that this car had, it never would start again. They sold me the car for $300, and I towed it home. After replacing the alternator and some bad diodes in the Anti-Lock braking system and suspension control. I got the car back on the road. I drove it around for about six months before I sold it. 

Another car from the dealership was a low mileage 1994 Pontiac Sunbird convertible. They always wanted to have at least one convertible on the lot. This one they picked up in about 1998. It had a problem since they picked it up in that if it wasn’t driven every day, the battery would go dead. They took it to the dealer and a local shop. Nobody seemed to be able to find the draw. At the end of the summer, she decided she no longer wanted to fight the problem, so, it was going to the auction. I bought it for my wife to drive. The problem was the seat belt tensioner release in the driver’s door. What a weird problem. My wife drove that car for quite a few years. 

Another vehicle I got from the car dealer was a 1988 Ford Pick-up. She had taken it in on trade. It was a F150, Lariat 4X4, short box with pretty much every option. After she got in on the lot, she found out it leaked oil really bad. She took it to a local mechanic, who told her it needed both front and rear main seals. It would be a really expensive repair. She offered to sell it to me cheap. I got it home and looked at it. All it needed was a new oil pressure sending unit. It took a $6 part and never leaked again. I again told her about the repair and offered her the truck back. She again declined. I had just recently sold the Dodge Dakota to my step daughter who had bought my 1986 Bronco years before. The bronco was in really bad need of repairs. I had to do all 4 brakes and put in a new clutch. Then I had to put new tires on it. When I got the F150, I took the new tires off the Bronco, switched them with the F150 and then sold the Bronco. I drove the F150 for a few years until a guy I worked with at the fire department decided he really wanted to buy it. I sold it and decided to buy a newer truck that I really wanted. My wife and I went off the island to a dealer that had a used 2002 Ford F150 Lightning on the lot. That was what I wanted. Since I took my wife with me, I ended up coming home with a 2001 Ford F150 Super Crew King Ranch edition. It was a really nice truck. We had it for a couple of years, then sold it so we could buy a house.

A story that I recall from when I lived on the island was that one day in about 1998, I had a satellite and TV install at a house on the island. The home owner was an attorney in southern California. He had decided he didn’t want to have his kids grow up there, so he moved to the island. While I was there, he showed me his 1996 Dodge Viper GTS coupe. He seldom drove it, and it had less than 4000 miles on it. We got to be friends. A few months later, he came to my shop. He said he was going to sell the Viper through an exotic car dealer in Belleview. Since it would be the last day he would have the car in his possession, he thought I might like to take it for a drive around the island, he tossed me the keys. It was a rather memorial drive. It was cramped inside, and kind of difficult to see out of, but boy was it fast, and it had incredible torque. A fun drive.

Other collectible cars I had while on the island were, 2 1964 Thunderbirds. I just turned around and sold them to a collector. A 1964 Oldsmobile Convertible, that I sold parts off of and a 1965 Pontiac Gran Prix that I bought just for the 8 lug wheels to put on my 1966 Convertible, then sold for a nice profit. I also owned a 1986 Citroen Visa that could have been one of the only ones to ever been imported into the country. I also bought from the original owner, a 1972 Honda Z600 Coupe with low miles that had been in a storage building since the late 70s. That went to a collector in California.

As my daughters were getting to the age to drive, I decided to get them cars to drive. The first one got a 1986 Dodge Daytona coupe. It had motor problems that neither I nor a Mechanic friend could get to the bottom of, so it got sold for parts. Then I found a 1966 Chevy Chevelle sedan. It had a new motor and ran and drove well. It got her around until she went off to college out of state. My younger daughter was just about to get her license. I got call out with the fire department to a car fire at the local grocery store. When we got to the scene, there was a guy with his 1986 BMW 6 series sedan. It had had an engine fire. By the time we arrived on scene. Someone who worked at the store had extinguished the fire. We were talking to the car owner. He said he didn’t know what to do with the car. He asked if anybody wanted to buy the car. I asked how much. He said how about $50. I said I would give him $50 for it. Then the towing guy came over and said he had to tow it away. I asked him how much it would cost to tow it to my house. He said $50. The car owner said that if I paid the towing bill, he would give me the car. So I did. After repairing the wiring and finding a loose fuel fitting that caused the problem. My daughter has a BMW 6 series to drive back and forth to school. After she bought a car later, I sold it to a collector in Atlanta.

Also, when in the fire department, we were called out to a vehicle fire in town one day. It was a rather nice 1984 Ford F250 Pick-up with a carburetor fire. Again, by the time we arrived, it was put out. Again, the owner didn’t know what to do with it, again, he just gave it to me. I fixed some bad wiring and drove it around a little then sold it to a friend that needed a truck to tow things around with.

For my 50thbirthday, my wife decided to buy me a 1950 Ford Sedan like the one I had years before. I found one in Hemmings Motor News in Montana that looked good. It was what I wanted. A 1950 Ford Custom Deluxe Sedan with a flathead V8 and overdrive. It was a very original car with no rust. It was a complete driver, but needed a complete restoration. I owned it for a year or so, and bought lots of needed parts for the restoration, but never did much to it other than drive it around. I finally decided I couldn’t afford to restore it, so I sold it to someone who could. If I had that same car now, I would just drive it as it was, but even that few years ago, that wasn’t a popular thing to do like it is today.

One of my favorite stories from Friday Harbor, happened in about 2002. I got a call from the owner of the car lot on the island. She told me that someone from the island had called her, and wanted to know if she was interested in an old Chevy he had in a storage locker. She knew I was into collector cars, and asked me to come along and look at the car. When we got to the storage facility, the car owner opened the door. Inside was a beautiful 1956 Chevy Bel Air hardtop Sport Coupe. I crawled all over the car. There was absolutely no rust anywhere. The interior had the plastic seat covers on it that were popular back in the day. It had just under 95,000 miles on it. Under the hood was a 235 six hooked to a Powerglide automatic. He said he had purchased the car 17 years before, when he still lived in California. When he moved to the island, he had transported the car up to the island. It had been in the storage locker ever since, over 15 years. He said he was sick of paying storage on the car, and the first person to give him $6500 would own it. She decided she really didn’t need it or have a good place to store it, so she declined it. After she left, I was still talking to the owner. He said that I obviously was into old cars, so he wanted to show me the other car he had in another storage locker that he also wanted to sell. We walked across the driveway to another locker. He opened that door. Inside was a 1953 Jaguar XJ120 fixed head coupe. It was in beautiful shape. It had less than 50,000 miles on it. He said it ran great, although, I never heard it run. He said he wanted $12,000 for the Jag. I told him that I would ask around and see if anyone I knew was interested. I called my brother, who knew car guys in Carmel. He said he knew a guy who was into old Jags, he would talk to him and find out what he thought about the car. He called me back the next day. The guy said that $12,000 was a good deal, but not enough for him to jump on the next plane to come and get it. A week or so later, a friend of mine from Bellingham came over to look at the 56 Chev. He liked it, but also didn’t pull the trigger. When we were there, I asked about the Jag. He said he had dropped his price to $10,000, I said I would continue to try to find a buyer. The end of the month came around and the guy called my friend that owned the car lot back and asked her how much she would give her for the car. She offered him $3500 for it and he took it. When we were over picking up the car, I asked about the Jag. I told him I had talked to a couple of people who were interested. He told me not to bother, he had sold it. He said he wasn’t going to pay storage for either car one more month. He had sold the Jag for $4500. I never found out what happened to the Jag. The 56 Chev sat at my friend’s car dealership in the shop for about 5 years, until she decided she wasn’t ever going to do anything with it. I heard she got about $12,000 for it. As for me, because I had helped them out with those cars, they gave me a 1968 Pontiac Bonneville station wagon that they had since new. I got it running, but it needed a cam and head work, so I sold it to a friend on Orcas island who had a thing for 68 Pontiacs.

The last car I bought when I was on the island was a 2004 Ford Crown Victoria Cop Car. A friend of mine was with the Sheriff’s department. He called me and told me that a sheriff’s car over on Orcas had gotten wrecked. It only had about 30,000 miles on it. It was going to be auctioned off. There was a bid of $100 for the car. If I bib more than that, it would be mine. I was packing up to move and really didn’t have the time to deal with it, so I told him I wasn’t interested. Two days before the auction, the other bidder pulled out. I got the car for $1. I went over and picked up the car, removed the engine and transmission along with the electronics to control them. I hauled away the carcass and then had an engine and transmission I moved around from place to place until I gave up finding a project for them and sold them to a taxi cab company for $500.

It seems to me, that anytime I remember in my life that I made a major move, it marks a point in my automotive life. When I moved to Clallam bay, I had the three vehicles, the Camaro, the Pontiac wagon and the Ford van. When I moved back to Bellingham, I had the Honda Civic and the van. When I moved to California, I had my Thunderbird and my Suzuki GS1000. When I moved to Utah, I had my Pontiac convertible and my Spitfire. When I moved to Friday Harbor, I had my Pontiac convertible, my Pontiac Lemans, my Ford Aerostar, my motorhome and my Bayliner boat.

Chapter 10, Back to Bellingham, again. 2005-2024

When I moved off the island, I had the Pontiac convertible, my Pontiac LeMans, my wife’s Pontiac Sunbird, my Chevy van, my Datsun 280 ZX, my Citroen Visa, my Honda Goldwing, my 2001 Ford King Ranch Pick-up and my 1950 Ford. This meant I needed a place to put all this stuff. I made a difficult decision, and sold the Convertible that I said I’d never sell, the LeMans, the Datsun, the Citroen and the Ford. It was tough to see them go. I also soon after ended up with our daughters 1992 Honda Accord. When we got it, we gave her the Sunbird for something to drive. As my experiences with Honda cars up to that point had been less than stellar, I was just going to move the Accord along. After driving it a little, I was sold, it was a great car. I drove it around for a few years. It was a trouble free car that was fun to drive. We also ended up with my mother’s 1995 Honda Accord when we made her quit driving. I also found a 1984 Pontiac Fiero that was cheap and needed a home. I seldom drove it and eventually sold it.

One vehicle I really liked that I had in the past was the 1986 Ford Bronco. It was kind of unusual, in that it was a six cylinder with a four speed manual. One day, a friend of mine called me and said there was a 1985 Bronco for sale in Bellingham cheap. He said that it was a six with a four speed. I decided to go look at it. It was a really cool Bronco, it had basically every available option, but was a six with the manual transmission. It didn’t run and had some rust out. But it was $300 and had brand new tires on it. I took it home. It was a real low mileage vehicle, but the previous owner had ruined the motor by starting it with starting fluid instead of fixing the ignition. Then with the rings bad and burning oil, he had run it out of oil. I removed the engine, replaced the rings and put in a new crank. I fixed the ignition problem and then drove it for about eight years. Because of the rusty body, I found a totally rust free 1985 Bronco with a 351 auto for $500. I brought it home, then decided a body swap was more than I wanted to do. I fixed it up and sold it for a profit. I later did repair all the rust damage on the Bronco, but never finished the body work. But it was a good, reliable vehicle. I only sold it after I bought a 1992 Ford F250 4X4 with a 460 and a five speed to tow my trailer. I still miss that Bronco. Actually I miss it and the F250. I also during the time I had the F250, was talking with a friend who also had a similar F250, although a standard cab two wheel drive and an automatic. He ended up giving it to me. He was tired of fuel pump and fuel gauge problems. I ended up pulling off the box, replacing both fuel pumps and both sending units. I replaced the box and sold it to someone who needed a tow vehicle.

When I worked in Bellingham, I nearly each day, drove down one of the main roads, the Guide Meridian. Along that road, was a used car lot that was associated with one of the new car dealerships in Bellingham. It happened that I knew the owner of that dealership. One day, a 1990 Chevy Corvette showed up on the lot. I have always had a soft spot for yellow sports cars, this Corvette was yellow. After a week or so eying this car, I decided to stop by and check it out. It was a 1990 coupe with an automatic, which had every available option. It was in nice shape, but they wanted $10,000 for it. I thought that seemed high. Since I knew the owner, I figured that if I liked the car, I could talk him down some. I told the salesman that I wanted to drive it. He said that I couldn’t. I asked why. He told me that the automatic transmission was bad. I asked if they were going to fix that for the price they wanted. He replied that they were not going to fix it, but were going to sell it at auction. I said that I would buy it for wholesale price as is. I offered to give them $5000, they offered to sell it to me for $6000, we settled on $5500. It did drive, but was really random on when it would shift. I took it to a guy whom I had become friends with who had a mechanics shop behind where I worked. He offered to repair the transmission if I would pull it out and re-install it. He did let me use his lift and tools. It cast a little over $500 to get the transmission rebuilt. We also replaced the rear U-joints. I also noted that the mufflers didn’t match, so I installed Flowmaster Corvette 45 series mufflers onto the car. They sounded amazing. It was a fun car to drive. It handled well and was fairly quick. I had two things that I didn’t really like about the car. One was that it wasn’t a convertible, the other was that it was an automatic. It also leaked like a sieve and was hard to get in and out of. I drove it some for a year or so, then sold it to a friend who really liked it, and offered me quite a bit for it. At least I finally owned a Corvette. I don’t see myself buying another one. 

When I moved off of the island and back to the mainland, I took about a month off work. After that month, I was ready to go back to work. After two weeks at a job I hated, I went to work installing satellite equipment. The company gave me a better rate of pay because I used my own vehicle for the installs. I still had my 1995 Chevy van. I decided that since I would be driving a lot, I would take it to a shop and have it gone through. They found a cracked flexplate and some oil leaks. I had them fix it all. About a week after going to work installing satellite equipment, the van would intermittently start running really bad, in fact when it ran bad, I couldn’t get it to go more than about twenty miles per hour. I thought it seemed like a fuel delivery problem, so for about a week, I would come home and replace likely parts, fuel pump relay, fuel pump, filters, whatever seemed likely to me to cause the issue. Each time the van would run fine for a while, then lose power. After a week or so, I decided that I needed something better, so I bought a new 2005 Ford F150 work truck with a V6 and a five speed. I took the van to another friend and he tried to repair it for about a month. He did finally find the problem. When the previous mechanic had removed the transmission to replace the flexplate, he had neglected to hook up two ground cables that ran up to the fuel injection computer that was under the driver’s seat. After those were reinstalled, it ran fine. I no longer needed it and sold it to a friend who had a construction company.

After about a year and a half installing satellite equipment, I went to work for a AV installation company. When I did, they offered to lease my vehicle while I worked there. I originally used the Ford F150, but it wasn’t tall enough with the canopy on it, so I traded it in on a 2006 Ford E150 van. After about two years leasing it to the company, I sold it to them.

Not to long after I sold the Corvette, I sold the 1800 Goldwing. That left me with no fun vehicle to drive. I decided I wanted a convertible and a sports car. That would cover what I needed in a fun car at the time. I decided that I wanted either a Honda S2000, a Mazda Miata or something along those lines. My wife wanted me to but a Pontiac Solstice. I just knew I wanted a convertible with a manual transmission. After looking at those, I found the Honda to expensive, although I still want one, and the Solstice to impractical, no luggage space for traveling. That left the Miata. I had driven a number of those over the years. They are a fun car to drive. 

So on my way down to a Toyota dealership in Burlington on a Saturday in February to buy a Miata, I drove by a used car lot that specialized in somewhat exotic cars. Looking into the dealership as I drove by, I spotted a black second series SN95 Mustang convertible on their lot. I pulled around the block to check out what it was. Maybe if it was a GT with a five speed, and in nice condition, it could be what I would like. I stopped in and looked, it was a 1999 Mustang SVT Cobra convertible in nearly perfect condition. I knew they were only ever available with a stick. The people there were anxious to sell a convertible in the winter, and gave me a great deal on it. I was going to pay with the cash I had from selling the Goldwing, buy they also gave me more for my 1992 Honda Accord than I thought I could get selling it privately. The SVT Cobra was probably the most fun car I ever owned. It was quick, handled great, looked great and was quite economical to drive. It the few years I had it, I showed it at five Mustang shows around Washington. I never failed to bring home a trophy. The only drawback to the car was that a large number of components on the car were specific to the Cobra. Parts were scarce. Luckily, it was in great condition, But the few times I needed to get what should have been common parts, were difficult to find to say the least. As a weekend fun car, that was pretty easy to live with. In 2015, I changed jobs. With that change, I had a commute of 45 miles each way to work five days a week. After a couple of weeks, I decided I needed a more practical commuter car. I went to the local Honda dealer and bought a used 2011 Honda Insight hybrid. I actually had no plans on trading in anything on the Insight, but I knew I would likely have to sell the Cobra. I had driven it in to the dealer when I bought the Insight. I guess the manager was working at a Ford dealer when the Cobra was new. He really liked mine, and offered me as much as I paid for it a few years before. I traded in my SVT Cobra on a hybrid. Who does that? Six months later, I got a car from work, and sold the Insight. All in all the worst car decision of my life.

A litter before I got the Mustang. My wife was driving the 1995 Accord we got from my mother, and I drove the 1992 Accord with the stick. My wife was taking care of my mother, and she was starting to have a difficult time getting in and out of the Accord. My wife decided she wanted a Honda Element. We made a trip to the Honda dealer to look for what she wanted. When there, instead of finding an Element, we decided on a used Honda Odyssey minivan. That car was possibly the most trouble free vehicle I ever owned. It wasn’t until it had just turned over 200,000 miles, that I realized that since it was going to need tires and a timing belt, maybe it was time to send it down the road. 

One time, while on a job at Birch Bay, I was working on a house that had the AV equipment located in a rack in a garage that was located under the house. In the garage were two white Lincoln Continental convertibles, a 1962 and a 1966. I complemented the guy on his cars. I have always liked those cars, the only modern day four door convertible. I told the guy that I had experience with repairing the difficult to service disappearing convertible tops. He told me that the 1966’s top was not working, but he just left it down. A year or so later, he called me and asked if I would fix it. He said I could take it to my house and work on it as I had the time. He said he was in no hurry and that neither car had been driven in years. In fact he suggested that I drive it around and make sure everything worked. I fixed the top and took it to a couple of car shows. One day, while driving it around, I ran into a local collector. He told me he wanted to buy it. I told that to the owner, who responded that someone else had just told him the he wanted the car. I told him it was done, he paid me for the repairs and sold the car. I went back to the collector and told him it was sold. He asked if I knew of another one. I called the owner of the 66 back, and asked about the 62. He said it had problems, but he also wanted to sell it. I went and picked it up, repaired its problems and sold it to the collector for $20,000. I gave the owner the check. He said he would drop me off some cash for a commission for the sale in a few days. I was surprised when he dropped off $6600 in cash to me as a commission. I just wish he would have had more cars for me to sell.

In 2017, we decided to buy a trailer for camping. We purchased a 2016 Rpod trailer. That was reasoning behind buying the 1992 Ford F250. Since the Odyssey was getting long in the tooth, we decided we could kill two birds with one stone by getting rid of both the Odyssey and the F250. The replacement for them was a used 2017 Honda Ridgeline Black Edition with 20,000 miles on it. At the time of this writing, it is still our main vehicle.

In the wither early in 2022, we decided to move forward in our camping adventures, we sold the Rpod and purchased a 2002 Newmar 30 foot diesel pusher motor home. Of course, with that, we needed a vehicle to tow behind it for transportation. At the same time, the motor home dealer had a used 2005 Honda CRV that was all set up for towing and included everything needed to tow. It even had my preferred manual transmission. Now we were all set to go Glamping. At this writing, we also still have those vehicles.

Growing up in Bellingham in the sixties and seventies. A good friend of mine had a father who always seemed to be a wheeler dealer. His father owned a local mobile home dealership, and he seemed to take in some interesting items for trade, including some interesting vehicles. In 1970, I went over to my friend’s house, as I often did, and saw that he had an old car in the alley behind his house. I asked him about the car, and was told it was a 1913 Model T that was built for the Bellingham to Mt. Baker race in 1913. 

We both looked it over, and he proceeded to give me a ride around the block in it. The next time I heard anything about the car was in 1971, when at the first of our senior year of high school, my friend signed up at the local technical school for half day class in auto mechanics, to repair, and even restore the model T. All that happened during that time, was the car got torn down to parts and they rebuilt the motor. The repair that was needed, was repair to the oil pan, as it was cracked and leaking. Over the next few years, he and his father took most of the parts of the car and painted then in preparation to put the car back together. This never happened, so the only parts that were not still torn apart were the engine and the differential, which were rebuilt. A good thing is the car was always stored inside. When his father passed away, my friend inherited the Model T. It sat in his garage in parts for 38 years. I have always kept in touch with my friend, who always said he was going to use the car as a retirement project. About 10 years ago, I started asking him if he was ever going to actually do anything with the car, he responded that he really had very little interest in the car and wasn’t really sure what he was going to do with it. I told him if he ever wanted to sell the car, I would buy it. Over the past 20 years I have become very interested in both Henry Ford and the early Ford motor company, having read pretty much every book about them that I could find. This really had me interested in owning a Model T. Finally, this in February of 2023, he decided it was time to let me take over this project. I went to his house and picked up the car and all the parts. I had not seen the car in over 50 years, and was amazed at the condition of the parts and the body. There was no rust on anything, even the motor, which had no paint on it. The body was completely rust free and all the original wood was in perfect condition. Even the original leather upholstery was in amazing condition, at least for 110 years old.

At least as important as the amazing condition of the car was the story about the history of it. By this time, I had the opportunity to watch the documentary, “The Mountain Runners” about the Bellingham to Mt. Baker race’s held in 1911, 1912 and 1913. According to my friend, the car was built in 1913 by a mechanic at Diehl Ford in Bellingham by the last name of Mack for the 1913 race. He went on to say that the mechanic had sold the car to my friend’s father in March of 1953. The mechanic was long retired at that time and the car had been sitting in a shed for years. At that time, my friend’s father owned a car dealership in Bellingham called Bellingham Motors that sold Lincoln’s and Mercury’s. He turned the car over to one of his mechanics to restore the car and put it back on the road. This was completed by 1954. He then used it occasionally until 1971 when it was disassembled. 

Interesting things that I found out about the car since I acquired it is that it was never titled since new. It has no serial number on the engine. The suspension was lowered. It has aftermarket, correctly dated knock off wire wheels, A Moore 2 speed overdrive transmission, domed pistons, High performance aluminum intake manifold, A Bosh Magneto, An aluminum Hogs head and many other period parts. I also got some period correct leather Washington license plates that were put on the car for display only. 

I have started to reassemble the car, which is not an easy task for someone who not only didn’t take the car apart, but has never owned a car built before World War II. We will see what becomes of the Model T...  

Chapter 11, Other Car Related Experiences over the years.

During my years of playing with cars, I have the experience of not only owning cars and driving cars, but also attending many car shows, visiting many museums and getting to know a few car collectors.

I guess it was in the mid-70s that I became really interested in collector cars. I had always liked convertibles and sports cars, but I soon turned my interest to cars that I felt were interesting both to me and to others. In 1975, we made a family trip to Reno Nevada for my sister in laws 21st birthday. While there, my father in law and I decided to go and check out the “Harrah car collection”. This was just a few years before it was sold off after William Harrah’s death. I remember being completely overwhelmed by the vast number of cars to see. There were well over 2000 cars, each one either restored or left original for a specific reason. We spend an entire day there. It was an experience that changed my view of car collecting forever. Somewhat later, I had the opportunity to visit the “Imperial Palace car collection” in Las Vegas. It was at its peak. At that time, it held the largest collection of Duesenberg’s in the world. It was also sold off not long after I got to see it. 

One of the next museums I really remember was a number of years later. On a trip to Disneyland, I decided to visit the “Petersen Museum”. It was a great museum that changes its displays on a regular basis. To date, I have visited it about six times. One time, I did the “vault tour” I would strongly recommend that to anyone who attends that museum. On one trip to southern California, I visited the Petersen, then the “Nethercutt museum”, also a great place to visit for a car guy. 

While living in Carmel California in the late 80s, I had the opportunity to attend the “Pebble Beach Concourse De Elegance”. I have also returned a few times to the car week in Monterey. It is one of those bucket list items for any true car guy. Once, while there, I was given all access passes to the “Rolex Motorsports Reunion”. That was also a memorable experience. I hope to return to the Monterey car week again at least once. Another experience I had the opportunity to attend was “Hot August Nights” in Reno. That was a fun experience, and included one of my three visits to the “Harrah’s memorial National Car Museum”. It is more static in its displays than either the Petersen or the “Lemay’s Americas Car Museum” in Tacoma. But there are some very historic cars to see there. I’ve had the opportunity to visit the “Lemay’s Americas Car Museum” a few times. It’s another premium museum for anyone into cars. Arguably even more interesting than the “Americas Car Museum”, is the “Lemay collection”. It is at his residence and also at a college campus he purchased for housing his cars. It is open to the public only one day a year, but there were at one time, as many as 3000 cars at the two locations. It, like the Harrah’s collection, is overwhelming. I’ve attended more than six times and hope to return again. I’ve attended many other small museums on the west coast, too numerous to mention. Over the past few years, I’ve started on the more eastern museums. Around 2009, we drove a little over half of historic Route 66. Nearly every town along the route has some kind of a museum. We stopped at most of them. On another trip to Chicago a few years back, I decided to visit the “Volo car museum”. It was interesting, in that a large number of the cars there are for sale. Since then, we have also gone to the “Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg museum”, the ”National RV museum”, the “National Car and Truck museum” and the ”Studebaker museum”, all in Indiana. Then we went to the “Henry Ford museum”, “Greenfield Village”, the “Piquette Ave plant” and the “Gilmore museum”, all in Michigan. All were recommended visits for any and all car fans. Again, I plan to return to get a second visit to all those Michigan museums. I also plan to go to “Hershey” and the “Lane museum” in the somewhat near future. I’m sure I will find more museums as I get older. There are always more to see.

Over the years, I’ve also run into a handful of people who had a private car collection. One guy I knew in Carmel had two Lamborghini Miura’s and a Jaguar XK120. I’ve also had customers over the years that had Ferrari’s and any number of muscle cars. I even got a chance to tour a private collection that had the second largest collection of Stanley Steamers in the country. A couple of people come to mind when I think of private collections I’ve had the opportunity to see. The first one belonged to a customer I did some work for on San Juan island. This guy, Dave Spurgeon, had just recently moved to the island, and wanted some electronics work done. While doing this work, I had to go into his attic. In his attic were lots of boxes full of things you might find in an attic, and also a stack of coffee table books of cars. When I can down out of the attic, I asked if he was interested in cars. He said he was. I told him that was my hobby. He asked me what kind of cars I had. I responded by telling him about my two Pontiacs. I asked him what kind of cars he had. He had just moved in, and hadn’t built a garage at the house yet, so his cars weren’t there. He grabbed a book from his coffee table and showed me the car on the cover, it was a 1957 Thunderbird in the salmon pink color. He said that was what he had. I said, like that one? He said it was his car on the cover. He then picked up another book, on the cover was a 1950 Mercury coupe, he said that was another one of his cars. After that day, we became friends. He did build two garages on his property to house his collection. He had about 30 or so beautifully restored cars and trucks and restored toys including a major collection of restored pedal cars. He also had someone build him a perfect ¾ scale Peterbuilt semi truck. It was called a “Betterbuilt” it included a ¾ scale trailer for hauling cars to car shows. One time, shortly after meeting him, I charged him for some service I had done. He said he would write me a check. We went into his office where he proceeded to put the blank check into a magnifying machine so he could read what he was writing. Come to find out, he was all but completely blind. He could no longer drive any of his cars. He had a handy man who worked around his place and drove him where he needed to go. During the time I was president of the local car club, once a year he would invite us all up to meet in his garages and tour his collection. He would even supply the food and drinks. What a great guy he was. He died shortly after I left the island. I don’t know what became of his collection.

Another collection, a few years later was at a customer’s barn/office in Lynden. This guy had more money than he knew what to do with, and had a collection of whatever seemed to catch his eye. When I first saw his collection, I was impressed that he seemed to have a number of cars that I really liked, as well as some I really disliked. He had a 1965 Buick Rivera, a 1965 Continental Mark II and some old brass era cars. He also had some 70s era Cadillacs and Lincolns. He also bought a Firetruck. He was the guy I sold the Lincoln convertible to. His collection was definitely not open to the public.

There are still a couple of specific private collections I still want to see. There is a guy here in the Bellingham area that has a collection of all pre 1920s cars that he has restored, some are supposed to be nearly one of a kind cars. I have gotten the invitation to his collection, I just haven’t made it there as of this writing. The ultimate private collection I want to see someday would be to get an invitation to see Jay Leno’s garage. We shall see if that ever happens

Chapter 12, Car guys who have helped me to this day.

As I look back over my life, I can remember the car guys that have steered me in the direction I have gone. This first group is from the time I was in middle and high school, until right after that. Some have been short term friends, some, lifetime friends.

Probably the first guy I remember who was a car guy was Jerry Peterson. He was probably my best friend in middle school. Unfortunately, he also lived quite ways away. During the summer, while I was away at Boy Scout camp, his family bought a house just a couple of doors down from where I lived. Jerry had a small Suzuki motorcycle. And we spent most of our afternoons after school either riding around on the motorcycle or building things down at the neighborhood beach on Bellingham Bay. Jerry was the first of our group of friends to get a car. His dad was a wheeler dealer and always had a cool car or two around. When we were freshmen in high school, Jerry got a car. A 1959 Chevy Impala four door hardtop. We would sit in it and dream of actually driving it around. Meanwhile, his mom drove a 1958 Impala coupe. I really loved that car and its styling. Later, he sold that car and replaced it with a 1966 Olds Cutlass Vista Cruiser station wagon. Another cool car at the time with the windows in the roof. His dad also brought home a 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible. I remember Jerry an I trying to figure out how to open the trunk, only to find out that it opened backwards to stow the top. Just when we were about to get our licenses in 1969, Jerry suddenly got a 1968 Chevy Camaro to replace the ’59 Impala. It was a 327 with a three speed, but it was an almost new car. He had what was possibly one of the coolest cars in the high school parking lot that year. We are still friends today. He has a 1965 El Camino, a 1967 Camaro and a Model A coupe he has had since high school.

Another guy I knew from middle school was a guy named Dave Glad. We were acquaintances, but not really close until we got into high school. We then became the best of friends for years. When we first got our drivers licenses, he had a hot 1955 Chevy two door post with a built up 327 and a four speed. We drove it around some, but it was tough on gas. He decided he wanted some kind of an imported sporty car, like one of the ‘50s Volvos or an English sports car. We went and looked at a lot of cars before he landed on a wrecked 1958 MGA. At that point in my life, he was the most knowledgeable guy on cars I had ever met. I learned a ton about cars from him and he was a good mechanic. I remember when I worked at the gas station and he would come and help me work on my ’58 Chevy, I was always afraid to take something apart that I wasn’t familiar with. He would tell me that some probably less educated guy at the manufacturer that probably haven’t worked there long had put it together, so I could easily do myself. At least for the most part, he was right. Pretty much anyone could fix those things. Getting good at it would take time. During our senior year of high school, he took a half day class at the tech school learning auto body. It was then and there that he repaired the damage to his new to him MGA. He and I spent endless hours looking for cool cars to buy, or at least to look at. He was my friend that went with me to the San Juan Islands looking for cars. Most of the time when we found a car, we went to his house and performed whatever repairs were needed. I even lived next door to him for about two years while I was married the first time. Even when we were in high school, his real interest was in Model As. He had five of them when we graduated. Of those five, he still has four of them. He also owned some cool cars after high school. After he totaled out the MGA a few years out of high school, he bought a 1965 Mercury Comet Caliente, It was a 289 with a factory four speed. He sold that and bought a Mustang II, then bought a 1964 Mercury Comet convertible. He still has that car also. Also during the years after high school, he spent much of his time restoring a 1931 Model A Briggs Town Sedan. He still drives it and shows it today as well. We have remained good friends for what is now over 55 years. He has been a huge help to me in working on my Model T race car.

Another guy that I knew in high school was Ralph Peterson. We had some classes together, so when we were together, we talked cars. It was from him that I bought my 1948 Dodge truck. He always had some interesting cars. One time, when we were seniors in high school, he showed up in a 1960 Impala convertible that he had bought. It was a real rust bucket. I remember sitting in the back seat and having to straddle the floor because there was no floor in the center of the foot wells, you just saw the road going by beneath your feet. It was bad front and rear. The good thing about the car was that it was a high performance 348 with a factory four speed. The running gear was much better than the body. After a few weeks driving it around, he deemed it too dangerous to drive safely, and took it off the road. He then proceeded to remove the drivetrain and haul away the body. What could he find to install the drivetrain into? A few weeks later, he found a 1956 Corvette that was hit in the driver’s side rear for the princely sum of $50. It had no engine or transmission, but was otherwise very complete. He managed to get the parts from a wrecking yard to fix the rear corner, and did a good job of fixing the broken fiberglass body. He then started to go through the trim pieces that came with the car. Among the trim parts, he said he found two “fuel injection” insignias. He told me that it must have been a fuel injection car, but they didn’t come out until 1957. He found a period car magazine that he brought to school that stated that there were a few 1956 Corvettes that were produced at the very end of the year that actually had fuel injection. I don’t remember if these cars the article talked about were ever released to the public or not, but he was absolutely convinced that this was one of those cars. He then proceeded to attempt to install the 348 into the Corvette. It wouldn’t fit, so he gave up on the car. The story goes that he sold the car to a couple of guys who worked on a lot of cars that lived out in the county. They attempted to install a 440 Chrysler motor in the car, but it also wouldn’t fit, so they cut the car in half and drove over it with a tractor. What a horrific end to what could have been a nice car. I sold Ralph my 350 Kawasaki in 1972. I have seen Ralph a few times since high school, but I haven’t seen in years now.

Another guy that I remember from high school was a guy named Dave Williams. I really don’t remember him well from school, he was a year ahead of me, but he grew up in the same neighborhood as Dave Glad, so they were friends. At school, Dave Williams kind of stood out. We was about six foot five and had a really low voice. In school, he was known as “Lurch” as in the butler in the Addams Family. After high school, we did a stint in the Navy. It was after he returned from there that we got to be good friends. We have been close friends for about fifty years now. We have both had any number of cars, trucks and motorcycles. Over the years, I have found or offered him deals on numerous cars. He has always thought about them and declined. Later, he always seemed to kick himself for not taking advantage of those deals. He has had any number of interesting vehicles over the years. At this time he has a 1967 Buick Skylark that he installed a Buick 455 into. Both he and Dave Glad have been my longest time car friends, and for many years we have gotten together on a regular basis and our conversation always seems to go to cars. They both have been helping me as I work on my Model T. 

Back in 1972, right after high school, I took a class at the local tech school in electronics. While there, I met a guy who seemed to share my interest in cars. Alvin Vogel had grown up on a farm in the small farming town of Everson. When he turned 16, his grandfather had given him his Olds 98 four door hardtop. It was a good car, and Alvin had just rebuilt the engine. Kids like Alvin who had grown up around a farm worked on things a little differently than we did. I guess the term “barnyard mechanic” came from how they did things. Things weren’t always fixed right, you just made due with what you had available. It was with Alvin, in his Olds, that we moved to California in 1973. When I returned, we remained friends. When I had a TV repair shop in Ferndale starting in 1975, he became my part time employee. One of the memorable times I recall with Alvin was that in 1974, his dad decided that if he had a better car, maybe he would go out and get a better job. So, his dad loaned him enough money to buy a 1967 Chevelle SS 396 with a four speed and a posi. It was a nice car and was in really good shape. The first weekend he had the car, we were out cruising Bellingham. While we were driving around, I mentioned a statement we all had used in jest, “do a bleach burnout”. After I said it, Alvin pulled into the first convenience store he saw. He said he needed cigarettes. He came back out with a quart of bleach. We proceeded out to Hannagan road out in the county, where the locals went to drag race. It had new asphalt pavement, and someone had marked off the quarter mile with paint for a start and finish on the shoulder. We stopped, there were no cars in site. I reached over to grab the bottle of bleach. Alvin said, no way, he was going to watch this happen. He told me to drive and do the biggest burnout I could. He jumped out, poured on the bleach and told me to hit it. I did, by the time I hit fourth gear and was close to redline, I doubt I was going twenty miles an hour. Any chance I had to beat on someone else’s car I would take. A few weeks later, he had blown up the 396. After replacing the crank and a couple of rods, it was back on the road. That lasted only a couple more weeks. That time the motor was destroyed. He came over to my house driving his dads truck and told me that he needed to find a new motor. He told me that he wanted something over 400 cubic inches. At that time, there were two Chevy motors that came to mind that would fit into his car. One was a 427, a really valuable motor that was mostly used in Corvettes, or a 454, the replacement for the 427, also valuable and even harder to come by. I told him that finding a 400 cube or larger motor would be really tough. A week or so later, here comes Alvin in his Chevelle. He pulls into my driveway, jumps out and opens the hood. Under the hood was a 1964, high performance 409, an option I’d not considered. He said, let’s go for a ride. We jumped into the car and took off. We headed out into the county and were driving at ridicules speeds. After a while, it suddenly started to make a lot of horrible exhaust noise. We went to his house and jacked it up to see what was wrong. Come to find out, because of how the 409s exhaust was routed, he had cut big chunks out of the cars frame around the front suspension. I couldn’t believe we had been driving that fast on those roads with a frame in that condition. I had him drive me home in his parent’s car. I never rode in that car again. A week or so later, Alvin got arrested for stealing gas from a neighbor and got thrown in jail. His dad wouldn’t even come and see him, let alone do anything to get him out. My dad was always friends with all my friends, so Alvin decided to call him. My dad got him out of jail providing he went right from there into the Marines. The next day, Alvin joined the Marine corp. He lasted five days in basic training before he was put into a mental hospital for almost two years. When he got out, he was a different person. As I stated before, I let him work for me in my shop some, just to help him out. That lasted a while, then he just quit coming in. One day, a few years later, he stopped by my house at about 8:00 in the evening. He was barefoot and said he was tired. His truck had broken down on the freeway in Marysville, about 50 miles away. He had walked to my house from there, barefoot. By this time I was married and had a baby in the house, so I didn’t even invite him in. When he was leaving, he said that he should go visit my dad. I knew that would be a bad thing, so I told him my folks were gone. They were, in fact, gone. They were playing bridge at some friend’s house. When they came home about 2:00, there was Alvin, watching TV, wearing my dad’s bathrobe. He had cooked a ham, and was drinking my dad’s hidden supply of booze. My parents freaked out, and told him to leave and not to ever come back. That was pretty much the last time I saw Alvin. He did come to my house many years later just to look me up. I was past that time in my life. I drove him into town, dropped him at the Lighthouse Mission, where he was living and gave him some money.

This next group were the friends I made a while after I graduated from high school and after I was married the first time. This wasn’t too long after, but was a separate time in my life. At least that’s how it seemed to me. As soon as I got married, I seemed to get new car friends that I hung around with. My first wife had grown up out in the county on a farm, so her friends there were of that type, raised on the farm. We also lived in that area after we got married. These guys usually had cars at a young age are were taught how to work on them.

One of the first car friends I met at that time was Steve Jackson. Steve got married about the same time we did, and his wife was good friends with my wife, so we did a lot of things together. When we started to hang out, Steve had a pretty hot ’55 Chevy coupe, but it seems every time he drove it, something broke. He then got a 1970 Ford Torino GT, but it was pretty much used up. He then picked up a 1963 Buick Rivera. It was actually a nice car. We drove around a lot in it in the short time he had it. I’m not sure how but he then ended up with a 1970 Cougar Eliminator. It was wiped out on one side and needed engine work. I don’t think he ever actually drove it, but we did work on it a lot. One time, while I was selling cars, Steve came in and told me he needed a good work truck. Something better than the Junkers he had up to that point. We had a 1965 Chevy pick-up on the lot that was in good shape. It had a rebuilt six cylinder and a three speed, but the body was straight and everything worked well. Steve went and found the money to buy it. He drove it back and forth to work for about a week, then decided to try and work on it. He removed the air cleaner and drove it around. It sucked the air cleaner stud into the motor and ruined the engine. That’s how long that lasted. Still in the hunt for a decent car, I found him a great deal on a 1968 Camaro. My boss’s wife had a 1968 Camaro that she had purchased new. She had recently purchased a new Firebird, but still had the Camaro. My boss needed a small building built on the top of a mountain for a two way radio repeater. I got him to agree to trade the Camaro for the labor to construct the 8X8 building. Steve was happy to do that, and ended up with a nice car at last. After a month or two of his nice car, Steve took out a telephone pole with it late one night. He not only had no insurance, but ended up in a coma for about two months. He had a couple of somewhat interesting cars after that. I still hear from him every couple of years.

Another friend from that era was Steve Davenport. Like the others from that area, he seemed to like the Tri-Five Chevs. He had a 1956. He also over the years had a Jeep CJ-7, a Datsun 240Z, a 1975 Chevy Blazer and a 1970 Corvette. During that time, my wife worked nights each weekend, so I would be home with the kids sitting around with little to do. At least once a month, there would be a knock on my door, there would be Steve Davenport. He would always ask if I still had the movie American Graffiti around, I had the Laser Disc. He would ask if we could watch it. Often that was my Saturday nights back then. He got divorced shortly before I did in 1984, so we shared a house for about six months after that. I still see Steve occasionally, mostly at car shows. He was always a Chevy guy, but is now mostly into Mopar muscle cars.

Another guy from that time was Rich Amos. Rich worked in a number of body shops as long as I knew him. He was really good at body work and a master fabricator. When I first met Rich, it was because his wife was friends with my wife. We went over to their house. After playing some games for a while, he took me out to see his brand new Subaru Brat he had bought. I noticed he also had a really nice Ford Falcon in his driveway. It was a 1963 Falcon Sprint convertible with a 260 and a four speed. He said he just never drove it because it needed a radiator. I told him that I would be interested in it if he ever decided to sell it. A few months later, I was over at his house and noticed the Falcon was gone. He said a relative needed a car, so he put in a radiator, and sold it to him for $300. I felt like I was not at the right place at the right time for that car. Shortly after that, he picked up a 1955 Chevy pick-up. It was straight and solid, but someone had tried to install a much later Chevy six cylinder into it and it wouldn’t mount up correctly, so they lost interest. Rich brought home a rolled 1967 GTO that he got from the body shop he worked for, and proceeded to remove the 400, 400 turbo and the posi rear end and install it all into the ’55 pick-up. He then did the body and paint work, and did a number of custom things to the truck. It was beautiful when it was done. The only thing that was wrong at that time was the brakes. Because of the newer, more modern GTO rear end and the old straight axel front end, the brakes didn’t want to balance. I that was an issue now, there are all kinds of things to help that, but then, not so easy. I was over at his house one day, and he was telling me about this problem. His thought was to put independent front suspension on the truck. This would be a big job. About a week later, I stopped over to see him. There was the pick-up with independent front suspension on it that looked like it was made that way. He showed me what he had done. He had taked the front suspension off a late Corvair, which just unbolted, widened it out, and bolted it onto the frame of the truck. He had also then added the power steering and power brakes from the GTO onto the truck. It was amazing. A few weeks later, I noticed the truck wasn’t there. He said a relative of his needed a truck, so he sold it to him for $500. I guess he just liked to build these things. He had little interest in driving them. I guy I worked with had bought a cheap truck to drive back and forth to work. It was a 1953 Ford half ton with a flathead V8 and a three speed. He drove it to work for about a year, but it was getting tired. Rich knew about his truck, and wanted it to make it into one of his projects. He ended up trading him for a 1970 Ford F200 that had been lightly rolled. It had dents, but from twenty feet away, it looked good, and since this was in about 1979, it was a lot newer and less worn-out than the 1953. Rich took the 1953 Ford and installed a 400 ford motor with an automatic, ¾ ton Chevy front and rear axles, A high lift, a cool paint job, a Warn winch and huge 42 inch Monster Mudder tires. This is the truck I ended up with in 1984. I kind of lost touch with Rich after I got divorced, but ran into him again while getting some body work done on my 1980 280ZX. That was the last I saw of him. What I learned from him was that even projects that seem insurmountable can be done if you take them one step at a time. 

The last car guy from that time that I will highlight is Doug Gibson. He was friends with a couple of my other car friends. Doug was a worker at the local pulp mill. About every few years, the plant would go on strike. For a couple of months, all the workers would be off, causing most of them to get rather broke. During one of those strikes, Doug decided to go to work at a local locksmiths shop and learn that as a second trade. The next time they had a strike, he purchased the locksmiths shop from the owner, who wanted to retire. Doug never went back to the pulp mill. His locksmith shop was in a really old gas station building in Bellingham. It became a place for all of us car guys to go and hang out. We would talk cars and learn about locks and keys, especially as they related to automotive locks and keys. Doug had gotten married to a woman you was divorced and had kids. She had a pretty nice house that she had gotten in her divorce. Since she didn’t owe on the house, Doug didn’t really have to make much as a locksmith to get by. He did build a nice shop at the house. We would go there and help him on his projects. We put together the Chevelle Demo derby car in his shop. Often, when I went over there, I drove my Mach I. I recall his wife really liked it. It was to them that I sold the Mach I. I got cash and a 1962 Nova that he had fixed up for it. Doug also had a number of ‘40s cars that he was going to work on someday. I don’t think he ever did. Not to long after he bought my Mach I, he and his wife split up, he sold the locksmiths shop and moved to the Midwest somewhere. I understand he is still there now. 

While I lived in Carmel California, I lived next door to the Carmel Highlands Fire Department. Shortly after I moved there, I joined the department as a volunteer. One of the full time firefighters there and I became good friends. His name was Keith Fraley. He was the training officer, and was in charge of maintaining the fire engines. He gave me my first taste of working on Fire engines. Our first out engine was a 1959 American LaFrance with an open cab. I really enjoyed driving that truck. We spent quite a bit of time working on, and maintaining the engines.  Keith had lived a colorful life. He lived hard and drank hard. He was one of those guys everyone seemed to like. He had even been shot once in the stomach. He would tell us all stories of things he had done that were hard to believe, but others substantiated his tales. When I met him, he was living with his girlfriend, Paula. He drove a 1968 Chevy pick-up and she drove a kind of beat up 1966 Pontiac Catalina convertible. I always told him that when he wanted to sell the Catalina, let me know. One day, the transmission in the Catalina gave out with no more reverse, so he bought her a 1980 BMW 2002. He sold me the Catalina for $300, I restored it and owned it longer than any other car to date, some 18 years. Part of the deal was that I would help him fix up his truck. A month or so later, his truck mysteriously had a fire, I’m sure it was set up. Suddenly, he was in the market for a different truck. He needed a truck, because he was a plumber in his off days. One day, when I was out doing a service call, a customer had a mid-60s Ford pick-up in his carport. It looked really nice, and had a camper on it. I asked the guy about it, he said that he had bought the 1966 Ford truck new. The tailgate was never installed. The camper was always on the truck since new. We went out to look at it. The camper was huge. It turns out that it was a one ton truck with a ten foot box. This was something I was unaware even existed. It had a 300 cubic inch six with an automatic and dealer installed AC. The truck has less than 30,000 miles on it. I told Keith about it. He went over and bought it. The camper was an odd configuration, and was the biggest one I had ever seen. Keith took it off, took the tailgate out of the original sack and we got back an looked at the truck. I had never seen anything like it. Inside to box looked like new, and I’ve never seen another pick-up with a ten foot box. A few months after that, Keith and his wife and their newborn child moved to her hometown of Philadelphia. I understand he took off shortly after that in the truck and camper and moved to Mexico. I never heard from him again, but I did get invited to a memorial service after I found out he died in about 2007.

While I lived in Salt Lake City, I can think of only a couple of car people who helped me out. One was Steve Hurst, Steve was a member of the local chapter of the Pontiac Oakland Club International. I had joined the POCI when I moved to Salt Lake. At the meetings, Steve and I became friends. He was into both Buicks and GTOs. When I purchased my 1969 GTO Judge, he was a huge help. I got the Judge as a rolling body with new paint. Other than that, it was all boxes of parts. He was not only able to come and help me at my house, but he would come over with his 1968 GTO, so we could look at how things were assembled. He also put me in touch with other people you had the needed parts for all my Pontiacs. Steve was a big help to me in my serious Pontiac stage.

The other car guy in Salt Lake was my step son, Michael. When my wife and I got married in 1991, he was 13. He was so mad about his mom getting married that we went and stayed at his grandfather’s house for the first three weeks or so. He did finally come home, but he and I didn’t get along for quite a while. Eventually, I let him help me on my cars. That really seemed to change his attitude towards me. We spent a lot of time working on cars. One time, we went to a car show in my Catalina. When we pulled into the car show, the car went into vapor lock. I was going to remove the 400 from the car, and I had picked up a date coded 389 to put in it. We got home from the show, pulled the car into the shop, and in 45 minutes, we had the 400 on a motor stand. When it came time for him to start to drive, I found him a 1976 Pontiac Trans Am. We removed the bad 455 from it and installed a good 400 I had. After that, we went out together and scrounged up parts to make it nicer, correct wheels, new tires, air dams and such.. When it came time for him to actually practice driving, we went out in my 1964 Bonneville. He really fell in love with that car. I let him have it, and sold the Trans Am. After he had problems with the frame of the Bonneville, he got a Mazda pick-up that had a worn out motor. We removed the motor and completely rebuilt it. I think he learned a lot about cars and mechanics during that time. I know he is a car guy today and has had some cool project cars. He is also not afraid to do what it takes to do even major mechanics work on his cars. It nice to think that I was at least some kind of an influence in that part of his life.

Another guy that I met while living in Salt Lake was actually living in Friday Harbor. In 1993, when on our yearly vacation in Friday Harbor, our family decided to stop off at Vic’s diner for lunch. During our lunch, we were seated in one of the booths. On the wall above the table was a picture of a local car club with everyone standing by their cars. One of the guys in the picture was surrounded by Pontiacs. I asked the owner of the diner who the guy was. He said that he was Mike Pinnow, and he had a little car repair shop in town. I decided that I should go and meet him. I went there, it was a small business. They repaired cars, rented some cars and sold a few cars. I met Mike and we talked Pontiacs for quite a while. He told me what he had, and that he was involved in drag racing. He also told me that he wanted to find a 1964 Pontiac 2+2 with preferably a 421 and a four speed. It was nice to talk to him. A few weeks after I returned to Salt Lake, I attended a cruise night in Murray. There, at the cruise night was a 1964 Pontiac Catalina 2+2 with a 421 and a four speed, and it was for sale. I wrote down the info about the car, and the next day, I called Mike Pinnow. He flew down a few days later, bought the car and drove it home. A few years later, when we moved to Friday Harbor, we were kind of Pontiac buddy’s. he even found me the 1972 LeMans I used for parts for my 1971. A few years later, he got divorced, packed up his Pontiacs and moved to Twisp Washington. I remained friends with his wife, and did a lot of mechanics work for her on the cars she had for rent and for sale after he left. I never really heard from either of them after I moved off the island in 2005.

The next car guy I met after I moved to Friday Harbor was Charlie Settles. Charlie was the president of the San Juan Cruisers car club, the group in the picture at the diner. The best thing I could say about him was from a newspaper article I wrote for the Journal of the San Juan’s.

“I’m here to tell you about a fellow car person, who was probably the finest citizen of this community I ever met. This amazing person was Charlie Settles. He was a friend to all. He was the force in starting the San Juan Cruisers, of which I have been a member since I moved here in 1996, and the founder of the Friday Harbor High School Drag Race Team.

Charlie didn’t ask around town if any kids were interested in drag racing or even cars. Instead Charlie would see a young man or woman that looked like they had nothing promising to do, and tell them he had something for them to do. He took these kids around with him and taught them about cars. He got them interested enough to go out and scrounge around for an old car to make into a drag car. They went on trips to the racetrack in Mission B. C. They went on trips to recycle aluminum to get money to support the team. They went on trips to the mainland just to have fun. Charlie did all this without any pay from anyone. Nearly every weekend I would see Charlie on the ferry with a group of these kids going to somewhere or other. The kids who he worked with, for the most part, stayed out of trouble while he was involved with them. I can remember many times, going by the old shop building at the high school and seeing the door open. I would stop in to see what Charlie and his group were doing. They might have been working on the drag race clubs ’66 ElCamino race car, or any of the kid’s cars, or something totally unrelated. But they were always having a good time.

Things weren’t always easy. As time went on, the high school decided they did not want the affiliation with the Drag Race Club. They also lost the use of the high school shop building. But the loss that we couldn’t get over was the tragic loss of Charlie. In a terrible accident, a fire took Charlie from us. I remember the memorial service; nearly the whole town was there. I can’t remember ever going to a more touching service.”

What more can I say about him at this point. What a great car guy.

A car guy who I met through the San Juan Cruisers was John Thalaker. John was a land surveyor in the islands, and was a real car guy. One thing about him was his taste in cars was somewhat like mine. He had a couple of Model Ts, a couple of Model As, including one that I found for him, some other 1930s cars, some old trucks and a 1976 Corvette. He also liked to work on his car projects. I sold him a few vehicles while we lived on the island. When my daughter was done with her 1966 Chevelle four door, I sold it to John. His plan was to take the old body off the frame and put a 1950 Chevy pick-up body on the frame. The last time I saw it, he was moving along with it, but I never saw it completed.

The last car guy from the island was Jon Zerby. He was the under-Sheriff in San Juan County. He had a 1962 Ford Sunliner and a 1965 Plymouth Barracuda. Both were nice, restored cars. He and his wife, Kris, both had Harley Davidson motorcycles. We rode around quite a bit with them when we had our 1800 Goldwing. Jon has since sold his Harley, the Ford and the Barracuda. He recently bought a 1948 Jeepster that he drives around. I still keep in touch with him. 

The last guys I’ll list here are a father and son team, Darrel and Steve Pitts from Bellingham. When I got my Model T, I asked my old car friends that had Model As who would be the guy to talk to locally about Model Ts. Both Jerry Peterson and Dave Glad told me to contact Darrel Pitts. Darrel is the Whatcom county expert on Model Ts and other early cars. He has about a dozen old cars, most of them Model Ts. He has aa old speedster that he and his son, Steve have driven as far as Montana before. Between the two of them, Darrel and Steve, they have an almost endless supply of old car parts. They have been a good source of both parts and knowledge for me during my re-assembly of my Model T.  

Chapter 13, Car Parts Sources.

During the 70s, and even the 80s, if you needed parts for your car, you either went to the local car parts store, or when you were on a budget, Like we were, you went to one of the many local wrecking yards. In the Bellingham and Whatcom county area, there were probably at least a dozen wrecking yards. Some were well organized operations, we seldom went there, most were small, even almost home operations on maybe ten or less acres. These places had much better prices and allowed you to walk around and see what they had available. If you found what you needed, you would then take the part off yourself. Walking through the wrecking yard looking at what was there are checking out the cars was, at least at that time, more entertaining to me than just about else. I used to love that. Of the wrecking yards in the area when I was growing up, I remember a few. One was Wholesale Auto Wrecking. It was on auto row in Bellingham. It was far and away the most well run and expensive operation in the area. It was there until about 2000 when it became a large Toyota dealership. I was able to walk around there in the early days, but soon after, only the employees were allowed in the yard. The next largest operation was Gundies Auto Wrecking out on the Mount Baker Highway in Bellingham. It belonged to a local family, the Gunderson’s. I went to high school with Joel Gunderson, one of the sons of the owner. It was a large operation, but you could still do look around and remove your own parts. It was probably the next most expensive, but had a great selection of cars that were arranged by make in rows. It is still there, and still a wrecking yard today. The other large yard was Zwickies Auto Wrecking on the Guide Meridian in Bellingham. They processed their cars rather quickly, so their selection was not so good. It was there one day while looking for parts that I saw my old 1948 Dodge pick-up and was amazed how well the paint had held up over the years. It is also still there, but is no longer a wrecking yard as it was. It is now Z recycling. There are lots of cars in their yard stacked up, but they don’t sell parts off of them. It’s a busy operation today. Another fairly good sized operation from back then was Al’s Salvage on the Y road in Bellingham. That was my favorite of the larger yards. It was always interesting to walk around there. Since it was opened only around 1970, there were lots of cars that ended up there that I recognized. Even a few of mine ended up there. One time we needed a crankshaft out of a Pontiac. The guy just rolled a reasonably decent Pontiac two door hardtop up on its side so we could take the crankshaft out from the bottom. What a dumb way to get the part out of a decent car, but that was how things were done then. You even just let all the fluids just run out on the ground. Al’s closed down in the early 90s. Another one I remember was Ferndale Auto Wrecking. It was on the Axton road in Ferndale. In the late 70s, I was looking for some trim parts for my 1959 Cadillac convertible. It happened that they had a ’59 Eldorado hardtop there. It was a low mileage car that had been hit in the front fender. Back then, cars like that with minor damage ended up in places like that. The owner saw we were interested in cool cars. He showed us a car he had. It was a 1958 Pontiac Bonneville with fuel injection. It was hit in the driver’s side quarter panel. The car had been there since it was nearly new. It had less than 10,000 miles on it. He had refused to sell parts off it. He said he was going to fix it up someday. I have always wondered what happened to that car. The other wrecking yard I remember well was Wrights Auto Wrecking. It was on the Aldrich road just by the Hemmi road in Bellingham. Just after I had purchased my 1948 Dodge pick-up, Dave Glad and I went in search for some needed parts. Dave suggested we go to see Mr. Wright. His yard was at his house on a rather small acreage. This would have been in 1971. I didn’t have a lot of money to spend, and had a whole list of parts I needed. Before we got there, Dave said that he would want to much for his parts, but if you sit with him and listen to him spin his yarns about his life, the prices would get better. Dave was right, we talked with him for quite a while, then asked about the prices of the parts I needed. He nearly gave them to me. Later, when I got my 1958 Chevy, I found a 1958 Chevy sedan at his yard. For $35, he gave me the right to come and get any parts I wanted off the car as I needed them. I ended up taking a lot of things off that car for months. Old Mr. Wright was a nice guy, his wrecking yard has been closed since the late 70s.