When I asked how much he might get for them if times were better, our buddy, Danny, shot me a sarcastic look and a one-word answer: “More.”
His tone of voice added “stupid” without his having to speak the word, but that was because I had raised the subject of his favorite snack, cracklins, without having any.
“What kind of a guy would do that?” he grumbled like a grinder shooting off sparks.
Just as I’ve been getting an education in transmissions, frames and roll bars while watching a series of cars take shape in the garage, I’ve gotten to know the guys who drop by for the occasional look. The extended fraternity is close enough that as soon as Denny hauled the latest project home from a car lot near Miami Valley Hospital, his across-the-street neighbor looked at the 1969 Karmann Ghia and said, “I know where that came from.”
He was right, just as I was wrong about Bear, who sometimes drops by the garage for a look. Although I’ve known him a couple of years, only last month did I realize Bear is his last name, not a nickname. Don’t get me wrong, he’s always been a friendly Bear, but a Bear nonetheless. (And may be spelled Bare.)
As much fun as the cars and visitors, are the ideas that we bounce around while Denny is welding or bending something or I’m trying to find a screwdriver, tape measure or hammer for him.
In a way, the ideas resemble the ’53 Studebaker.
The car is from the era of balloon cars of the 1950s — models like the bulky Ford Mainline my dad bought when I was a kid from a neighbor who needed cash to pay an overdue utility bill. Although it is large by comparison, the Studebaker’s aerodynamic lines foreshadow the sleeker Corvettes of the late 1950s and early 1960s. More than 50 years after its production, the car looks like a snapshot of an idea taking shape.
It’s not a far a reach from there to think of the ideas floating around us every day as works in progress — thoughts that take shape and are introduced in such-and-such model year, develop over time and either disappear or have some elements incorporated into the next major redesign.
Like our cars, our ideas are vehicles we ride on for a time to see how they take the bumps and corners of events. That’s just the beginning of a conversation, of course. But it’s the kind of thing we might kick around the next time I stop in the garage. By the way, there’s a name for the style of hot rod he’s working on now — a car that uses only the shell of a previous model, like the Karmann Ghia, and has a totally different frame and engine beneath. It’s a called a sleeper, because underneath the surface, you never know what you’re going to find, like some people I know.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.
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