This is a little long, but bear with me. I grew up in North Arlington, NJ in the ‘50’s & ‘60’s, about 15 miles west of NYC. Yesterday a friend of mine, Tony Gentile, drove his Henry J gasser from Ma. to NJ to attend the Dead Man’s Curve show. He posted a picture of a ‘23 T AA/A that looked very familiar to me. I enlarged the photo, and found it be be a car I had known in ‘63, when I was 16 years old. I flipped out, and called Tony on his cell, and eventually, I got to talk to the new owner, Mike. When he handed Mike the phone, I introduced myself, and told him I had lettered the car in 1963. Mike was very excited as he didn’t know any early history of the car. His dad had been trying to buy it from the original owner for a long time, but he never wanted to cell it. When he died last March the widow called and told his dad to come get it. The owner owned Joe’s Bake Shop in N. Arlington, and was sponsored by my cousin, Bobby Burgess’s, NHR Speed Shop in Harrison, NJ, where I worked as a counter boy, and weekend gopher for the Altered at Island Dragway in Great Meadows, NJ. As you can see the lettering is not great, but none of the other crew could do any better. The great part of the story is that the car remained as parked in the late ‘60’s not 2 miles away from my home, and today still resides there. He’s not going to restore it, just get the 283 rebuilt, and take it to events. I’ll go down to see it soon. As an aside, Joe made the best poppyseed hard rolls in the state, and at midnight on Saturdays, my friends would get the rolls out of the back door, and sit in the car with a stick of butter and eat them. I’ve never really progressed much past 16 mentally anyway, but this made my day!
Hard to believe a race car could be just parked all those years and left complete and in one piece. Most I find have been parted out and put back together 10 different times. With hardly a memory of what they were originally. That is a really great find.
Great story! Thanks for posting it. Look forward to more pics when you go to see it. I bet that thing was a handful to drive. What a blast it must have been..........Yummm, Poppyseed rolls with Butter!!
I don’t believe so, and I’d be very surprised if it ever ran anywhere other than Island Dragway. It was a pretty low buck, local operation. Maybe someone else will recognize it?
Great find and what a cool history you have with the car. I see a ‘57 block, Corvette 6 qt. oil pan, a 4-71 with Algon injection and big tube headers. Then I noticed the lettering you did on the sides of the cowl, Crane heads and C-T Strokers. Crane Fireball heads were hot stuff back then and I wonder if it was a 1/2” arm combined with a 4” bore for a 352 cu. in. combination. Did cousin Bobby only sell parts or did he do machine work too?
How could you have something that cool just getting crap piled on in your garage for all those years. I can see keeping but I'd want to have seen, show it off...
No, he did not, but he was a pretty good wrench / driver, and held the C/MSP National Record in his ‘58 Vette for a while.
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