Wednesday, June 25, 1997
Old cars and the people who love them
By Ken Ellsworth / Abilene Reporter-News
SWEETWATER - Cars are just cold machines, so it has confounded
me that others live, eat and breathe them, dote on them and treat
them like favorite pets, especially when the cars get old.
It is then, when cars are old, that people start using words
like "vintage" and "classic" as though they
are speaking of fine wine or great books.
To me, though, cars have almost always been just a way to get
from one place to another with relative ease and speed. Until
Sunday, that is.
Sunday, I almost succumbed to car love.
That was when I got to drive in a media car rally, driving
from the Nolan County Courthouse around Lake Sweetwater and back.
"Well, which one do you want to drive? You get your choice,"
said Waylon Clark, one of the car lovers and collectors. He waved
his arm toward a row of parked, beautiful old cars, models that
had been built from 1941-59.
"How about that one?" I asked, pointing to a brownish-red
beauty with rounded fenders.
"That's my car," Clark said with pride. "It's
a good one."
Clark and his wife, Melvelene, were co-directors of the media
rally, which was staged as a precursor to the MBNA Great Race
XV. The Great Race is a coast-to-coast race of more than 100 vintage
vehicles, and it will stop in Sweetwater about noon Thursday.
The racers will lunch and chat with visitors before driving on
to the Tye Wes-T-Go Truck Stop, where they will gas up.
Clark said his vehicle, the one I was to drive, was a 1941
Chevrolet, but he had made some improvements. For one thing, he
had installed a big 350-cubic-inch V-8 engine, making it, actually,
into a sort of a hot rod. Clark showed me how to make his Chevy
go and said he wasn't worried I might damage the car.
Ken Becker, the executive director of the Sweetwater Chamber
of Commerce, sat down in the passenger seat. He would be my navigator,
and a good one, too. The day before he had bicycled over the entire
23-mile course and knew the road intimately.
The car's big interior looked and smelled like a scene from
my childhood. I remembered sleeping on a roomy rear seat similar
to this car's as my father drove through the night.
I turned the key. The engine rumbled lowly, speaking of its
power.
The rally cars were leaving the courthouse separated by five-minute
intervals. When it was our turn to start I touched the accelerator
and the car, older than me by three years, moved out. Old as it
was, it wanted to run, but I could not let it.
"No faster than the speed limit and never more than 55,"
Clark had instructed.
Around Lake Sweetwater we went. The car glided. Looking through
the windshield, I could not see the fenders, just the v-shaped
hood. I felt like I was driving a very fast wedge, following a
hood ornament.
Everything seemed better than a modern machine. The ride was
magic.
After the rally I talked to Bill Haley, a Sweetwater businessman
who collects old cars. He had loaned four of his collection of
13 old cars for the rally.
"What is it about old cars that is so attractive to collectors?"
I asked.
"I don't know. I just know this. My daddy bought a 1940
Chevrolet on July 29, 1940, in downtown Fort Worth and the dealer
was Earnest Allen. The car cost $795 and it was brand new. I was
6 years old at the time," Haley replied.
So, Haley was bitten at a tender age, and I was nearly bitten
Sunday.
This column covers the cities and communities of this part
of West Texas. To contact Ken Ellsworth, call (800) 588-6397 or
(915) 673-4271, Ext. 381, or write to P.O. Box 30, Abilene, TX
79604.
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Copyright ©1997,
Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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