Shine your Chevy, detail
your Deuce Coupe and hustle your hot rod over to Reno and Sparks' Hot August
Nights for
a celebration of America's love affair with cars and rock and roll: July 31 -
August 9, 2009. That’s what my friend Jerry and his friend from childhood,
Chuck, will be doing this year, as Jerry does every year.
Only this year they will be showing off “Jer’s 40,” a hot red 1940 Ford coupe that the two men have been restoring since 2002. Chuck and Jerry are in their early ‘70s now and
their passion is restoring cars. Buddies since they were 13-years-old, they bought Jer’s 40 when it looked like this. Double click the photos to see them in more detail.
This what it looks like now.
When Dannie, Jer’s
wife, and my own life-long friend, sent the photos of the restored car recently, I was
totally jazzed. In Sparks, NV, where they live, Jerry has a big garage at home where
he does his restorations. He even has one car he restored in honor of Dannie,
but that’s a story for another time. Dannie’s e-mail describing Jer’s 40 follows:
“I'm glad you
enjoyed the picture of Jerry's car. He is so proud of it. In
January 2002, Jerry's best friend Chuck, from his teenage years was here
visiting. They are both very much into cars. They were driving and
tinkering with cars from the time they were 13 years old. Anyway, they
saw this 40 Ford advertised in the paper. It was located in
Arizona. So they got on a plane and flew down to check it out.
Jerry bought it and they drove it home. Took two days and was quite a
trip. It had never been refurbished, so not much of anything worked very
well. They couldn't get the key out so when they stopped for the night
they had to park it right outside the motel window so they could keep an eye on
it. Probably neither one of them slept that night. They finally
made it home and they were both in seventh heaven. They started working
on it right away and Chuck wound up staying an extra month.
After Chuck left, Jerry
started working on a couple of other cars that he had. He wanted to wait
till Chuck could come again to work on the 40. So, over the years, lots
of Chuck’s vacations have been spent working on the 40 with Jerry. They
tried several different engines, and finally settled on a new Flat head engine
which was what the kids used to "hop up" in the old days and it goes
like a ‘bat out of H---‘. He got tuck and roll upholstery put in it and
took it to the painter about a month and a half ago. Just got it back on
Saturday when I sent the picture.
Hot August
Nights will be starting up here in a few months and he is really looking
forward to showing the car. Hot August nights lasts for a week, and they
have about 6,000 old cars registered this year. They have show
and shines all around town, so I probably won't be seeing much of Jerry
then."
Dannie's using oxygen these days and isn't able to spend the countless hours at Hot August Nights like she used to, but she says he
has lots of friends in the old car clubs, so he always has someone to
hang out with.
This is a photo Dannie snapped of Chuck (l) and her husband Jerry. And here's two more views of Jer's 40.
For the life of me I can't seem to write the code tonight to get these photos centered, but if you've just had some wonderful dreams of what it was like to ride in a car like this, let me know.
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