The Red Roadster - Part 3

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The Red Roadster - Part 3


Bobby got out and walked around to the passenger side of the car. He helped Gail lie down in the seat, kneeled on the running board and with rain pouring down on both of them they delivered the baby. The birth went ok, if you can call delivering a baby girl on the seat of a small and wet roadster in a cold and driving rainstorm ok. Gail coached him through it, at least she did when she could talk. Bobby did ok. He’d been paying attention to the things Gail told him when she talked about some of the deliveries she’d been involved in at the hospital and he more or less knew what to expect. His biggest fear was dropping the baby.

He got the baby wrapped up in his jacket right away, helped Gail sit up, handed her the baby and that was when the Chrysler engine decided to started sputtering. Before he could get around the car to the drivers seat, the engine died. With the louvered hood top and the missing hood sides, rain finally shorted out the ignition. Not much scared Bobby, but when the Chrysler faltered and quit, he was really scared. Gail was starting to shiver from the cold and being soaking wet didn’t help.

He gave it a try, but the engine wouldn’t start. With no flashlight and the roadster battery almost dead, he figured they were out of luck. The only thing he could think of was to carry the two of them back home and call for an ambulance. I think he could have done it. Bobby was young, strong and determined.

Sometimes in life, the cavalry does get there in the nick of time. In their case it came in the form of a California Highway Patrolman patrolling the back roads for problems. The cop thought he’d stumbled onto a wreck since the 57 Chevy was on one side of the road stuck in the mud and the roadster was parked on the other side, barely off the road and sitting at an odd angle.

The cop held the baby while Bobby helped Gail into the back seat of the CHP cruiser. The warm car helped, but not as much as the blanket the cop got out of the trunk. Bobby covered Gail and the baby up with the blanket and held them close.

It was a quick ride to the hospital in the big cruiser with the red lights on and the siren occasionally sounding once they were in town.

I was just about out the door at work when one of the guys picked up the phone and said “It’s for you”.

It was Rebecca on the line and she told me that Bobby wanted me to get some help, go out to his house, get the roadster and the Chevy off the road, put them in the garage, grab some dry clothes for him and bring them to the hospital. She told me that Gail had the baby, everything was alright and Bobby would explain it all when I got to the hospital.

Like I mentioned, we had some cool guys at work. When I mentioned what was cooking, Jim, who’d worked swing with me volunteered to come along and help. I was glad to have him along, it looked like it was definitely going to be a bigger job than one guy could handle.

We ran the coupe out Canyon Road toward Bobby and Gail’s house. Just like the cop had first thought, we figured we were looking at a wreck when we saw Gail’s Chevy off the road in the mud and Bobby’s roadster sitting partway on the road about a mile from the house.

The roadster wasn’t too much of a problem. We towed it back to the house and rolled it into the garage which was standing open. I found the hidden house key and used that to get in and get some dry clothes for Bobby.

The Chevy though, that was another problem. It was fairly well stuck. The coupe couldn’t budge it and the tires just spun on the wet pavement. It looked like we were going to have to leave it, but that didn’t look like the greatest idea in the world. It was sitting nose down in a huge puddle and I figured if it kept raining like it was forecast to do, the front end of the Chevy would be totally covered by water and mud before morning. We went back to the house and called the towing service in town only to find that they wouldn’t be available for several hours and probably not until morning. I didn’t think that was going to work out too well and I tried to understand, but even with it rolling over almost two in the morning it was hard to do. Geez ... we worked 24/7 and sometimes more in the power business. Seems like working late for the tow truck guys couldn’t be too big a deal. When I thought about it a little more I realized, the tow truck guys were always out there, any time, day or night, rain or shine and they were pretty much like us in not seeing home or even a day off for a long stretch of time.

Even so, working for the power company does have some perks. In a matter of speaking. I knew that a couple of the garage guys had gone out to Prado Road to see what they could do with one of the district line trucks that was having alternator problems. Far as I knew they might still be out there. As much work as the line crew had to do to replace a pole that had gone over in the rainstorm the whole darned crew was probably still there and I hoped the garage guys would be there too. With that in mind, I called the power station. They told me the mechanics were still with the district line truck on Prado Road. That wasn’t too far from the house so Jim and I ran over there in the coupe.

We got there and found the garage one ton shop pickup still there and the mechanics finishing up on the line truck. I expected to find the regular mechanic and the serviceman - that being the title for apprentice mechanic - but what I found was the crusty and sometimes crabby shop foreman and the mechanic. The mechanic I knew and figured he would have stuck his neck out and used the company truck to pull the Chevy back up on the road.

Well ... I figured all the foreman could say was no. So I asked. I didn’t even get to the part about it being Bobby and Gail’s car let alone the birth in the roadster and the trip in the cop car to the hospital.

He said, “Sure, we’ll be glad to give you a hand.”

A bit of a surprise to me, he’d always been a little gruff on the phone. You never know I guess.

We led them up Prado Road and out to the stuck Chevy. The rope was still tied onto the Chevy’s bumper brackets and it was a simple matter to drop the loop of rope around the shop trucks bumper hitch. With the shop truck being a well equipped one ton as well as four wheel drive, it pulled the Chevy out with no problem.

Thankfully the Chevy started right up, but we took it back to Bobby’s house anyway.
I was worried the front brakes and all were full of mud and gravel and it didn’t look like a good idea to drive it very far. We rinsed the front end off with a hose as best we could and stuck it in the garage with the roadster and locked everything up.

Now it was our turn to go looking for dry clothes. Even with raincoats, both Jim and I were soaking wet. I ran Jim back to the power station where his car was parked, thanked him and headed for my house. Once there I ran the coupe into the garage and left the windows down so the car could dry out. Jim and I had dragged a lot of water in with our getting in and out during the rain.

I went inside, talked to Rebecca for a few minutes, looked in on the baby and took about a two minute shower. It felt good and I wanted to stay, but I knew Bobby was probably miserable in his wet clothes at the hospital. I grabbed Bobby’s dry clothes out of the coupe, tossed them into the Olds and headed out. It was still pouring down rain.

I got to the hospital and once inside I was informed it was way after visiting hours. I said “ok,” turned around as if to leave and headed down the hall. I knew what floor Gail worked on and I’d been there several times with Bobby when he went out to see her about something. The lady at the desk figured that took care of that and went back to whatever it was she was doing as soon as I turned around.

Once I got on the 2nd floor where maternity was, I went straight to the nurses station. Got lucky there. I knew the nurses on duty since I’d met them quite a while back. They told me what room Gail was in, said Bobby was in there with her and to go on down. I walked down the hall with the bag of Bobby’s clothes and entered the room to find Gail asleep and him sitting up in a chair, very much awake, covered with a hospital blanket and wearing only a hospital gown. The nurses, co-workers and both of them friends of Gail’s had taken Bobby down to a shower, had him clean up and gave him a gown and blanket. I think Bobby was embarrassed a bit, but not enough to turn down a warm shower when he was cold and wet.

He got dressed and we walked down the hall to see his little girl. A beautiful baby that he and Gail named Megan Lee. Quite a week for sure. Bobby and I had been friends since the first day he walked into high school. Now, about eight years later we were both married and had baby girls who’d been born four days apart. We felt the little girls were well on their way to being best friends already.

 

Little and the Cops

Little’s biggest desire in life - at least the one right behind hunting and fishing - was to be a cop. Or as he put it, a police officer. The big problem we could see was his decided lack of height. He’d studied hard, taken the right courses and didn’t worry too much about the height requirement. He figured there had to be some way around it. If nothing else, Little was tenacious.

We’d seen a few guys from school apply at the police department, but what stopped most were the academic requirements. A few were stopped by the physical requirements. The physical requirements were firmly in place and it didn’t look like they would change any time soon. A good part of it was the Chief of Police. A big strong guy, just about the same size as Earl and he felt there was no substitute for size when it came to dealing with the bad guys.

I’d met Chief Mitchell when I was about 14 and volunteered to caddy for dad at one of the tournaments his club put on now and then. More now than then. Seems like they had a golf tournament darned near every time I turned around. As fate would have it, we got paired up with the Chief and his partner. Chief was an ok player, swung hard and just smashed the snot out of the golf ball. He hit a three wood farther than most guys could hit their driver. Quite a bit farther in fact. A mid 80's player, he was something else when it came to hitting the ball. If he could have hit the ball straight all the time, he’d have been in the 70's for sure. Kinda tough to be a 70's player though, especially when you’re spending a lot of your time searching for an errant ball.

Once Little found out dad and I had known the Chief for several years and mentioned the little fact that the Chief still played golf all the time, he volunteered to caddy for his dad who belonged to the same club and also played in most of the tournaments.

It must have been six months before Little got a chance to meet the Chief. He’d finally gotten lucky when his dad ended up in the same group with the Chief. Little figured this would be his chance to ask the Chief a lot of questions about the police department. The Chief answered a few, but about the 4th hole, he took Little to one side and told him that he was here to play golf and get out of the office for a while and police work wasn’t really what interested him right now.
A disappointment for Little, but he took it well. He kept on caddying for his dad when he could, but after the question and answer session that had gone nowhere with the Chief, he pretty much lost interest in the caddy biz.

Even so, Little still talked to the cops who parked at the Frosty Shop every chance he got.
He took courses aiming toward a career in law enforcement and studied hard. To the credit of the local cops on the street, not one discouraged Little and to a man they told him to just keep studying. Around the country, height and weight requirements at many police departments were starting to get tossed out. The realization that they could be missing out on some highly intelligent people that were perhaps smaller than average didn’t escape them either.

Not to be in our community though, Chief Mitchell was a stickler for applicants meeting the minimum physical requirements. Little’s problem was that the minimum height was 5'8". And he was 5'7". A small sticking point for sure and no pun intended.

Little kept on plodding along, carrying a lot of units at the Junior College. The way he figured it, he was 19 now and could apply in about a year and a half. If the height requirements kept him out of the local police force, he’d go out of town and apply. His hearts desire was to remain in our little beach town and marry a local girl he fancied. Fancied was about all he’d done. He hadn’t even asked the girl out on a date. In fact, at 19, he hadn’t asked too many girls out. He was one shy young man.

Little got a part time job working weekends at the parts house that was first on our list when we were chasing parts. The counter guys always treated us well and gave us just about as good a discount as what the local garages got. Little got a job there because the owner knew he was a good solid and dependable kid. It helped too, that the parts house owner knew Bobby’s dad and Bobby as well. Little helped at the family machine shop/oil field supply business when he could, but they were closed on weekends which was about the only time Little had to work. He came in after school a couple of times a week to help out, but as he put it, he didn’t want any pay because this was for family. Even so, Bobby’s dad paid him a few bucks. Just enough for gas and a little bit of pocket money.

Little started the weekend job at the parts house mainly so he could buy Bobby’s pickup.
Bobby let him use the 46 Chevy pickup most any time he wanted to. As long as Bobby or Gail didn’t need it. It wasn’t long until Little more or less decided the truck was his and all he had to do was have Bobby name a price and he would meet it one way or another.

Bobby was at the point where he could use a new pickup with modern V8 power to tow the A roadster to the dragstrip. He’d been looking at 63 Chevy’s for a while. When the 64's came out with their laid back windshield and good looking grille, that was enough for Bobby, he ordered one and let Little take the 46 home. The price he laid on Little for the pickup was way below what it was worth, but as Bobby put it, Little had always been a good brother and the first to help when Bobby needed it. Far as Bobby was concerned, Little could have had the truck for free except for the small point that Little wanted to pay for it. Bobby got kidded about it for a while when we would ask him if we could have the Little price.

Little’s life came to an interesting crossing of the roads, so to speak. Nothing planned, just one of those things that come out of the blue. Part of Little’s duties at the parts house was delivering parts in the store pickup. If things worked out right, he could park at the beach next to the pier and eat lunch. It was a Saturday, with warm and clear weather to boot. Strangely enough there weren’t too many on the beach and not too many on the pier. Kind of funny thought Little, but that’s the way it went sometimes.

He hadn’t even got his lunch out when he noticed a pair of little girls, probably seven or eight years old running along the pier and climbing on the railing. An older woman - probably their grandmother - was with them, but the girls would run on ahead just out of reach. It seemed to be a game they all enjoyed and Little could tell that the grandmother, as he’d decided she must have been, told the girls several times to get off the railing. He said he had a strange feeling about the whole thing and figured at the least he could take his lunch up on the pier and eat it there.

Sure enough, one of the little girls lost her balance on the railing and fell off the pier. Little was still near the bottom of the wooden stairs leading up to the pier from the beach, when he heard the scream, turned and saw the grandmother go over the railing and launch herself into the ocean. Right behind the surf line as it turned out. It was high tide and the surf was running pretty good, although nothing like the big winter storms that could have the waves darn near touching the underside of the pier deck.

Little climbed the rest of the stairs as fast as he could and ran the two hundred yards to where the other little girl was sitting on the pier deck and crying. He told her to stay there and got a nod and a teary eyed sort of smile from the little girl. He looked over the rail and didn’t see anybody. Just surf and foaming white water. He kicked off his loafers, ripped off his parts house shirt and went over the side wearing levis, socks and a t-shirt. He figured the two of them were gone, but he had to look for himself.

One thing in Little’s favor was that he was a very strong swimmer and he’d done a lot of body surfing with us over the years. He understood the waves, how they worked and how to swim in them. In the short time he was in free fall he spotted the grandmother hanging onto one of the pier pilings and getting banged around by the surf. It didn’t take Little very long to swim over to her and offer to take her in to the beach.

Surprising Little, a whole bunch, the grandmother said, “Hell, I can swim, get my granddaughter, she’s hung up on a piling in the middle of the pier and I can’t get her off!”

When she pointed, he saw the little girl who was half unconscious and hanging from the piling with waves swirling around her. When the wave came in, she’d go under water and once it passed and started breaking she’d come out of the water and end up hanging above the water about knee deep. Once he got over there he could see exactly what the problem was. An old rusty bolt sticking clear through the piling had snagged the little girls sweater back and there wasn’t much she could do about getting loose. Little got over there ok, got out the pocketknife he always carried and wrapped his legs around the piling. Getting more than a few splinters in the process. He cut the sweater clear, grabbed the little girl and when they had a moment of calm he swam out from under the pier.

He found that the grandmother was ok and still clinging to the piling where he’d first found her. He asked her if she would be able to swim in ok.

Grandma answered, “Hell yes and don’t you let go of my granddaughter!”

True to her word, grandma had no problems swimming out of the surf into the calmer water and neither did Little. Towing the little girl was easy for him. He was a good swimmer and a strong kid. It stood him well this time around.

When they got to where they could touch the sand and start walking, Little and the grandmother looked up at the pier where they saw a dark haired cop holding the other little girl and watching intently. Another cop, this one a big sandy haired guy, was running down the stairs to the beach. Little and the grandmother waded out of the water and up onto the dry sand. After a few seconds, the grandmother sank down onto the sand, sitting there looking at her Granddaughter and didn’t say anything. It was pretty obvious the struggle in the surf had worn her out.

Little just stood there with the little girl in his arms and watched the cop walk up to them.
When the cop got there and looked at the little girl, Little noticed for the first time she was bleeding pretty good from where the rusty bolt had cut her back.

All the cop said was, “Let me have her.”

Kind of a strange threesome for sure. Little and the cop were standing there, the cop was looking at grandma and then he told her he was going to run the little girl over to the hospital and did the grandmother want to come along.

Grandma’s answer was, “Yes, but I can’t for a minute. Take her and I’ll drive there myself.”

Enough for the cop, he turned and ran - if you can call it running - as well as he could through the soft sand with the half conscious girl in his arms. He met his partner at the bottom of the stairs, gave the little girl to him and the two of them ran up to the top where the other little girl was. Collecting the other little girl, they disappeared out of sight.

It was only a few seconds later and Little saw the police car start up the slight grade off the pier toward the warehouse at the top. Once there, the red lights and siren went on. Kind of a strange deal thought Little. It seems it would have been more sensible to leave the other little girl with her grandmother. Even so, both of them were in good hands.

Little helped the grandmother get up, although she was a bit shaky. He asked her if she was going to be ok driving to the hospital by herself. She said she thought so. Little didn’t think so and offered her a ride to the hospital. Grandma just nodded her head. Apparently the surf had given her a bit of a beating against the pilings while she was trying to get her granddaughter free and she was still a bit dazed by it all. Aside from a few splinters in his legs, Little was doing ok.

He got grandma to the parts house pickup and drove her to the hospital. When they got there, they saw a police car, probably the one from the pier in the ambulance parking spot and two more were parked nearby. They parked as close as they could to the emergency door entrance and Little walked grandma over to the door where a nurse took one look at them and came out to help. Little told her he was ok and to take the lady.

Grandma started to walk in, stopped, turned, and with a tired smile told Little, “Thank you very much”.

For Little, a most interesting lunch hour. He finished the last couple of deliveries he had on the pickup and returned to the parts house. When he got there, he realized he must have been quite a sight. He was still wet and had sand all over his levis and shirt. To top it off, his loafers and parts house shirt were still up on the pier where he’d left them.

When the counter guys and a customer asked Little what happened, he told them he’d helped drag a little girl out of the surf at the pier. He didn’t make a big deal out of it and the other guys didn’t press him. All they said was, go home and take the rest of the day off. Ok with Little, there were only a couple of hours left to work anyway.

Little never told anybody else about what happened. If it wasn’t for the small fact that most every cop in town knew him, his identity would have remained a mystery. The paper called him, “The Unknown Hero of the Pier.”

The paper and the mayor’s office wanted to have a ceremony at City Hall and give Little a medal. Little though, he wasn’t interested in medals and refused to go. His folks were disappointed, but they knew Little had strong feelings about some things so they let it go. In the end, the city put the medal in a box and mailed it to him. As far as I know, Little never opened the box. Bobby told us Little put the box on a shelf in his closet and as far as he knew it was still
there.

Life for us, had settled in comfortably. The babies, both Melanie and Megan were approaching one year of age and just about at the toddler stage. Bobby and I were proud papa’s for sure.
The little girls were the apples of our eyes. Surprisingly, they got along well and enjoyed each others company. Never any of that typical baby stuff of poking the eyes, pulling the hair and one running roughshod over the other one. We were all amazed, the babies got along so well that having both of them was just about as easy as having one.

Course, like Bobby’s grandmother cautioned, “Just wait until the terrible two’s.”

We’d heard about the two’s and read about them, but decided it was something we’d have to experience for ourselves. Even so, Bobby’s grandmother loved spoiling the babies. If she bought something for one, she bought the same thing for the other. She called them her little angels and loved to babysit them. Pearl loved the babies too, but she was quiet about it. She went about it in her own way. Her own way, being many handmade things like quilts, clothes and the like.

It almost seemed the little girls were twin sisters. The same size, the same sweet smile, blond hair and a happy outlook on life. We couldn’t have asked for much more.

Earl was a sweetheart too, he doted on Melanie and it seemed he loved Megan just as much. I think a lot of why the babies turned out the way they did - although at one year old, they still had a ways to go - was the love and attention from both families.

Gail’s folks made a flight in from Alaska to see Megan after she was born and had made another to celebrate her first Christmas. They were thrilled with Melanie as well and welcomed her with open arms. Seems there was no one who wasn’t quite taken by the two little girls. For sure, we were.

By now, Bobby had owned his Chevy pickup for almost a year It was a nice one with factory black paint, V8 engine, short bed, big back window, deluxe interior with factory radio and heater.
He’d installed a set of duals and chrome wheels with baby moons as well as a frame mount trailer hitch and that was pretty much the extent of the modifications. With the chrome passenger car style bumper instead of the more common step bumper it was a good looking little truck.

We’d done a little more drag racing with the A roadster and Bobby had brought home a couple of trophies with it and that was about it for the hot rod end of things. The roadster still ran close to the same times it did on the first outing, but that was ok with Bobby. It was a fun car to drive and we were all pretty busy with our lives just as they were. Not much need for building and improving right now, although we’d talk about it when we got together.

Life was, for the most part, darned near perfect. Rebecca was almost finished with her marine biology studies at the Arroyo Verde college and only had a couple of units to go for her degree.
She was looking forward to finishing up and had a good job waiting for her at Rincon Oil. The job, a local one, helping to monitor environmental concerns for the oil company and to assist in developing long range plans to extract oil with the least effect on the environment. Contrary to what a lot of radicals were thinking, the oil companies were concerned with the environment. As they put it, “We’ve gotta live here too.”

We were just cruising along enjoying life and figuring it couldn’t be too much better. There always seems to be a shadow lurking on the edge though.

The shadow in the form of the Vietnam war. A period in American history that just about tore the country apart. The draft, which had been in effect since World War Two was really on a roll.
Young men were disappearing from town at a surprising rate.

First to go in our group was Don. He’d been doing ok flying helicopters for a crop dusting outfit and was thinking about getting started in a business of his own with charter helicopters.
To top it off, he was living in Newhall with a Santa Barbara girl.

We hadn’t seen much of Don in the last couple of years other than to run into him now and then and get an update on what he was doing. He’d made a point to stop by to say goodbye before he shipped out. We found he’d been recalled to duty because the Army needed helicopter pilots badly.

Next to go was Larry. We hadn’t seen much of him or Sue either since their move up north.
The girls wrote back and forth all the time so we were pretty much up to date on how their lives were going.

The draft struck close to home too. Little got his notice on his twentieth birthday. Happy birthday Little. Kind of put a damper on the party, but Little figured it could be an opportunity for him.

Bud got called up, got on the bus, went to L.A. for the physical and was turned down. He was surprised to find he had a weird heart rhythm and that disqualified him. When he went to a local doctor, he was told that it shouldn’t ever be a problem. Apparently it was a very common thing.

With Bobby and I being 25, married and with one child each, we figured that helped. Then we started seeing guys 27-28 years old with two kids getting drafted and we figured it wouldn’t be long for us. The girls worried a lot too. We figured we’d go if we had too, but we weren’t in any rush. There was still a lot of family in town to help Rebecca and Gail if necessary. In fact, either family would have helped either one of them if it came down to that.



1966

The year passed pretty slow. We worried a lot about Little and worried about Don and Larry as well. It got so we hated to pick up the paper and read about another home town boy who wasn’t coming home. Ever.

Don had gone to Vietnam right away. Helicopter pilots were badly needed. After finishing with a short re-orientation at Army flight school and some additional training to check him out in the big double rotor Sikorsky helicopter he was on his way just a few weeks after we last saw him.

Larry went overseas right away too. He got a three day pass after basic training. Susan drove over to Fort Ord, picked him up, they spent the weekend on the coast near Monterey and that was it. Pack up and go.

Little spent most of the first year he was in, training as an MP after basic and then working as an MP at Fort Ord. Kinda funny, the Army actually stuck a guy in a place he was qualified for.
Then he shipped over to Vietnam. Little being an MP relieved us greatly, but then we found out that duty in Saigon could be almost as hazardous as it was out in the boonies. So much for a worry free tour of duty for Little.

Funniest part about all of this more than serious stuff was that Little learned to shoot a rifle fairly well and a pistol quite well. Turns out, he needed glasses. Neither he or the family realized he had a hard time focusing on things. He could actually see fairly well, it was just trying to focus on the rear sight, the front sight and the target at the same time that threw him. As he put it, the shotgun was no problem. He just saw a blur where the barrel was and swept it through the moving target pulling the trigger at the right time. He was definitely a natural with a shotgun.

The glasses didn’t help as far as the focusing went, but Little could see a lot better further out.
What fooled everyone and especially him was that he could read without glasses and he figured everybody saw things like he did.

Little sent Bobby and the folks a photo of himself in uniform. The typical one the armed forces take of their young men and women when they get out of basic or boot camp. There he was, dress uniform, stern look, at attention. We didn’t hardly recognize him. Little wasn’t the sharpest dresser in the world, but he wasn’t bad. It was quite a change seeing him in a freshly pressed dress uniform with everything in place. What really changed his looks were the Army issue black horn rim glasses.

That was a slow year for all of us. Aside from worrying about Little, Larry and Don, Bobby and I worried a bit about the draft ourselves. If it came to it, we’d go and do our duty just as our fathers had done. After a while it got to where Rebecca and Gail wouldn’t get the mail out of the mailbox. Bobby and I would bring it in after work or whenever we could. I will admit though, when one official looking brown envelope came to my house it scared the hell out of me. Turned out, it was just a tax return. We got to where we hated to see mail in a brown envelope.
I don’t know why Bobby and I never got called up. I don’t think our jobs had much to do with it, it would have been fairly easy to replace us by somebody else in our companies. We’d seen it happen to other guys.

Pretty much the same thing happened to Roberto. He just kept plugging away at the family machine shop and waited for the axe to fall.
It never did.



1967

The year with the guys overseas finally came to an end and they all came home. Came home to America that is. Larry and Little both ended up at Fort Sill for the last few weeks of their two year requirement.

Larry had it kind of easy and was just marking time. Little though, he got stuck doing MP duty for the remainder of his time. Not too bad a deal as far as he was concerned, but just hanging out would have been a little easier. Maybe not, Larry told us that just waiting around not doing much of anything made the time run very slow.

Don came back and went to Texas as a flight instructor. He worked there for a while, got tired of it and volunteered to go back to Vietnam for a second tour of duty.

We never saw him again. His helicopter went down on an ordinary run of the mill supply flight to an outlying base in supposedly safe territory. It was never found and the whole crew ended up being listed as MIA.

The war developed into a status quo kind of thing and we went on living our lives pretty much as usual. It was hard to forget though. Every night, the war was right there on the television set.
The part that hit the hardest for me, besides the loss of Don, was when Life magazine printed the photos and names of the dead for just one week of the Vietnam war. It was staggering and went on for page after page after page. I never forgot it.

-<>-

Our lives running along on autopilot and we weren’t doing too much of the hot rod, drag race thing. The only thing that happened along those lines was when Bobby sprung for a set of wrinkle wall slicks and a lower set of gears for the 31 roadster. It pained us to take off the old hard slicks as they were a long ways from being worn out. Even so, it was something Bobby felt was necessary. The Y-Block was a good runner, but it was giving up a lot in the traction and launch department.

The slicks and gears turned out to be a major improvement. Gearing went from a 3.70 running 30" diameter hard slicks to a 4.56 diff running a set of 30" wrinkle wall slicks. They were quite a bit wider in tread width too. From about 8" wide to about 12" wide.

The first weekend Little was home, Bobby and I took him to Lions dragstrip at Long Beach.
We were still running a tow bar between the roadster and Bobby’s 64 Chevy pickup. The roadster shod with street tires for highway travel and we were beginning to realize a trailer would be a lot better way to go. At least we wouldn’t have to do the tire swap bit once we got to the strip and again before we could head for home.

With the good air at Lions - being darned near at sea level - and with the cool temperatures along the coast the roadster ran the best it ever did. It cranked an 11.05 and 120 mph right off the trailer.

Roberto was there with his 50 Chevy coupe. By now, he was darned near untouchable for us. He’d built another 409, this one with a smaller bore, but the same half inch stroker that was in the other motor. In fact, this was the half inch stroker out of the other motor, less the pistons. Roberto had bought another 409 engine, got a set of .030 over 7/1 forged pistons and stuck a 6.71 blower on the engine. A pair of big AFB’s were on top of the blower and Roberto was in business. Other improvements were the B&amp;M hydro, a set of the widest slicks he could get on it and a set of 4.56 diff gears. The little coupe used to run 10.70 at 124 with the old unblown 480 inch engine. With the new engine, only a 473 incher, but with an overdriven blower, it now ran consistent 9.60's at 143 mph.

Roberto’s car ended up in the A/Gas Supercharged class, but he had a tough time there.
With the lightweight and in many cases, blown Chrysler powered 41 Willys and later the even lighter weight 33 Willys he had a tough row to hoe. Roberto’s coupe was a third to a half second slower than the fastest cars in the class. The tough part was that most of them ran darn near right on the record. Now and then he got a win against these cars, but eventually he would get picked off.

Bobby had it in the back of his mind to race Roberto at the strip someday, but at the rate we were going we would never catch Roberto. Racing a third to a half second faster car was one thing, but racing Roberto with a car that was one and a half seconds slower was an exercise in futility. Even so, Roberto and Bobby ended up paired off when the staging lane guy picked em out for a paired time trial run. Roberto was gracious and dragged his feet a bit on the start. Even so, he pulled Bobby’s roadster on the top end. It was fun though, both Bobby and Roberto were grinning like idiots when they drove back into the pits.

Funny part about it for us, the very first run we made was the best one we did all day.
We stayed close to the 11.05 at 120 mph, but that was it.

Little spent a week at home before he put on his uniform and headed for the police station.
His plan, to apply for a position on the force. He figured his college training as well as the training and time spent as an MP would give him a leg up. Trouble was, he needed more than a leg. The Chief who headed the force when he left for Vietnam was still the Chief when he got back. And Chief, like always, just wouldn’t give any leeway to anybody shorter than the magical 5'8". Stronger or smarter, he didn’t care. He wanted his officers to be 5'8" and that was it.

Personnel tried to discourage him, but in the end they let him apply anyway. They wished him well knowing that once the application got to the Chief that would be the end of it. Short was short and that was it. They sympathized, but with the Chief being the way he was, they couldn’t do much about it.


Little was optimistic though, he figured he’d take his chances. If it didn’t work out at home, there were other police departments that would take him on. Even so, he still wanted to stay in the old hometown. That’s where he’d grown up for the most part and he had a lot of friends as well as family there. If it came to it, it would be hard to leave.

He got lucky though. The day after he applied, he went out to the hospital to see Gail about something. While they were standing in the hall talking, a Pink Lady - Pink Ladies being a group of volunteer hospital workers- walked by and gave him a really weird look. She made a point to come back and look at him again. She asked him point blank if he was Robert Smith. Little just nodded in the affirmative.

Gail was a bit surprised too. She knew the Pink Lady and until she thought about it a bit, she couldn’t figure out how the Pink Lady knew Little. The Pink Lady asked Little if he remembered her, but Little didn’t have a clue. Turns out, she was the grandmother of the little girl he’d rescued from the surf under the pier. Now the light dawned. Little had only seen her that one day, and she was a bit disheveled to say the least. All the Pink Lady had to say about it, other than she was still thankful, was to tell Little he should have come to the awards ceremony. With that, she turned and went down the hall.

Part of what Little had to go through to be accepted into the police force was a physical and that was the part of the process he dreaded. Dreaded, because that was where, once again he would have his height measured and he feared that once again it would be found wanting. Gail knew all about Little’s desire to join the local police force as well as his very real worry about not being tall enough.

After Little left, Miss Gail - being Miss Gail - a girl not to let an injustice stand if she had anything to say about it went looking for the Pink Lady. And had a most interesting talk with her.
Gail knew who the Pink Lady was. Her identity wasn’t a big secret, but Little didn’t know she was the wife of the Chief of Police. The best part was, she was solidly on Little’s side and in fact thought her husbands insistence on sticking with what she felt was an outmoded requirement as far as height went was to put it bluntly, stupid. Maybe it hit home with her. I don’t know, but the little fact that she was just over five feet tall may have had something to do with it.

Part of the police department routine when an applicant was ready to take a physical was to weigh and measure the applicant right at the police station. In the Chiefs opinion this took care of any fudging right off the bat. If the applicant didn’t meet the basics on the written and the height and weight, why spend any of the departments money on a physical when the applicant couldn’t make it anyway.

Little wore his tallest shoes, a nice pair of black wingtips, but he knew it would do no good.
Height measurements were always taken with shoes off.

When the personnel officer ushered Little into the room with the doctors office style balance scale and height measuring gadget, Little was surprised to see the Chief in there as well as the Pink Lady from the hospital. It was a bit confusing for a short bit. The Chief sat there with a form on a clipboard, not smiling, not saying anything. The Pink Lady had Little remove his shoes and get up on the scale. The Chief still sat there, he didn’t say a word. Little figured this was a little weird, but what the heck. Weight, 170 pounds, almost all of it solid muscle. Height, 5'8 and ½ inches. Little was stunned to say the least. The Pink Lady smiled and told him to step off the scale. The Chief dutifully wrote the figures down, gave the form to the Pink Lady, got up and walked out.

The Pink Lady ushered Little back to the personnel office and laid the form on the desk. Little could see it upside down and it was easy to read. Right there in black and white, on an official police form, 170 pounds and 5'8 ½ inches tall. He didn’t know what to say so he said nothing. He wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The rest of it was a breeze. Little aced the required tests and with his background as an MP he was a shoe in. He couldn’t wait to tell someone, but there was no one to tell except his mom. Everybody he knew was still at work. He got curious though, he drove out to the hospital, went to the maternity ward and found Gail. When he asked what the deal was and who in the heck was the Pink Lady he kept running into, Gail told him the Pink Lady was Mrs. Mitchell the wife of the Chief of Police. Gail admitted to putting a bug in Mrs. Mitchell’s ear about Little and the height requirement. Gail knew her as a more than nice lady and they’d worked together often.
What happened after that was Mrs. Mitchell had simply gone home, told the Chief that his height requirements were stupid and any kid who could drag their granddaughter out of the surf like Little did, deserved a chance at being a police officer. She put her foot down hard when she informed the Chief she would be at the police station in the morning and she would take the weight and height measurements and the Chief would sit there and write them down. It wasn’t often Mrs. Mitchell told the Chief how it was going to be, but when she did, the Chief listened. He didn’t get to be Chief by being stupid.

Little got through the short indoctrination period and started his probation period. Which meant certain in-house studies had to be completed as well as field training with an experienced officer. Simply put, Little wasn’t allowed to work on his own until he’d met all the requirements and satisfied the Chief. It didn’t bother Little. He was used to working hard and the in-house studies were easy. Easy for him anyway.

Only problem for Little, if you could call it a problem was that everything seemed to happen to him. Some cops go their whole career without getting directly involved in too many big deals.
Little seemed to catch them all. His first week probably set the standard for the rest of his police career when he got tangled up in what the other cops called the “Robin Hood Incident”. Cops, like any other group have their war stories and like any other group they would slap a nickname on you early in your career. Your best hope was that you got a good one instead of one you’d spend the rest of your career trying to live down.

The very first week Little was doing patrol car duty he was paired up with an older more experienced officer named Campbell. Campbell was kind of a cool guy, had a lot of miles under his belt and not much really got him excited. Best part was, he was patient and didn’t shove everything off on Little.

On a quiet Saturday, along about one o’clock, the radio popped up with an armed robbery in progress at the archery range. A weird enough call in itself, to boot, it was just outside the city limits on Canyon Road and the county Sheriff’s had jurisdiction. Before Campbell had a chance to mention that little fact, the dispatcher said the nearest Sheriff’s car was 15 miles out and the city cruiser was the closest police vehicle to the scene. That was enough for Campbell, they were only a few minutes away so it was on with the red lights and head out toward Canyon Road.

The out of their jurisdiction bit was no big deal, the city and county police agencies pretty much worked hand in hand and a lot of times you’d find them both on scene. Along with the California Highway Patrol if they were close. And if the CHP was close, they came in anyway.
The way the cops figured it, the more the better and they made a point to back each other up as much as they could.

Little thought it was a peculiar call and asked Campbell what the heck the bad guys could expect to get at an archery range. Campbell told him that a regional tournament was going on during the weekend and it was probably some idiot trying to steal the tournament entry fees. Campbell figured there ought to be well over two hundred archers there so the take for the bad guys might not be too bad.

It didn’t take them long to get out there. Campbell was a good driver and a smooth one.
Little was surprised at how fast they did get there, but just chalked it up to not having to do much more than slow down for some stoplights and for sure breaking the speed limit a touch. He noticed too, Campbell didn’t use the siren much and he quit hitting it once they turned off the Coast Highway onto Canyon Road. Campbell told Little the siren could be heard a long ways away out in the country and he didn’t want to scare the bad guys off.

They turned off Canyon Road onto an old oiled road leading up to the county rodeo arena and a quarter mile in, hung a right onto a small dirt road that led to the range proper. What they found was hard to believe.

The archery range had a small wooden booth about twenty feet off the dirt road on the left, about two hundred yards up from where they’d turned in. The booth was where you signed up and paid your entry fees. The parking lot was beyond that and the archers parked, walked back to the booth and signed in. A pale green 58 Chevy four door was sitting just down the road from the booth. The driver was sitting behind the wheel looking right at Little and Campbell and looking a bit worried. Standing outside, a guy with a double barreled shotgun was standing near the open right rear door. He was facing about twenty five guys with bows and arrows. All with arrows nocked and ready to draw and shoot.

It was a bit of the old Mexican Standoff for sure. The shotgun would have cut down several of the archers and the guy wielding the shotgun looked like he could end up looking like a human pincushion. Campbell idled the police car up toward the Chevy and stopped about fifty feet down on the other side of the wide dirt road. He would have turned and blocked the road, but it was too wide and parking the way he did allowed them to get out with some cover. He told Little to get the shotgun out of the holder, keep it out of sight and unlatch the door.

The driver of the idling Chevy just looked at the two cops. The guy with the shotgun didn’t bat an eye and didn’t pay any attention to them. He was focused solely on the archers and they were focused solely on him.

Campbell turned the radio volume down and called the dispatcher for a backup unit. He didn’t want the radio blaring and spooking anybody into doing anything rash. He told Little to get out and get down behind the car. Once Little was out, Campbell slid over and got out on the passenger side.

Campbell’s biggest fear was hurting somebody in the crowd. It was obvious they couldn’t shoot at the guy holding the shotgun from where they were. There were a whole bunch of archers behind him. They couldn’t cross the road and shoot toward the bad guy because the bottom edge of the parking lot would have been in the firing line and there were quite a few people in there either hiding behind a car or standing there watching the whole thing. He asked Little to take the shotgun, cross the road, walk up the embankment toward some big rocks and set up a firing line that shot down and across the road away from the parking lot. At least nobody was standing in the road proper and any shots headed that way wouldn’t hit anybody. Campbell would stay by the car and keep an eye on the driver and when Little was in position he could cover the driver as well as the shotgun toting bad guy. He was more worried that the driver had an out sight gun than he was about the guy with the shotgun. At least right now.

Campbell knew Little was a heck of a shot with a shotgun and his military record showed him to be a calm guy under stress and under fire as well. He hated to send a new guy in, but the way it stood it looked like the only thing he could do.

Little shouldered the Remington 12 gage pump, racked a double ought shell into the chamber, made sure the safety was off and went straight across the road, up the embankment and stood next to the rocks. When he swept the shotgun across the windshield of the Chevy the drivers eyes got real wide, but he didn’t move. The driver could see Campbell on the other side with a pistol pointed right at him. When Little started toward the guy with the shotgun one of the archers who was just across from where the police car was parked told Little in a soft whisper that the bad guy had fired one round right through the roof of the entry booth, but no one was hurt. He hadn’t reloaded either. The archer had witnessed the whole thing from when the guy got out of the car with the shotgun right up to the present moment.

Well thought Little, one small thing in our favor. He advanced steadily on the bad guy and in a firm and clear voice told him to put the shotgun down. The guy never even acknowledged that Little was there. As far as Little knew, he hadn’t even turned and looked when the police car drove up. His attention was focused on the archers and they were pretty much focused on him. The whole shooting match had come to a halt when the shotgun was fired. There was quite a crowd watching the whole thing.


For his part, Little was taking soft steps toward the bad guy. It looked just like he was stalking game. Campbell walked down the road in a crouch and had the driver covered with his pistol. He figured if the driver made a move with anything that looked like he might have a gun, he was going to catch one right in the head. Campbell could do it too. He was one the best shots in the department.

Little just kept walking that soft walk and told the bad guy once again to put down the shotgun. The authoritative and confident voice finally got through to the guy. He took one quick glance at Little and finally realized what he was up against. He was already in the deep stuff just facing the archers and here was a determined cop with one of Remington’s finest pointed at him.
It just wasn’t his day.

He didn’t do anything for a few seconds and then he raised the shotgun over the heads of the archers, yelled “get back!” and fired the last round over their heads.

Backing up, he kneeled and slid into the back seat with the shotgun still leveled at the archers. Then he yelled at the driver to get going. The driver had mixed emotions about that. He had the cop with the pistol pointed right at him and the nut case he’d teamed up with in the back seat with a shotgun. All he did was ease his foot off the brake and let the Chevy start idling down the dirt road toward the exit gate. Little was pretty sure he was facing an empty shotgun, but he wanted to be very careful.
The bad guy, surprising to both Little and Campbell pulled his shotgun into the car and apparently laid it down on the seat. Not bad thought Little. Even so, it was very possible he had another weapon he could bring to bear and Little still had the shotgun trained on him.

The guy in the back seat sat there and the driver hadn’t made a move. The Chevy was idling slowly down the road without any input from anybody. Neither Little or Campbell wanted to shoot because there was still a lot of people around.

Little whispered to the archer standing next to him, “Think you can put an arrow into his tire?”

The archer didn’t say a word, he drew his bow and drilled the right rear tire with no problem.
That seemed to be the unspoken signal. Darned near every archer there started letting arrows go at the car. The right side tires were flat in virtually no time and arrows started hitting the bodywork. It wasn’t long until the car had twenty or thirty arrows in the body and darned near that many in the tires. Little and Campbell hadn’t fired a shot.

The Chevy idled into a fence post and stopped. By now the bad guys were trying to make intimate contact with the floor. It helped, but not completely. The driver got an arrow right in the shoulder and was whining and crying. When Campbell told him to get out, he complied as best he could, opened the door and fell out onto the dirt road.

The bad guy in the back seat, apparently unhurt by the barrage of arrows and unnerved by it all, opened the door and with shotgun in hand, took off running. He was a fast runner too. Little took off after him, but it was obvious he was losing ground. By now, the archers were just standing there taking it all in.

It came to an end when the bad guy ran by a lady in a green sweater and green Robin Hood type hat and pointed his shotgun in her direction. She stepped back out of his way and when he passed, she calmly nocked an arrow, drew her bow and put one right into his butt. That was enough for the bad guy, he yelled and fell face first into the grass and lay there. He didn’t say much, just squirmed around. Little couldn’t blame him, it did look painful, but he figured the idiot got pretty much what he deserved.

When Little walked up to the lady with the bow he smiled and said, “You must be Robin Hood.”

The lady wasn’t smiling when she said, “Yeah and you’re the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

Well, it was all over but the shouting although a bit of that had gone on when the bad guy got the arrow in the butt. Little cuffed the guy and asked the bow wielding lady to stick around.
Once the backup units and ambulance were there and the dust had settled a bit, Campbell found out what had happened from the two girls in the entry booth.

The bad guys had driven into the parking lot, pulled a u-turn and parked just down from the entry booth. When the guy with the shotgun got out, he walked up to the booth and without saying a word fired a round over the head of the girls working there and told em “this is a stickup”. The report from the shotgun attracted attention up and down the archery range and archers started coming over to see what had happened. Gunfire at an archery tournament being a rare thing indeed.

When the archers got down there and saw the guy with the shotgun and the shotgun wielding bad guy seeing the archers, he marched straight to the car without a dime in his hands thinking that now was perhaps a very good time to leave. The lady who put an arrow into the bad guy knew the girls working the entry booth and she was a bit steamed to say the least. She was dragged into the trial as a material witness, but not much was said about the arrow incident. I think the judge thought it was a fine piece of shooting and who could blame the lady.

Interesting part to this whole escapade was, if the idiot bad guy had not fired a round through the roof of the entry booth, he would have attracted very little attention and would more than likely have gotten away scot free.

He should have studied his history as well. The invention of the bow and arrow pretty much set the world on it’s ear. Hunting and warfare was forever changed. Looked like he forgot the bow and arrow was a weapon and a darned good one too. For him, it was like stepping into a hornets nest although here, the hornets had big stingers.

Topper to the whole thing was, not one archer approached the arrow riddled Chevy to claim an arrow. The poor little four door with it’s two right side tires flat was dragged off by the towing company. Kind of interesting though, especially now that it looked like a giant pincushion.

As for Little’s nickname? The other cops started calling him Sheriff after that one.
Coulda been worse I suppose, but it did make for fun and confusion in the ranks when in later years somebody would say to get the Sheriff. It always threw the new guys for a loop. They knew they were city cops, they knew Little was a city cop, so why did they call him Sheriff?

A simple story for sure, and one the cops enjoyed telling. Little wasn’t even the hero. He was there and that was where he got his nickname. Simple as that.



1968

Life just kept rolling along. Rebecca was working at Rincon Oil and had been for a while. She liked the job and it was an interesting one. Taking care of Melanie was easy too. With my rotating shift schedule I got to spend a lot of time with her. During the times when Rebecca and I were both working, Pearl took care of her. In fact, Pearl ended up taking care of both Melanie and Megan when everybody was working the same shift.

Sarah liked to baby sit the girls as well and Earl was always willing to watch them. As was Bobby’s grandmother, Bobby’s folks, my folks and even Little at times. With our large - call it well extended - family, the babies were always with someone they loved who loved them equally well.

Melanie and Megan were three years old. Not babies anymore according to the accepted rules laid down by who knows, but to us they were still the babies although we called them the girls most times and the little girls the rest of the time. Still cheerful and still getting along great with everyone and especially so with each other.

It was beginning to look like Little was going to be the confirmed bachelor in the group. He was 23 and had been on the force for a year and a half. And still not dating. He was busy with his life, attending night school and figured he didn’t have time for a girl in his life or romance in general. Trouble was, he’d loved one girl, Abigail Green - Abby for short - all the way from Junior High School until he left for Vietnam. Trouble was, he’d never done much more than talk to her now and then. He’d dated a few young ladies, but for some reason he was afraid to ask Abby out. We thought a refusal from Abby was something he figured he couldn’t handle. He was a bit different from us on that count. We figured a refusal was one thing, but never even trying was another. Bobby tried to make him see the light, but Little could be stubborn at times and just didn’t want to take a chance. He didn’t say so in so many words, but it was easy to tell.

The young lady in question grew tired of waiting, if in fact she ever was waiting. She’d gotten on with her life and married a local boy. A year later, they were the proud parents of a redheaded baby girl. Born about the same time that Melanie and Megan were. Abby’s husband had talked about joining the Air Force and with the shadow of the Vietnam war looming large in the background it seemed like it would be a smart move. He was pretty sure he could get a good education in electronics, spend four years in the service and get a good job when he came out. A good plan as it went. He went through basic, went through a couple of Air Force electronics schools and ended up as a crewman on a B-52.

Best part was he got stationed at Edwards Air Force base North of Lancaster. Abby and the baby - who they’d named Bonnie Sue - joined him out there. It was a modest beginning to what looked like an interesting life, but like always, real life often raises it’s sometimes less than beautiful head.

His squadron was sent to Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean as relief for another B-52 squadron rotating back to the states. All the planning and all the training came to naught when his first flight on a bombing mission to Vietnam had the B-52 lose an engine shortly after takeoff. The engine came unglued bad enough that it took the adjacent engine out and the resulting fire damaged the wing to the point where the big ship rolled over and went in not twenty miles out from the island. A couple of Mayday calls were all that were heard.

The crash was witnessed by pilots from other B-52's on the mission and the big plane went in at such a steep angle and hit so hard there was no chance of anybody surviving the crash. There was a search and rescue mission mounted, but nothing came of it.

The young widow and her baby moved back to the old home town and she went to work at her widowed fathers small furniture store. Old man Green was glad to see Abby and his granddaughter back, but was sorry at what caused the return. For him, it was a small blessing in disguise. He could return full time to his wood shop in the back of the store. Along with running a furniture store, old man Green was one of the towns best cabinetmakers. For Abby at least, a degree of security, but even being back at home with her dad, it was a lonesome time.

Gail was the first one to see Abby back in town. She made a point to casually mention it to Little the next time she saw him. Little, normally a most calm guy, flushed red and didn’t quite know what to say. Gail knew how Little felt about Abby and didn’t push it. Just getting the information out there was enough. She did make a point the next few times she saw him, to ask if he’d talked to Abby or even seen her around. The answer was always in the negative. She finally told him - after a month had passed - if he ever expected to get anywhere with Abby he’d darned well better get off his butt. Strong words from Miss Gail for sure.

Bobby heard it all and just smiled. He’d been down that road before and had more or less given up on Little. He figured Little would find who he would find when the time was right.
As happens many times, fate stepped in. This time though, it was a big step.

 

Continuation of Little and the Cops

A couple of kids from LA, stupid ones for sure, decided they would drive into our town, hit a small business, clean out the till and disappear back to LA. Not too bad a plan in some respects, but their failing was in picking old man Green’s furniture store. A small store which fit their big plans for a big score, but like many small stores of the time and especially so for a furniture store, not much cash was ever on hand.

Our brilliant duo parked in front of the downtown barber shop, got out of the car, pistols in plain view, tucked them away in their belts and strolled across the street into the furniture store.
the whole thing witnessed by the two barbers as well as half a dozen customers. The barbers didn’t have guns, but they had brains. One barber stayed inside and called the police department. The other walked calmly outside with his straight razor and cut the filler stems off both right side tires on the getaway car making for two very flat tires. Then he went back inside and waited for the show to start.

Abby and three year old Bonnie Sue were in the front window arranging a window display when the duo entered the store. She’d seen them cross the street, and aside from thinking that this was a strange twosome to be furniture shopping and maybe picking up some negative vibes to boot, she stepped out of the window display and shut the panel behind her. Bonnie Sue was sitting in a rocking chair, almost asleep and Abby hoped she would stay there. She was safe enough, there was no place for her to go and not much to get hurt on in there. A decided plus was, she couldn’t get out either. A good move as it turned out.

As soon as Abby stepped away from the closed panel - which pretty much disguised the entrance to the window - the twosome entered, drew their guns and pointed them at Abby and motioned toward the cash register. They never said a word. Old man Green saw everything that happened. He’d long ago set up a couple of mirrors so he could work in the back shop and keep an eye on the main part of the store. When Abby handed over what little money there was in the cash register the leader of the two took one look at the eighty five bucks and got a little disgusted. The second guy though, he was livid. He’d expected to make a serious chunk of change out of all this and half of eighty five bucks wasn’t going to do it for him.

He turned, walked to the front of the store and locked the door. When he turned around, his partner was on the carpeted floor, out cold. He’d never heard a sound. Old man Green had stepped around the corner with a crowbar and cold cocked the guy. Then stepped quietly back into the shop. Not to be deterred, the leader of the pack walked up to the shop door, went through, turned right and found himself looking into the barrels of a double barreled 16 gage shotgun. Held by Old man Green who had a ferocious scowl on his face. Figuring a hasty retreat was in order, our hero backed rapidly out of the shop door, walked backward towards the door, all the time staring at old man Green and the fearsome 16 gage.

Fumbling with the doorknob behind his back, he finally got it unlocked and he stepped outside only to find a small crowd standing to his left. The crowd, not interested in him at all were calmly watching three year old, redheaded Bonnie Sue calmly rocking back and forth in the rocking chair, still half asleep. They were just fascinated.

When the would-be robber turned around, there was Little with a 12 gage Remington pump stuck in his face. That was enough for him, he laid down his pistol, put his hands on top of his head and turned around. It was apparent he’d been here before. Little had him cuffed to a bicycle rack and patted down in no time.

Little entered the store about the same time Abby went back into the window display.
He never saw her. She went in, let the panel door go closed, saw that Bonnie Sue was ok, picked her up and sat down on the rocker with the little girl in her lap. Little found old man Green sitting astride the second would-be robber tying his wrists together with many windings of friction tape.
Little figured the tape ought to do it until the back up unit got there. His extra set of cuffs were in the squad car.

About then, the guy on the floor started coming around and not much later started whining that his hands were tied too tight. Too bad thought Little. Old man Green figured they weren’t as tight as they ought to be, but it would do for now. Besides, the guy was bleeding all over his carpet. Little and old man Green got the guy up and marched him outside. The backup unit had just pulled up with two cops on board. They’d come straight over from the station when the call came in. Little told them it was all over and to cuff the friction taped, still bleeding guy and stick him in the squad car. They cuffed him alright, but they were going to leave the friction tape as it was until Little told them to take it off. The other miscreant was stuffed into the back of the squad car and they were both hauled away.

The barber from across the street came over and told Little which car belonged to the robbers.
It would be easy to find because it had two flat tires. That said without blinking an eye.

The crowd in front of the window was still there, but they’d gone from watching the robbers back to watching the window. That caught Little’s eye and being a naturally curious guy, he walked over and looked in. There was Abby, the love of his life although he’d never said a word about it to anyone, sitting in a rocker holding a beautiful redheaded little girl and calmly rocking back and forth. Everybody knew how Little felt about Abby. He wore his heart on his sleeve and it was pretty obvious to any thinking person who knew him.

He didn’t know what to think. The last time he saw her was before she got married. He’d heard about her husbands death and knew she was back in town, but he’d made no effort to look her up. He was standing there looking at Abby and the beautiful little girl and thinking about what Gail had told him a few weeks back. At least he was until Abby looked up at him and smiled a soft sweet smile. That was enough for Little. He’d missed his chance with this girl once and decided he wasn’t going to miss again.

He walked back into the store, found old man Green cleaning up the bloodstained carpet and asked him how to get into the window. Old man Green didn’t bat an eye. He told Little where the panel was and how to pull it open.

Little went inside, walked up to Abby and said, “Hello.”

Abby smiled and said, “Hello Robert.”

She knew about Little’s nickname. Not the bit about the Sheriff nickname, but that the guys had always called him Little. To Abby, he was Robert and that was that. Little sat down in the rocking chair next to her and they both just rocked for a while. All the time, the crowd was still outside. For some reason, the little stage play going on inside the window was far more interesting than anything else that was going on at the moment.

Little asked if he could call her sometime. Abby smiled and with tears welling up in her eyes and hugging Bonnie Sue a little tighter she nodded her head yes. That was enough for Little and more than he’d hoped for. He got to his feet to see the crowd outside the window staring at them with considerable interest. He didn’t quite know what to do, so he tipped his hat and walked out of the display. The crowd took that to mean the little window show was over and responded with polite applause. All the while, Abby and Bonnie Sue were sitting in the rocking chair quietly rocking back and forth.

Little didn’t call, but he did take action. The next morning, a Friday, as soon as he got out of the police station and into his squad car he headed straight for Old man Green’s furniture store.
Only to find old man Green was there, but Abby was not. Old man Green told him Abby came in at nine o’clock in the morning and that he liked to come in at 7 o’clock, do a little work, drink a little coffee and open the store at eight.

Since it was only a quarter after eight, Little headed out on the Coast Highway, parked and waited for Abby’s car to pass by. Old man Green and Abby lived a ways out of town in a small beach community called La Conchita just east of the Ventura County line so he knew she would pass by where he was parked.

He’d seen her maroon 64 Mustang coupe parked at the back of the furniture store several times and figured, rightly so, that it belonged to Abby. His opinion seconded by old man Greens affirmative answer. It was a long 20 minute wait until he finally saw the southbound maroon Mustang in his rear view mirror. When it slid by, he slipped the squad car in gear nailed the throttle and hit the red lights at the same time. Abby saw the cop car pull in behind her and pulled over. She was surprised to see that it was Little getting out of the police car. She didn’t know what to think for a bit, she was driving under the speed limit and couldn’t think of anything she’d done wrong.

Little walked up to the passenger door and Abby reached across to open it. Bonnie Sue was in the right front seat, seat belt buckled and smiling. She was looking at Little and not saying a word. Little opened the door, but didn’t get a chance to say anything because a Sheriff’s car pulled in behind him and stopped. Flashing red lights and all. Great, thought Little, no backup needed and here it is. He walked back to the Sheriff’s car to tell him that everything was ok. He didn’t get a word out there because a northbound CHP cruiser slowed down, threw on the red lights and swung a u-turn. This was getting a bit out of hand thought Little. Abby must think I’m totally crazy.

He told the two officers he was just talking to the young lady and no assistance was required. Another Sheriff’s car went by, started to slow down and do the u-turn thing when the first Sheriff got on the radio and announced to the world that Little was just talking to his girl friend.

Great thought Little. The city PD monitored the Sheriff’s radio frequency as well as the CHP frequency so now the whole world knows. The second Sheriff got back up to speed and kept going north. The first Sheriff and the CHP guy both got in their cars and left. Grinning all the way.

When Little returned to Abby’s Mustang, she was more than confused and wanted to know what the heck was going on. What was going on was that Little was trying to ask if she could join him at a small barbecue at Bobby and Gail’s house this evening. Abby said she would like that, but she’d have to bring Bonnie Sue along. She watched Little carefully to see if it was a problem. It wasn’t, Little loved his niece, Megan Lee and loved our Melanie Ann as well. He got along well with both little girls and was a favorite uncle with both of them.

Little told Abby that it wouldn’t be a problem and in fact he would enjoy taking her along and getting to know her. Plus, Bonnie Sue would get to meet two little girls who were the same age as her. That was what Abby wanted to hear, she’d always loved Little, but had simply given up because of his shyness. Years ago, it had been a distant romance and most of it in her mind. She was a shy girl, but nowhere near as shy as Little was. His acceptance of Bonnie Sue was, for her, her fondest wish granted.

Returning to the station house that afternoon, Little was in high spirits. Until he walked in and saw everyone staring at him. Then he remembered the Sheriff’s comment on the radio.

Cops are cool guys most of the time, all they did was nod their heads letting Little know they knew. The female dispatchers and the two secretaries were all smiles though. They thought it was nice that Little had a girl friend and they weren’t above a little teasing The teasing didn’t bother Little, but he later admitted, he’d never had so many women smile at him so much, so often. Like he said, it was nice, but it sure seemed like they knew something he didn’t. Little hit that nail dead flat on the head.

The barbecue turned out more than interesting. Not because anything crazy or weird happened, but just because it turned out so well. Rebecca and I, along with Sarah and Melanie showed up at Bobby and Gail’s house about six. Little, Abby and Bonnie Sue got there about a half hour later. Bobby and I were dressed in the typical California hot rod uniform of t-shirts and levis along with a pair of loafers. Pretty much our standard outfit for barbecues and just about anything else. Little showed up in dress slacks and a dress white shirt. At least he had the good sense not to wear a tie. Men have been tossed out of barbecues for lesser offenses. Wearing a tie to a barbecue was a social gaffe of the highest order as far as we were concerned. Not that we would have thrown anybody out, but we sure would have razzed him.

The girls, our girls that is, our young ladies, Rebecca, Gail and Abby were all three dressed in nice summer dresses and looked especially nice. I don’t know how that works. For a long time there, I figured the girls conferred on the phone as to who was wearing what, but neither Bobby or I had ever seen Gail or Rebecca do that. It seemed they instinctively knew the right thing to wear. Maybe they did talk on the phone about it, but I don’t recall ever hearing any such conversations. One of those girl things we never did figure out. Just some kind of feminine ESP. It was beyond us for sure.

The evening was pleasant. Bobby barbecued a great Jamaican Chicken as he called it, but to me it was more like something you’d find in a Louisiana bayou barbecue joint. Served with a cold beer as usual for the guys, it was spicy enough that the girls skipped their usual wine with dinner and drank the ice cold beer.

We learned a bit about Abby as well. Nobody knew too much about her except that we knew who she was and how Little felt about her. Bonnie Sue was a standout in our eyes. She fit right in with Melanie and Megan and they all played together nicely. It was quite a combination, two little blondes and a little redhead. A pleasant sight for sure as they were all beautiful little girls.

I never did understand why Melanie and Megan played so well together. They never fought.
Over anything. Now here was a third little girl of like mind, and no fighting here either.
It sure made life easy for their moms. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were witnessing the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the three little girls. One that would reach a long ways into the future.



1969

Little and Abby got married in the same little church by the beach Rebecca and I were married in. It started out to be one of those small, family only, a few good friends kind of weddings, but by the time the dust settled darned near the whole city police department was there as well as several Sheriffs and a couple of Highway Patrolmen to boot. To say the little church was a bit crowded was an understatement for sure.

Chief Mitchell and Mrs. Mitchell sat up front with the families. Sitting with them was the young lady that Little had dragged out from under the pier several years back. Sitting next to her was her sister. We didn’t realize it at the time, but these two girls were the extent of the Chief’s family. It was a story we didn’t know much about, but it boiled down to the little fact that Chief and Mrs. Mitchell were raising the girls.

When Little and Abby walked out of the church, headed for the little Maroon Mustang, I was behind the wheel and couldn’t resist telling Little that with all the cops and all the squad cars and cruisers sitting there, I should have brought the coupe and driven them off in the fine style that he’d driven Rebecca and I off when we got married. He didn’t say anything, just smiled. I think he was thinking that maybe it would have been a good idea. Little did like to pull a good joke now and then. I don’t know why this particular one appealed to him, but it did.

 

The Big Buick

Taking care of Bonnie Sue for the week Little and Abby would be gone wasn’t going to be a problem for anyone. Rebecca and I, as well as Bobby and Gail along with both grandmothers had volunteered to watch her. First one on the baby sitting schedule was Bobby’s grandmother. She was taking the girls, all three of them, shopping Monday morning and wished for them to be ready on time and properly dressed as young ladies should be. Like a few other times, we didn’t listen as well as we should have. We sent the girls out dressed in jeans, t-shirts and tennies. The t-shirts were very nice and very feminine and we thought the girls looked cute in them.

Bobby’s grandmother showed up right on time in her 10 year old Volkswagen. Kind of amazing that she was still driving the darned thing. I had to admitthough, it was well taken care of, ran great, looked good and had a fresh coat of wax on it. Courtesy of Bobby and Little. They loved their grandmother and tried to help her all they could. Even if the truth was, grandma did quite well on her own and didn’t need help from anybody. She stuck the girls - all three of them now four years old - in the car, had them buckle up, checked each one and headed off for town. At least we thought she was going to town.

Grandma had plans and the girls, figuring they were just going shopping with “Nana” as they called her didn’t have a clue. Nobody told the girls to call Bobby’s grandmother Nana and I don’t know how it started, it just did. Grandma liked it though and it wasn’t long until most of us were calling her Nana.

Some of the best shopping around was in Arroyo Verde. A bigger town than ours and a bit tourist oriented, but still, they had great stores. Most the big chains and quite a few independents that were more than interesting.

Nana told us later that she’d been thinking the Volkswagen wasn’t going to be able to handle hauling all four of them and the stuff she planned to buy. Never being one to worry about what others thought and being a lady of action so to speak, she drove the little Volkswagen up to the Arroyo Verde Buick dealer, went inside, found the car she wanted, the one right in the middle of the showroom floor and wrote a check for it right there. The Buick sales staff was totally stunned to say the least. In walks this silvery haired, nicely dressed lady with three little girls, two blonde and one redhead and pays for it on the spot.

The car, a brand new 1970 Buick Electra 225 Custom Convertible that had been on the showroom floor for about two hours. It was a red one to boot. Bright red in fact. With the white top, it was a great looking car. Not only great looking, it was big. Really big. Nana figured it would be just right for what she had in mind.

Part of the deal was, the dealer would deliver the Volkswagen back to her house. The Buick dealer figured, and rightly so, he could spare a couple of guys for a couple of hours for a customer like that.

For Nana and the girls it was off to the races. It didn’t take long to buy the Buick and get the paperwork squared away. The girls fell in love with the bright red Buick right away.

That may have influenced Nana’s thinking, but I don’t think so. She was a lady who was smart, did things her own way, was polite about it and frankly, she didn’t give a damn what anybody else thought. Course, it didn’t hurt to have her three little angels approve.

Rebecca and I were out at Bobby &amp; Gail’s house for a late afternoon barbecue and that was where Nana would bring the girls back. We were absolutely stunned when Bobby’s grandmother drove up the driveway in the Buick convertible. By now, they’d put the top down and were having a fine time. All three of the girls were dressed to the nine’s. They had on frilly dresses, Mary Jane’s, white gloves and hats. As well as big smiles. It was a fun day for all of them and a long one too. It was obvious they were all a little bit tired, but not too tired to show us their outfits, as well as show us the rest of the stuff Nana had bought them. It took Bobby and I three trips to unload the huge trunk in the Buick.

Aside from buying the big Buick convertible, Nana had darned near bought the store out. There was all kinds of stuff in the bags. All the way from tennis shoes, jeans and sweaters, to nice school dresses with matching shoes, jackets, you name it, if a little girl needed it, it was in there.
Only trouble was, the girls were still a year away from starting school. That didn’t bother Nana, she figured the girls could get used to dressing like ladies and there was no time like the present to get started. Next year they would go shopping for school clothes for real. If that was a practice trip, it was going to be real interesting to see how next year turned out.

When Little and Abby came back from their honeymoon, they moved into the small La Conchita beach house owned by old man Green and he in turn moved into a small apartment over the furniture store. All of which suited him just fine. He was able to start working even earlier in the wood shop.

Little took Bonnie Sue under his wing, decided he was her dad and never looked back.

Nana gave her Volkswagen to Little. She thought he needed a good work car and then he wouldn’t have to drive the old green 46 Chevy pickup. Truth was, the pickup still ran great and Little loved it. He couldn’t see himself driving anything else.


1970

Rebecca and I had been living in the little house at the back of Earls property for almost eight years. It was small, but comfortable and it was a nice place to live. With the orchard out back and all the trees on the property, it was like living in a wooded park. We had all the privacy we needed and if we wanted company, the big house was a short walk away. We’d been good about saving our money and in fact had a pretty good chunk of it put away to buy our own house.

It looked too, like our family would be growing. Rebecca was pregnant and the due date was sometime in the middle of summer. Same with Bobby and Gail, she’d gotten pregnant a couple of months earlier. None of us had planned anything, we were just going along and enjoying life as it came. We were all surprised, pleasantly so, but for us, Rebecca and I that is, it looked like it would change our life quite a bit. Starting with the need for a bigger house.

I didn’t know what to make of all these coincidences in our lives, getting married about the same time, having baby girls just four days apart and now it looked like another major event in our lives was going to happen at about the same time. Just coincidence I guess. I didn’t know what else to call it. Sometimes though, it seemed that fate had a finely tuned sense of humor.

We told Earl about it and he was more than pleased. He was a darned good father-in-law. It seemed that darned near everything we did pleased him. The most important part I believe was that Rebecca and Melanie were well cared for and much loved. Easy for me. It was all I ever wanted. Earl had a surprise of his own. He’d been good about saving money too. The orchard attached to the house usually made the payment on the property and it had been paid off for several years. Along with the company stock he’d been buying he figured at age 55 - which he would reach in a couple of months - was a good time to retire. A surprise to us, but when you thought about it, not a really big one. Earl liked hunting and fishing, but he didn’t really do too much of that except for one big trip to Utah every year. He played golf too, but he wasn’t out on the links every weekend beating up on the golf ball. He was ready for a change in his life as well. He’d been seeing a lady named Lucy who worked in the Edison district office. Seeing her in fact for a little over a year. She was divorced and had been for four years or so. They were the same age and had many interests in common as well as having strong feelings for one another. A surprise to us, but I think not to Pearl and for that fact, probably not to Sarah either. Living in the same house, they were a lot closer to Earl than we were and they saw him every day. Earl didn’t try to hide anything, he just hadn’t been ready to talk about it at the time. What he did want to talk about though, was he would like to sell the big house to us. He wasn’t going to ask for what it was more than likely worth, but he wasn’t going to give it away either. With what we’d saved, and the price Earl gave us, it was apparent that Rebecca and I could swing the payments on the big house. Taxes and all. One really fortunate thing was that this was before the big California real estate boom. Fifteen years later, we’d have been doing good to swing a place in town, let alone a great house out in the country. Part of the deal was that Rebecca’s grandmother would be able to stay. Ok by us, we loved Pearl. Sarah was 20 now, just finishing up at the local Junior College and was planning on attending college out of state. Just where, she hadn’t figured yet, she had several choices and was just mulling them over. Only problem for Sarah was her steady boy friend. She didn’t want to go off and leave him behind.

Rebecca’s grandmother decided she would live in the little house as she called it. When the time came for us to move in, we’d help her move out. It didn’t take long for Earl to get things squared away and retire. His birthday rolled around and he walked out the door.

The same evening, he took the whole family out to dinner including Lucy and Sarah’s boy friend. That was where he laid the surprising news on us that Lucy was retiring in a couple of weeks and they were moving to Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. A place known for it’s good fishing, as well as being close to some of the country’s best national forests. A small point not lost on either of them.

Earl and Lucy packed up and moved out at the end of summer. They didn’t take much of anything with them. Earl had a new Dodge 3/4 ton 4x4 with cabover camper stuffed to the gills with clothes - mostly Lucy’s - Earl’s fishing poles, a couple of rifles, a shotgun and some tools.
He left the house pretty much as it always had been. All the furniture in place, a lot of the garage tools including the big ones were still there. It looked like he’d only left for an hour or two instead of for the rest of his life. Quite an adventure we felt, pack up a few things, toss your lady love in the truck and head for the hills. Although the hills in this case were in Idaho.

They were looking forward to it. They had a simple plan. Either find the house they like or buy some property and have a house built on it. Lucy was looking forward to furnishing the house and doing the decorating bit. She’d done pretty much the same as Earl, sold her house, the furniture, given away a lot of stuff and was traveling light.

I’d spent a lot of time in the big house, but it felt weird to be living there. It was home to Rebecca, but it still took her a while to get used to it. Best part was having the big three car garage all to myself. With the attached carport and the carport at the small house, we were pretty well squared away as far as taking care of the rolling stock went. The yellow convertible was still there. Earl didn’t want to take it to Idaho and in fact he hadn’t driven it much at all since Rebecca and I got married. The odometer only showed 9800 miles on it. Between what little Rebecca used it and Earl only putting on a few miles each week it had only been driven 2600 miles since I first met Rebecca. Earl signed it over to Rebecca and told her to do whatever she wanted with it. Since it was in such good shape and insurance and registration weren’t too bad, the decision to keep it and just drive it as a fair weather fun car was easy.


1971

Earl and Lucy had been gone for a little over a year. They’d found 20 acres up against the mountains and had a house built. They were happy and had met several other couples and were fitting in with their new community just fine.

With us having three nice cars at home, and absolutely not needing another one, I dragged another one home anyway. A very nice 57 Ranchero. Only flaw was the Y-Block engine was destroyed. It probably could have been rebuilt, but it had been run dry of oil and overheated to the point where the crank had seized. All accomplished by a co-workers daughter. She’d been allowed to use the little truck as long as she helped to keep it up. To her dad’s credit, he taught her how to check the oil and water as well as tire pressures. For her part, the young lady decided her life was too busy to bother with such mundane stuff and burned it up coming back from the San Fernando Valley. The only good part was, the truck finally quit just as it entered town, so dad didn’t have to have it towed very far. Since he wasn’t a mechanic and didn’t want to put the money out to rebuild the engine, he gave it to me for a very low price. I figured at the least, I could get a junkyard engine, rebuild it and still come out way ahead.

Things went pretty much as planned. I found a good running 390 engine and automatic with only 35,000 miles on it that was in a wrecked 68 Mustang GT at the junkyard. I tore the engine down, but it probably would have been ok as it was. I ended up doing a valve job and installing new rings and bearings. The swap was easy, 352 motor mounts from the 59 Ford were used, the trans mount had a simple adapter plate made and I adapted the headers that came with it to the Ranchero. On a Saturday morning, after everything was bolted down, I spun the starter over and the engine lit right off. Smoking just a touch until the rings seated. I drove it to town and back with no problems. It turned out to be a nice driving, nice riding, darned nice little pickup. All I did to it after that was to stick on a fresh set of tires and later a set of slot mags went on. An occasional wax job on the still in good shape white paint along with the usual oil changes took care of the maintenance end of it. I started driving it to work pretty steady.

Every once in a while though, I’d see the original owner eying the Ranchero and I imagine he was sorry he sold it. He never complained though. I soon learned how he felt. Rebecca never said a word about the two of us now owning four cars. I’d thought for a while about setting the coupe up strictly for drag racing, but one of those can’t hardly refuse it offers came along and I sold the coupe to a guy from the San Fernando Valley. Now it was my turn to wish I hadn’t sold it. I’d owned it for close to 14 years and put a lot of work and care into it. It was a part of who I was, but I didn’t realize it until it was gone.

Rebecca told me to drive the yellow convertible if I wanted to. A generous offer, and I did drive it once in a while, but only when she was along. I considered it her car and I also wanted to keep it in excellent shape. I liked driving the 57 Ranchero, but it lacked the strong running, hard pulling hot rod quality the 50 Ford coupe had. Rebecca’s next suggestion was, since I’d always liked Bobby’s roadster, why didn’t I get one for myself. That struck me as an excellent idea. The only flaw was, 32 roadsters were few and far between. As Bobby and I found out when he set out to build the drag racing roadster back in 1964 and that was seven years ago. It looked like it would be tough to find one.

To top it off, Bud sold his 47 Chevy coupe about the same time and like me, he wasn’t too sure why he did it. Both he and Vicky had late model cars and the 47 was a fun car for them as my 50 was for me.

Once again, the search started. A Deuce roadster was what I wanted, but I was open to other years too. A Model A would have been ok, but I figured if I couldn’t find a 32, a 33 or 34 would fit the bill just fine. The A’s, as much as I liked Bobby’s drag racing 31 were neat little cars, but I was determined to search for exactly what I wanted. At least for a while. It turned out to be a short search as well as a long one.

 

The White Sedan

The first week we were looking for a Deuce roadster, we found one. Sort of. Bud found it on a Saturday morning, pretty much the same way a lot of hot rod stuff gets found. You just stumble onto it, pure and simple. Interesting part was, it was right down the street from his house. Funny part was, he didn’t know he’d found one at first.
He’d been on the lookout for a Deuce roadster for me as well as looking for a car to replace his 47 chevy coupe. He thought he’d found what he’d been looking for, at least as far as a project car for him. Like happens sometimes, he didn’t know he was looking for that particular car until he saw it. That particular car being a 37 Chevy four door sedan.

The owner was in the middle of taking it out of garage storage and rolling it into the back yard. He’d had it in storage since the late 50's and was getting tired of it taking up space. Turns out the 37 was an inheritance from his moms estate. He’d planned to fix it up as the old saying goes, but like many well intentioned guys, he’d never gotten around to it. At least he hadn’t got around to the part where the car gets disassembled and parts lost over the years.

It was a complete car, totally intact without a dent in it and darned near perfect chrome. Painted factory dark green, it looked like you could fire it up and drive it away. The best part was the very low mileage. The guys mom didn’t drive it much and it was pretty much a garage queen when she had it. The guy seemed pretty straightforward to Bud and told him the only thing wrong with the car was a knocking rod and that’s why it was parked. To the owner, a knocking rod was a major disaster and it would have cost a lot to have it fixed. For Bud, an easy fix, but even better would be swapping a later engine into it. It didn’t take em long to settle on a fair price. It looked like the owner was glad to get it out of his hair and glad to see it go somewhere it would be cared for. He realized parking it in the back yard was the first step toward major deterioration. After the dealing was done, the payoff and paper work completed, Bud said he’d be back with some help and he’d take the car home.

Bud came back with Bobby and his car trailer in tow behind the 64 Chevy pickup a couple of hours later. It didn’t take them too long to get the 37 up on the trailer with the hand crank boat trailer winch mounted on the trailer. That thing was a big improvement over using the two ton chain hoist. The real interesting part to all this was during the loading of the 37. The ex-owner of the 37 opened the door to his storage shed to get out the lawnmower. Bobby spotted the unmistakable outline of a roadster body sitting in the back of the shed.

Bobby really had a practiced eye for that kinda stuff. Bud said he’d looked in there too, but all he saw was a blanket covered shape with cardboard boxes and garden tools leaning on it. When they asked about the body, the guy casually told them that it belonged to his brother and he wished his brother would come and get it out of there. It had been stored there since about 62 and he could use the room. Bobby told him if it was the right car, he’d be interested in buying it. Along with cleaning out and organizing the storage shed as part of the deal That seemed more than reasonable to the guy. Get rid of the roadster and get his shed cleaned out.

It didn’t take long to find that it was a Deuce body in excellent shape. Complete with doors, dash and trunk lid as well as the windshield and stanchions lying in the trunk. That was it, but it looked like a good start. The brother was called, a price quoted, Bobby balked a touch, but only for the bargaining bit. Brother came down a touch to $350. and Bobby said ok. It was a bargain no matter how you figured it. All this went on while I was on Saturday day shift.

They got the 37 hauled up the street to Bud’s house and took it off the trailer. Once that was done, there was a bit of scrambling to round up the $350. cash. By the time they were done, they’d cleaned out their rathole money, went home to Bobby’s house and cleaned out Gail’s stash of quarters she was saving, dropped by the hospital and got another $40. from her. I don’t know why they didn’t call me, I had some rathole money of my own I could have tossed in the pot.
They thought it would be a cool surprise for me. Course once the surprise was over, I had to come up with the money to pay everybody back. Including going to the bank and getting $120. in quarters to replace Gail’s quarter stash. She didn’t want bills or a check. Either one, being entirely too easy to spend. The quarters she’d found, got pretty much left alone until it was time to cash them in for what she wanted.

I got home in time to find Bobby and Bud, dust covered and a bit tired sitting there in front of my garage with a Deuce roadster body sitting on the car trailer. It was a good surprise indeed.
Easy for me as well. I wrote Bobby and Bud a check for their part and Monday went to the bank for the quarters. I figured I owed them extra for cleaning out the guys storage shed. They were cool, said that it was no problem. They’d been adequately repaid, in a manner of speaking when they took the shed junk to the county dump.

When they rolled in with the Deuce body on the trailer and all the trash in the pickup, the guy who ran the dump really had some big eyes. He probably figured that here were a couple of idiots that were going to toss a valuable Deuce body in the trash pile. Bud said he hovered around for a while, but when it got to the point where they should have untied the body, they just got in the truck and drove away. Leaving a disappointed dump operator in their wake. A small form of revenge to say the least. The dump guy always kept a sharp eye out for anybody who looked like they might pick up something and wasn’t above hollering at them if it looked like they were even thinking about it. The shoe was on the other foot this time around.

With the Deuce roadster body on hand, it looked like I was off to a good start. Once I saw Bud’s car, I wished I was off to as good a start as he was. Course, like they say, life is what happens while you’re making plans.

Late June, Bobby took Gail to the hospital where she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl they named Caroline Marie . All in all, a pretty calm delivery this time around. Bobby was home when it started, gathered up Megan and Gail, tossed them into the pickup since the 57 was in the garage and headed for the hospital. Everything went just as it should. A nice day, sunshiny, no rain, no drowned out roadster and no cold and soaking wet Gail.

Our turn came in the middle of August. I was at work on a dayshift Wednesday when Pearl called. Rebecca had decided it was time to go, though I think most of the deciding was done for her. Sarah, home from college stuck her in the Olds and took her to the hospital. One good thing for me was, I was on the extra shift, which meant that somebody else was working the board and I could pretty much walk out the door whenever it was necessary as long as I had a good reason.
The boss was cool, he took one look at me when I walked into his office to tell him I was leaving and before I said a word, he just said go. Must have been pretty obvious.

We were fortunate this time around, Rebecca gave birth about as easily as she did with Melanie. Although easy, and especially from the male viewpoint is probably the wrong term to use. I thought it would be a boy this time around, but I’d long ago decided, even before Melanie was born, that boy or girl, it made no difference. We were blessed with a beautiful baby girl who we named Judith Lynn.

Kind of funny in retrospect. All of the guys in our wannabee hot rod gang figured long ago, before marriage was even on the horizon, let alone anything we desired that guys who like hot rods ought to have sons. Little did we know.

After Judith Lynn was born, we were beginning to wonder where all the girls were coming from. Larry and Susan had two daughters, Bobby and I each had two daughters. The only boy in our group was Roberto and Mattie’s son. Who now had a little sister. We were outnumbered for sure, but that’s ok. We’d been there before.

Bud and Vicky were the only couple in our little group who didn’t have children. They were just waiting. For what I don’t know, they pretty much had it all together far as I could see. One thing I do know, they were trying the patience of Mama Marrone for sure. She loved her grandchildren and was ready for more.



1972

The year passed by in no time it seemed. Both Caroline and Judi were toddlers, just a little over a year old and an absolute delight. Megan and Melanie both decided their little sisters were presents just for them. They were a big help with caring for the babies and they played well together. Same with Bonnie Sue, when she visited, the five of them got along great.

I don’t know what we did right, if in fact we did anything right. It just worked out that way.
Our families were pleased with the new babies, just as they’d been pleased with the three older girls. Bobby’s grandmother was the most pleased of all. She loved it when she came by Bobby’s house and found all of us there. The girls all loved their Nana, and at times you would have thought you were looking back in time to a much loved queen and her court. Maybe we were.

There were times - with the exception of Larry and Susan who still lived up north - when the whole gang was together, kids and all and Nana would be right there in the middle of it. I don’t know where she got her energy, she was a one woman dynamo to say the least.

After we’d found the Deuce roadster body, we’d been looking pretty hard for a frame, but were having no luck. I did drag a few parts home though. The very best being a 69 Olds Toronado 455 engine. Along with a T-400 short tailshaft transmission out of a Buick. I was tempted to follow Bobby’s lead and get a Chrysler 8 3/4" rear end, but we’d found the 57 Ford 9" rear end was just about the perfect width for a roadster. All it took was a little thought in the wheel backspacing dept. A pair of wheels with a 4" backspace fit the body well and it looked great. Course all we had was the body propped up on the rolling axle and a couple of wooden crates, but it was easy to see how it was going to work out.

Only hangup with starting assembly was, we had no frame. We’d been talking to just about everybody we knew and talking to a few we didn’t know in our search for a frame. Seemed at one time, they were fairly easy to find, but we were having absolutely no luck.

No luck until Rebecca and I stopped in at a little seafood place called Castagnola’s on Cabrillo Blvd. near State Street in Arroyo Verde on a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon. We were driving the yellow convertible, a favorite with the girls who loved to go places in it. Arroyo Verde was one of Rebecca’s favorite places to go and just cruising up the coast in the bright yellow convertible with it’s smooth running Y-Block was one of life’s little pleasures. We still didn’t drive it much, just saved it for special occasions for the most part, although we did make a point to run it into town at least once a week just to keep the battery up. For it’s part, it was a good little car that never let us down.

We parked around the corner from the restaurant and I locked the car. Sometimes I wondered why I bothered. Anybody with a pocketknife has the key to a convertible. The driver of a nearby tow truck stepped out, walked over and started looking over the car. Not surprising, a lot of people were attracted to the bright yellow convertible. We talked for a short while and on a whim or what, I don’t know, but I asked him if he knew where any Deuce frames were that were perhaps for sale. Surprisingly he did. At least he thought he did. A pair of twin brothers in Pole Creek, about 10 miles past Via Lindero, had been involved with 32 Fords for many years and had quite a stash of parts. They had a name, but nobody seemed to know it. They were just called the Deuce Brothers.

That was an interesting stroke of luck. We’re 30 miles out from home one way and run into a guy who tells us where a frame could possibly be found 30 miles the other way from home. We had a nice lunch, walked the girls along the beach for a while and then headed for home.

I figured Sunday was as good a day as any to try to find the Deuce Brothers. It didn’t sound like it would be too difficult. Pole Creek was a small town and we figured their place couldn’t be that hard to find.

Bud and Bobby had planned to spend Sunday finishing up the Caddy engine swap on Bud’s 37 Chevy sedan. I was going to help too, but when I told them there was a good chance of finding a Deuce frame, they figured they were at a good stopping point. They had the 500 cubic inch 70 Cadillac Eldorado engine set in place on it’s mounts. With a short tailshaft T-400 behind it and that connecting to a 57 Ford 9" rear axle it was going to be something else. When he first got the car, Bud thought a 250 cubic inch six with powerglide would be a nice setup, but when the Caddy became available and the price was right for a darned near brand new engine, Bud decided to go for it. Vicky thought the Caddy engine was nice. After all a Caddy was a nice, smooth running car and she was looking forward to the 37 being the same. Little did she know....

The three of us piled into my Ranchero and took off for Pole Creek. Finding the house was easy. Once we hit the northeast section of town, the second road we drove by had a house on the corner with a Deuce three window and two door sedan in the driveway. When we parked around the corner we spotted two Deuce frames leaning against the fence. Both of them looked to be in good shape. Topper was when we looked through the openings in the wooden fence and saw a Deuce five window and a full fendered roadster sitting there. Turned out that only the three window and sedan was owned by the one brother. The other brother’s Deuce sedan was home. The five window and the roadster belonged to a couple of other guys and they were there for some work.

We knocked on the door and a big blond guy showed up in just a few seconds. He was nice enough, but it was apparent he’d had more than a few looky-loo’s wandering around once they saw the Deuce collection. Once we assured him we were serious and interested in a frame only, his cautious look went away and he showed us around. He’d been in the hobby for quite a while, but the way he talked he had an enthusiasm for it that made you think of a guy who had discovered hot rods yesterday. In the end, we got out of there with a frame and a complete dropped axle front end setup with spindles and split wishbones. The price was more than fair.

I gotta admit though, for Bobby and I, as well as Bud, all of us being Deuce lovers of the first order, it was kind of like visiting Deuce heaven. Along with the cars we’d seen outside, there was a completely finished full fendered maroon Deuce roadster powered with a small Chevy sitting inside the garage. Along with a few Deuce fenders and grilles hanging on the wall. Kinda made our day.

We figured if we worked hard on getting Bud’s car done and once we started on mine, things would go pretty fast. We were good about helping each other. A lot of things got done in the afternoons and evenings after work, but things really got done when the three of us could get together on a Saturday or Sunday. A lot of stuff goes fast when there’s three guys doing it.
Not to mention the extra hands. The girls were good about helping, whenever you needed a spare hand for a wrench or something along those lines, but they had their own stuff going and weren’t always available.

The little girls, Melanie, Megan and Bonnie Sue were seven years old and fast becoming accomplished mechanics. They’d learned what tools were what and were a big help when you were under the car. Seems like no matter how many tools you take with you when you crawl under the car, you always need one more. At least.

All three of them loved to ride in Bobby’s roadster and he’d made a point to install a 3rd seat belt in it so two of them could go along. It had a rumble, but we didn’t like the kids riding back there. The 3rd seat belt was simple to install and simple to use. It was tucked back under the seat most times and it didn’t get in the way when not in use. Melanie was a big help to me as she figured our roadster would be just like Bobby’s and there would be room for everyone to ride in the roadsters. Everyone being the three little girls of course.

With the three of us guys working on Bud’s 37 about once a week and me working on my roadster in the evenings, we started showing some progress on both cars. Especially Bud’s. The Caddy engine was left totally stock because Bud figured it would have more than enough power as it was. With the stock exhaust manifolds and the 2 ½" Hemi mufflers we figured the 37 would be very quiet. We weren’t proved wrong either.

When fire-up day came, we ran some temporary engine wiring, set the front fenders in place along with the newly re-cored radiator and started it up. Darned engine probably hadn’t been run for over a year. It lit right off and settled down to a nice smooth idle once a little heat was in the heads. It was quiet too. About all you could hear was the typical Hemi muffler sound and even that wasn’t too noticeable.

Seems the Hemi muffs sounded their best when attached to an engine with a bit of a cam in it.
With the smooth running Caddy it was very quiet. About all you could hear out of it was the stock Caddy fan pulling air through the radiator.

We let it idle for a while. Finding out if the car overheated in traffic was a concern. We’d done well in the cool running bit with our cars, but were a little worried that the slim six cylinder radiator wasn’t up to cooling the big Caddy. After a half hour of idling on a 90 degree day with no overheating, we figured the 37 passed the test ok. Probably helped that the engine wasn’t driving a lot of accessories like it would have been in the stock Caddy.

We weren’t wild about Rochester carburetors for the most part. At least Bobby and I weren’t.
We liked the simplicity and easy tuning of the Carter AFBs. Bud had no preconceived notions though. He figured if it worked good on the Caddy then it ought to work good here. It looked like he had a good point so the Rochester was left alone. The way things turned out, the whole package was a totally trouble free deal. The car started every time, never overheated, got fair mileage and it had good performance.

Brakes were another story though, the Ford brakes on the back were just fine, but the early Chevy brakes and the six lug wheels left a lot to be desired. Cured to an extent by swapping the originals for a later Chevy front drum brake with five lug wheels. Which made for an interesting spare tire situation with the Chevy and Ford patterned wheels front and rear. Bud didn’t really want to carry two of them. A small problem easily cured by a little thinking from Bobby. He found a 6 x 15" Ford pattern slot mag wheel and got it at a good price since mags usually sold in pairs and itwas the only wheel in that size in the junkyard. What made it work was the small fact that the back was solid and not full of cast in voids like some manufacturers did to save aluminum.
Bobby was getting to be a pretty fair machinist in his own right and having access to the family machine shop, turned out a drill jig with both the Chevy and Ford wheel patterns on it. Once centered and bolted down, it was a snap to drill the mag wheel with the Chevy bolt pattern so that it would fit either end of the car. Only thing you had to remember was to carry five of each style mag lugnuts as the Ford had ½” lugs and the Chevy had 7/16" ones. Easy enough to do. The funny part about it all, Bud never had a flat tire on the 37 as far as I know. Just something about being prepared.

Bobby was a good painter, but Bud figured he’d done more than his share already. He lined up a deal at a local body shop. We’d sand the 37 and get it ready for paint, bring it in and the painter would shoot it on a Saturday and we could take it home on Monday morning. Turned out to be a nice paint job. A pure and blazing white. It just about blinded you to look at it in the direct sunlight.

The little 37 ran blackwall tires on black wheels and small 56 Chevy hubcaps with beauty rings.
The front sat down a bit, not much, it wasn’t lowered, it just had a nice stance. Bud drove it around town for about a week, took some vacation days, tossed Vicky in the car and headed for Tijuana. Tijuana was a common destination for California hot rods and customs. You could get one heck of an upholstery job there. Well done with American products, good looking and most reasonable in price. The only downside to the whole thing was when Bud and Vicky got the car into the upholstery shop a little after 8 o’clock in the morning and it was there till darned near midnight. Bud didn’t know it, but that was a common deal, the first car in got the seats pulled, some sewing got started and when additional cars came in, your car got shoved to the back of the shop and you had to wait for them to get finished. It was worth the long day though, Bud and Vicky wandered the town, did a bit of shopping, ate in some good restaurants and came home with a killer white tuck and roll interior with medium grey carpeting. Even the trunk was done.

The little 37 turned out very nice. Bud liked it and so did Vicky. At least until the first time she drove it. Vicky was used to smashing the throttle on her big old 68 Buick and taking a while to wind up to speed. When she tromped the throttle on the 500 inch Caddy in the lightweight 37, the tires started frying and the car started drifting sideways. She did ok though, didn’t panic, just got off the gas and let it straighten out. After that, there was no stopping her. She’d been around Roberto’s killer 50 Chevy coupe long enough to have a good idea of how to drive a fast car.

Funniest part about all of this was when Bud almost got a ticket for a street race. Bud went to a lot of street races when we were younger, but he never raced. In fact he was a bit of an old lady when it came to driving. He’d tromp it when things were just right, but he hardly ever ran it over the speed limit.

Once though, it just got to be too much for him. One of those cigar smoking pain in the backside guys driving a new Dodge, a white one, tried to cut him off on a freeway on ramp. The on ramp started out as two lanes and blended into one before dumping you out on the freeway. He’d been riding Bud’s bumper for a while and when he saw his chance at the green light he stomped on the big Dodge and pulled out to the right lane to pass on the on ramp. Bud saw what happened and tromped the throttle on the 37. The 37, with the Cadillac’s fearsome torque simply lit up the rear tires. Bud feathered the throttle, allowed it to shift into second and hit the throttle again. Looking in the rear view mirror, he could see that he was pulling away from the big Dodge pretty fast. Next time Bud looked into his rear view mirror, he saw another big Dodge. This time it was black and it had a red light. Bud was nailed good. Like he said, if he’d have just stayed calm, the cigar smoking jerk would have gotten the ticket instead.

The CHP guy was nice about it though. He wrote him up for speeding instead of drag racing.
He told Bud that when he saw the white Dodge cutting through traffic a ways back he started keeping an eye on him. That all ended when the 37 fairly shredded the tires, laid down some big time tire smoke and walked away from the Dodge. Bud never did exceed the 65 mph speed limit, but he figured a 75 in a 65 mph speed zone ticket was better than one for street racing. I don’t think Bud or Vicky ever did nail the 37 in low gear again. They learned to wait until it was in second or high before they rolled on the throttle. Made a lot of sense, it was a strong running little car.

We kidded Bud about it for a while, even to the point of nicknaming his car White Lightning.
It kinda fit. The 37 was good looking, a bit of a sleeper, quiet and for a street car, very fast. We thought it funny as well. Bud never had done the street race bit. Bobby and I had done a lot of it and Bud was the only guy to get stopped for it. Not getting a genuine street racing ticket didn’t matter to us, we knew what it could have been.



1973

We’d been working on the roadster every chance we got. The 455 Olds and T-400 were in, the rear end installed with quarter elliptic springs inside the frame rails, a rear panhard bar as long as we could fit in and a set of ladder bars in line with the frame with the front mounting tabs being on the bottom of the frame rail. The same rear axle setup we’d built for Bobby’s drag racing 31 roadster. One of the big jobs was building the headers. There wasn’t too much room to tuck them in. What did help was to set the collectors a little further to the rear than you’d see on the later model cars that ran headers. We were aiming for a mid-range torque engine anyway, so the slightly longer header primaries wouldn’t hurt. With 455 cubic inches pulling a 2300# car around, a small loss in torque wouldn’t make too much difference.

The front end was typical of roadsters and coupes of the era. A four inch dropped axle, 56 Ford pickup front brakes, 56 Ford pickup steering box with fore &amp; aft style drag link and a pair of split wishbones. My plan was to get the car running, see how it worked out and then blow it apart for paint and chrome. Turned out it was a darned good way to do it.

Building up the 455 Olds engine was on the list of things to do, but since it ran ok as it was, we elected to leave it like that for the first few times on the road. The only wiring in the car was temporary. Just enough for the starter, ignition and charging circuits. The roadster handled ok as long as it was going straight. It handled fairly well under full power, at least it did as long as it was going straight. Where it was lacking was on the curves. It went around them ok, but not as well as it could have. The ladder bars had no give and when one side hit a bump two things happened. The rear tire that hit the bump would go up in the air unloading the suspension. If you were on curve when it happened, after the car came down it was pointed in a slightly different direction. Nothing dangerous, it was predictable, but you probably didn’t want to push it hard in the corners. The ride wasn’t too good either. Even pulling a couple of leafs out of each quarter elliptic didn’t really help.

I tried driving the little car off and on for a week, never going too far from home, but I just didn’t like the way it handled. Even with the stock Olds engine, it looked like it was going to be a good runner. It pulled hard through the mid-range. Part of the problem was a small case of bump-steer. We attributed that to the fore &amp; aft style drag link steering due to the wishbones were quite a bit longer than the drag link. Well, back to the drawing board so to speak. I parked the roadster and thought about it for a while.

The drawing board for us was usually group discussion or simply pencil sketches on a shorthand pad. It hit us that our problem with the ladder bars was that they were parallel. A little further thinking and we realized Henry Ford did have the right idea when he installed the triangulated radius rods or wishbones or whatever you like to call them.

The front end bump steer wasn’t that big a problem, but it bugged me a bit. The problems were easily cured. Easy in the figuring out part, doing the work was another matter for sure.
Since the car was destined to be blown apart for paint anyway, we decided to do the front and rear modifications while it was apart, paint it, put it back together and see how it worked out. Even if changes were required and we didn’t think they would be, we could always grind the paint away, do the changes and repaint.

Probably not as foolhardy as it seems, a lot of guys had been down the road before us and done similar things. We figured if it worked for them it should work for us.

We pulled the body, hood and grille shell and took them to Bobby’s house for paint. Since it was destined to be a highboy roadster, we figured that part ought to go pretty fast and in fact it did. The body was so straight that not much was needed. We primed and blocked it and shot the final primer coat on it. Then we let it sit for a week before we, I say we, I should say Bobby, he was the painter in our group and he shot all our cars except for Bud’s 37. He would have shot Bud’s car too, but Bud figured he could get it done a little faster at the paint shop.

During the week the primer was curing and shrinking, we cut the brackets to the old ladder bars off the rear axle and the frame. A new set of ladder bars, much longer and more graceful looking were made out of one inch .120 wall round tubing. These were pretty classy looking, but the round tubing took a while to fit and weld. We went to the extra trouble to make threaded weld bungs for all three ends of each ladder bar. Rings were made for the ends of the ladder bars, three per side, bolts had their heads machined round and shortened and were welded to the rings. The rings had the GM rubber suspension bushings with the rubber vulcanized to the inner and outer steel bushings. These were quite firm, but still had some “give” to them.

New brackets were made for the rear axle. These were angled so the ladder bars pointed at the transmission tailshaft. Another set of brackets was made for the front of the ladder bars and welded onto the transmission lower crossmember, one on each side of the tailshaft. Everything was cut and fit to come out with the optimal driveshaft angle and with all three corners of the ladder bar adjustable for length, we were well set up for any required tuning.

The front end, a different story. We’d been seeing roadsters and coupes now and then that had what we called hidden steering. Which simply meant that all the steering components were under the car. That was easy to figure out as far as the drag link and connecting it went, but the tough part was finding a decent sized steering box. That part solved when we talked to a guy running a roadster at San Fernando dragstrip. The roadster was actually a lakes car, but he took it to the drags now and then just for fun. Since the lakes guys were very aware of aerodynamic drag they went to great lengths to streamline what they could on their cars. This particular car ran in the modified roadster class and it looked pretty slippery to us. About the only major drag producing items - aside from the Deuce grille shell and grille - were the wheels hanging out in the breeze. The front axle, spring and shocks were exposed to airflow as well, but the tie rod and drag link was hidden behind them. That was about it.

The roadsters steering box was out of one of the new Chevy Vega’s. Since these were virtually a brand new car at the time, it took us a while to find one. When we did, the price was plenty reasonable. Seems that not many wanted parts from the Vega. Made sense, the car we got the box from was a 72 and aside from being a total wreck, it was still under warranty. Warranty or not, nobody was going to fix this Vega. It was pretty far gone.

Installing the Vega box was easy. We made up a simple 3/16" plate with some welded on bushings to match the three steering box bolts and then welded it to the boxed frame. The Vega box allowed us to move the steering column to a little flatter position for better ergonomics. It wasn’t too bad with the Ford pickup box, but we figured we may as well improve things while it was apart.

A front panhard bar was knocked out and installed. Recommended by the lakes roadster guy as a definite necessity with the Vega box. It probably would have been a good idea with the fore &amp; aft drag link steering given the propensity for the early Ford frames to swing back and forth on the spring shackles which made the steering a little less precise.

We made a new steering column out of 1 3/4" exhaust tubing, made a couple of adapters for a pair of sealed ball bearings, one top and one bottom. A floor bracket was welded to the bottom of the column and a column hanger welded on to the column for an under the dash mount. Bobby machined a nice aluminum trim ring for the top of the column. It slid on with an interference fit and was there for the duration. With a small diameter, black, three spoke steering wheel from the speed shop stuck on top and the black painted tubing with the buffed aluminum piece at the top, the whole thing looked pretty trick. We enjoyed building these cars. Driving them was first and foremost in our minds, but we had the patience to do it as right as we could.

Bobby was able to get some industrial needle bearing u-joints from an oil field supply house in LA. Only problem was, we couldn’t get one that had the Vega 5/8-36 spline on one end and the 3/4-36 spline on the other end. They were the same size on both ends regardless of size. We could have machined the steering column down to the 5/8" size and re-splined it, but we thought it would be better to leave the Chevy steering shaft at the 3/4" size it already was. The answer to the u-joint problem was simple enough. We bought three of the u-joints, two 3/4-3/4" and one 5/8-5/8". They disassembled easily enough and we ended up with an original one with 3/4-3/4" ends and two made up ones with 5/8-3/4" ends. We figured the extra 5/8-3/4" one was good trading stock. Bobby made a splined 3/4-36 intermediate shaft as well as re-splining the bottom of the steering shaft 3/4-36 after the original end was cut off to get the length we needed.

Sounds complicated, but it wasn’t. Made easy by the willingness of the oil field supply house guys to work with us on finding the u-joints and Bobby’s expertise as a machinist. He was a natural at it and more than once his dad wondered why he didn’t come to work for the family business. The simple answer was, Bobby really liked his telephone company job and didn’t want to be stuck inside in one place all the time. An idea I agreed with. I liked my job, it was different every day, but it was getting old walking into the big box like building and not leaving until the shift was over.

The right side steering arm was easy, the one that came with the front end we bought had the steering arm that took two tie rod ends, so all that was needed was a new drag link. Bobby came to the rescue there too. He rounded up some 7/8 x .156 wall tubing and made a new drag link on a lathe. The weird wall thickness tubing can be hard to find sometimes, but not in our little town. With all the oil field supply houses, tubing supply outfits and steel warehouses it was easy to get exactly what we needed.

The weird part with the tie rod and drag link was the oddball thread size of the Ford passenger car tie rod ends. To add to the confusion, one end had to be left hand threads. Some think that Ford did some weird stuff just to be proprietary, but I think Ford just decided 11/16" was the size to use, so that’s what they used. Although the choice for 18 threads per inch (TPI) I feel is definitely proprietary. An 11/16-18 tap was not to be had. In right hand or left hand. They were out there somewhere, but we hadn’t a clue where they were.

Bobby planned to cut the threads on the lathe, but cutting internal threads on several small pieces of tubing was a bit of a drag. One of the older hands, a machinist name of Johansen came to the rescue. He had a long piece of 3/4" drill rod and knocked it down to 11/16" OD on each end. He had Bobby turn threads on it, 18 TPI. Right hand on one end and left hand on the other.
Bobby knew how to cut threads, but making your own tap was a new one on him. Johansen cut the ends of the drill rod off and ground three flats on the round ends. Then he milled three flutes in the threaded end and cleaned it up with a stone. The torch was fired up, the drill rod heated to a soft red while being viewed in a subdued light and then the drill rod quenched in oil. Johansen pointed out that there were three types of drill rod. Oil hardening, water hardening and air hardening and you needed to be aware of what you had if you wanted to have a good finished product. With the newly made taps, it was simple to drill out the drag link ends and thread them on the lathe with the tap installed in drill chuck on the tailstock. It turned out so nice, that Bobby made new tie rods for both his roadster and mine. He didn’t like the slit style tie rod that used clamps. Water got in there sometimes and froze the tie rod end to the tie rod. We used the jam nuts that came with the tie rod ends to lock them to the tie rods and drag links.

It was kind of funny. After a while, we found ourselves in the custom length tie rod/drag link business for a couple of years. We turned out quite a few of them for the local guys. The other funny part was, Johansen kept the taps in his tool box although he’d loan em to us whenever we wanted them. After a while, he just left them lying on the back of his workbench so we could use them whenever we wanted.

With the nice steering setup and the more than nice ladder bars on the roadster I felt like we were in Fat City as far as getting it running went.

After one whole heck of a lot of sanding and priming and sanding and priming, we got the roadster painted the finish color. Paint used was the regular black fleet enamel, factory mixed by the Ditzler paint company and Bobby shot a beautiful paint job on the body, hood, hood sides and grille shell inside and out. The frame and other small pieces came out just as nice.

The only hard part was assembling everything without scratching it. Once we got to the part where we were ready to swing the big Olds engine in, I figured I only wanted to do it once, so we tore it down for a rebuild. The rebuild was pretty standard stuff. Everything stock except for forged pistons and a mild hydraulic cam. The carb was the biggest Carter AFB we could find. That, along with a balance job and a high output ignition coil was about it.

Once the car was wired and plumbed with the permanent stuff, we were in business. A short stop at the upholstery shop for some black leather tuck and roll finished the car off nicely. The leather recommended by Bobby’s Canadian friend Mike. Mike ran black leather in his fire engine red full fendered 29 roadster and told Bobby it was the way to go for upholstery in a roadster. As he put it, it lasted a long time, didn’t get overly hot exposed to the sun and was comfortable in the winters too. Nothing like the heat soak you’d get from naugahyde once it sat in the sun for a while.

The roadster turned into a good looking, good handling, fun to drive car. With the bored out Olds engine at 463", it had way more horsepower than necessary. It was the strongest running car I ever drove on the street. Half throttle would walk away from darned near anyone at a stop light. I’d driven Bobby’s roadster quite a few times. It was a good handling, strong running car.
The big difference was the extra 109 cubic inches of the Olds. Whoever said bigger is better sure hit the nail on the head there.

Bobby’s Chrysler powered roadster was no slouch. In fact, a race between the two may have come out fairly even. It was just that with the big Olds, the mid-range torque was so strong that you didn’t have to spin the motor very much at all to accelerate hard. The Chrysler with it’s bigger cam and better breathing needed to rev a bit when you wanted to accelerate strongly.
Even so, Bobby had found long ago, short shifting the Chrysler was the way to go in a race.
Even truer for the big Olds. I don’t think I ever spun it much above four grand.

The fresh black paint on my roadster looked so good that Bobby decided it was time to paint his. It had been in black primer for as long as I could remember. The color of choice was a foregone conclusion. Megan, as well as Melanie and Bonnie Sue had decided some time back that it should be the same color as Nana’s big Buick.

It didn’t take us too long to tear Bobby’s roadster down for paint. While the engine was out, we pulled the pan, a rod and main bearing cap and took a look at the bearings. They still looked good. Even so, Bobby figured this was a good time to freshen up the dependable Chrysler.
New rings, freshly honed cylinders, new rod, main and cam bearings as well as a new oil pump and timing chain were installed. We ground the valves and installed a set of new Isky valve springs. Bobby felt the stock valve springs may have done it, but the worry was that the heavier roller lifters were a little harder to keep out of valve float. Even so, he didn’t rev the Chrysler too hard, about six grand being redline and that seldom touched on, so the Isky springs were good insurance.

The frame was painted black with some of the leftover enamel from painting my roadster. Same deal with the front axle, springs and rear axle, some more of the good Ditzler black enamel went on those and any other small parts needing paint. With a little less than two gallons of the bright red Buick enamel on the body, inside and out, dashboard, underneath the fenders and the trunk lid as well as inside the firewall we had a good looking collection of parts to reassemble.
The only thing left as was, was the black Zolatone paint on the engine side of the firewall.
It still looked good, cleaned up ok and was one tough paint.

Two easy weekends of work after the several months of engine rebuilding and fresh paint and we had Bobby’s roadster running again. It was a knockout of a car. Black and red was the theme for Bobby’s car. Pretty much the same theme for mine. His roadster, when in black primer ran red steel wheels, the small 40 Ford hubcaps and no beauty rings. Now that it was bright red, it had black wheels, the same hubcaps and new beauty rings. My roadster was much the same, except now I had the red steel wheels with small 50 Mercury hubcaps and beauty rings.

Both of our roadsters were pretty neat little cars. A good contrast to each other too. One black, one red. One highboy, one full fendered. One topless, one with a top. One wedge motored, one Hemi motored. One with automatic transmission and one a four speed stick. Two roadsters built pretty much the same, but different and both of them equal in fun. The girls loved them both. The big girls and the little girls. Even Nana was tickled that Bobby had painted his roadster to match her big Buick. A pair to draw to as she put it. Nana being an inveterate card player and especially so where poker was concerned.

Bobby went so far as to pull the top off, carefully strip the almost tattered tan top material, refinish the oak bows and paint the top irons black. A new black top was stitched up at the local upholstery shop.

It really looked like something with the new top. It changed the car considerably. For the better I think. We’d gotten used to it running in black primer, but we agreed the bright red paint was just the right touch.


1974

We’d spent most of last year working on the roadsters and had two nice little cars to show for our time. Time well spent we figured. Even so, with the two roadsters in like new trim and us a little burned out on the building end of it, we figured just driving them for a while would be a good idea.

Turned out, we drove them far more than just a while, went some places in them that I never thought I’d go in a roadster and had more than a few adventures along the way.

Whoever said, “The view of the world through the windshield of a roadster is a different way of life,” said more than mere words can convey.

***

End of Part 3

 

Thanks, another wonderful segment! This post is the reason I have been looking forward to Friday all week!

 

bttt, this story rules.

 

As always, a DAMN good read!
-Jesse

 

Well I'm "HOOKED" "Write-On" brother!!!!!

Mark

 

Hooked? ME TOO! Shoot I couldn't get away from this if I tried.

Hope you turn this into a book. I'll buy some and put them next to my good ones, cause this is a good one.

Thanks much.
VonDad

 

bttt

too good to slip by this fast

 

right on. i can't wait for the next installment...