The Summer of (Car) Love

The Summer of (Car) Love

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

March, 2006 - Pat Foster

I imagine the lucky folks who live in Southern California, Florida and throughout the lowermost section of the United States get to enjoy swap meets and car shows pretty much year 'round, but for most of the country, car show season has been over for several months. Here in New England it pretty much ends by September 30, although a few diehards like myself try to extend it through the end of October. For us frozen Yankees, winter is the time to reminisce about what we saw and did last summer. I, for one, traveled to a lot of swap meets and car shows in 2005, and have many more scheduled for 2006.

Traveling to car shows is sometimes a bigger adventure than the actual meet itself. It begins with precise mapping and planning to determine the best route to our glamorous destination (where exactly is Rabbit Hash, Kentucky?) followed by a few unexpected logistical snafus (Who has my car keys?) and revisions (Where the heck did I leave the carburetor?), right up to departure time. Really intelligent people service their vintage cars early in the season so they can drive them locally for a few weeks to make sure everything is up to snuff. Me and all the other lunkheads check the oil the morning we're leaving, jumpstart the car off the battery charger we forgot to hook up the night before, and take off with a silent promise to check the tires at the first gas stop. We forget, of course.

We hit the road with a predetermined estimated time of arrival that, unfortunately, we have calculated based on driving a new Chrysler 300 at 100 mph rather than driving a 50-year-old Rambler at 60 mph. Of course, we also forgot to include time for rest stops, meal breaks and refueling. Thankfully though, the excitement of going to a car show or a club national convention usually provides enough adrenaline that we're able to make it to our destination, even if we do arrive six hours later than planned. It gives us the opportunity to experience lots of that relaxing nighttime driving, dodging deer and trying to read traffic signs by the light of 6-volt headlamps.

A word about those rest area stops. One thing I've noticed traveling to shows is that every highway restroom has certain features that are the same no matter where you go. Let's face it: They're not pleasant. They always smell like a herd of animals has gone through recently. And of course there's a certain individual I need to mention. The one who's always there even though I wish he wasn't. The Mystery Man. He's there when I get there, and he's still there when I leave. Every single time. He always sits in the last stall. The truth is, I've never actually seen his face, only his shoes and socks.

Driving across the country, you learn a few things. One is that Ohio is really two states that never separated, like an amoeba that forgot to split. Drive through Northern Ohio and the radio stations play rock 'n' roll, people watch SCCA racing, read Jane Austen and watch PBS. Drive through the Southern half of Ohio and people follow NASCAR, line dance and listen to the Dixie Chicks. I find that, like Zelig, I need to constantly adapt to this changing environment.

Michigan is a little like Ohio except the state actually is split. There's Michigan proper, and the Upper Peninsula or 'the U.P.' as the locals call it. The two halves are separated by the Straits of Mackinac, but instead of being separate states they're both called Michigan. I guess by the time the settlers got there they'd run out of names. Or maybe they were just lazy.

On the road we dream great daydreams. "Our car is going to win a trophy." "The swap meet is going to have the best vendors ever." "Here we will find the armrests we need, the radio we want, and that last little bit of trim we are willing to sell our soul for." "Our fellow club members will finally recognize us as being the backbone of the old car hobby." Little of this comes true.

Anyway, after a few minor incidents (where the heck are the jumper cables?), we finally arrive at the meet hotel and give the desk clerk our usual warm greeting. "Whaddaya mean I don't have a reservation?" But it's never really a problem. Hotels make their living by keeping people happy, so they can usually find us a room. Naturally, for smokers that means a non-smoking room. For non-smokers the only thing they have is a smoking room, which they'll do an extra-heavy job of fumigating, so instead of getting sick to your stomach from the smell of smoke, you get sick from the smell of cleaning fluid.

Dinner hour comes and it's time to go out on the town with a group of fellow car guys. Let's see, the choices are: Chili dogs with greasy fries, greasy pork sandwiches with greasy barbeque sauce, greasy burgers with greasy fries, greasy burgers with no fries, fries with extra grease, grease with no burger and no fries, or a small salad. Both my brain and my heart doctor tell me to take the salad, but my gut says gimme love, so chili dogs it is. Six hours later I remember the old saying: Chili dogs only bark in the middle of the night. So that night a lot of reading gets done.

But in the end everything turns out okay. Morning comes. The sun is shining brightly, as it will for five more minutes before the rain starts. You slide into your beloved collector car, get lost only once--okay twice--as you drive down to the show field and give the meet officials a hearty greeting: "Whaddaya mean I'm not registered?"


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