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Mary Lee and I returned from Maine yes­ter­day at around 3:30, unpacked, dusted off the “Gray Lady” and went up to Cruise Night in South Hadley.  Being a show win­ner at the first cruise night of the sea­son Memo­r­ial day week­end, we were directed to the “Winner’s Cir­cle” an area reserved for past show win­ners and assigned tag num­ber 10 to iden­tify us to all who would vote for the win­ner tonight (all entrants to the show were given a bal­lot and asked to vote for their favorite in the Winner’s Cir­cle).  So, while it was the judges who got us to the top, it was the par­tic­i­pants who would deter­mine the real win­ner.  We were fol­lowed in by other past win­ners, a ’65 Mus­tang, ’57 Corvette Con­vert­ible and a ’54 Stude­baker Pickup, along with a whole bunch of oth­ers com­pet­ing for the weekly prize.

After the weekly win­ners were announced at the end of the night, one of which was a very rare Kaiser Dar­rin, they held the cus­tom­ary raf­fles and with a very close vote, some­one said it was by only one vote sep­a­rat­ing the win­ner from the run­ner up, we were announced as the win­ners of the “Win­ners Cir­cle” con­test!!  After the tro­phy pre­sen­ta­tion and pho­tos, we could finally kick back and relax, after what was a very long day that started at 5:00AM in Casco Bay, Maine.  Nice to be there, but glad to be back here too.…

The rest of the week­end will be busy as well, with all of the rain we have been hav­ing,  I’m not going to miss an oppor­tu­nity to go out and play with my toy.… Tonight we will be at a Cruise Night at the Holyoke Sol­diers Home in the “Paper City” and tomor­row will find us at the car show on the Belcher­town Com­mon, spon­sored by the Belcher­town Cruis­ers, which is a fundraiser for the Juvinile Dia­betes Foundation.

Hope you are hav­ing as great a week­end as we are, till next time.….…

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After not hav­ing been out for more than a week and with a beau­ti­ful evening in progress, I decieded to run on down to Mark’s Cruise Night in East Wind­sor, CT. It was a smooth ride down Inter­state 91, that big old boat rides like a dream and much nicer than any of the new Cadil­lacs I’ve rid­den in lately. Once at the site we got stuck in line wait­ing to get through the gate and after about 15 min­utes of sit­ting in place, she over heated. I shut her down and when traf­fic began to move 10 min­utes later, we were a no go due to vapor lock. We rolled her back into the shade and let her sit for 15 min­utes and we were back in busi­ness. Not a big deal, but kind of put a damper on the evening.

It’s a con­tin­u­ing prob­lem as Mary Lee and I had the same issue two weeks ago. she’s cool as a cucum­ber on the high­way, but in stop and go traf­fic she heats up pretty quickly, not sure of the real issue, but on Thurs­day she gets fit­ted with a new aux­il­lary elec­tric fan and hope­fully the prob­lem will be resolved. She’ll also be get­ting a colder ther­mo­stat when the new gas­kets arrive in a cou­ple days. I’ll post more details when the project is finished.

Back to Mark’s for just a sec­ond, amaz­ing turnout for this event every Mon­day evening, 837 cars were in atten­dance. Live music, good food and a whole lot of fun. With that many vehi­cles there are sure to be a cou­ple stand­outs and this trip was no excep­tion. My high­lights, a 1925 Spring­field built Rolls Royce that purred like a kit­ten and a very nice 1954 Lin­coln con­vert­ible along with a cou­ple of very nice fifties era MG TD’s that I looked over very closely as that is my next project, a 1953 MG TD cur­rently in pieces on my garage floor.  Plus a cool ’58 Impala and another ’58 Dodge con­vert­ible owned by the same guy that I had met on pre­vi­ous occa­sions with the 2 Lin­coln convertibles.

Our sched­ule going for­ward, will see us at But­tery Brook Park here in South Hadley where we will com­pete against other weekly show win­ners in a “Best of the Best” event within their reg­u­lar Cruise Night on Fri­day night.  Sun­day we will be in Pitts­field, MA up in the Berk­shires to attend the 26th Annual Berk­shire Char­ity Car Show on the cam­pus of Hill­crest Hos­pi­tal.  July 9th will find us in East Long­meadow, MA at the “Change The Wind” event, an impor­tant fundraiser for the vic­tims of the Spring­field tor­nado that tore through our area on June 1st.  See you there?

Until then.….….…..

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What a Day!  Happy Father’s Day to all you Dad’s!   Motored on down to East Wind­sor, Ct. to attend a ben­e­fit event for Con­necti­cut Children’s Place, a school for abused and dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren. I wasn’t expect­ing much, just happy to sup­port a great cause. The divi­sions were not very friendly for us Cadil­lac guys. They had a full size divi­sion, but it was lim­ited to vin­tage 1964 – 1969 vehi­cles, so we were out and the only other option was for us to be in the 1950 – 1959 stock divi­sion. On top of that it was par­tic­i­pant vot­ing, not a judged event, never a good deal for us Caddy guys as all of the younger par­tic­i­pants tend to grav­i­tate towards the 60’s era mus­cle cars and we usu­ally get pushed aside.

The key word here is usu­ally, as I lined up and parked the “Gray Lady”, there was a nice white Pon­tiac Bon­neville already in and I slid in next to an orig­i­nal ’59 white Cadil­lac sedan, what a dif­fer­ence a year makes, our 2 cars were totally dif­fer­ent. Next in comes a nice orig­i­nal Ford and then a mod­i­fied Chevy. What the heck is a mod­i­fied car doing in a stock divi­sion? Then in comes what we called the turquoise triplets, a ’57 turquoise and white Chevy again heav­ily mod­i­fied, a beau­ti­ful orig­i­nal ’57 Corvette same col­ors and then a ’57 all Turquoise Lin­coln con­vert­ible that looked as if it just came off the show­room floor. At this point I’m think­ing, I’m doomed.….… It con­tin­ued on with more mod­i­fied Chevys and I set­tled in for a long day.

Turns out the Lin­coln owner and I met 2 weeks ago at the Feed­ing Hills event, but that time he was dri­ving a ’60 Lin­coln Mark V con­vert­ible in dark gray paint, also beau­ti­ful!  I couldn’t resist and asked him how many of those he had and with a smile he said about a dozen!  Any­way, as always we gen­er­ated a tremen­dous amount of inter­est and com­pli­ments.  I was approached by 3 peo­ple from the CPTV pub­lic access chan­nel 15, who it turns out were film­ing a seg­ment for their show “Your Mileage May Vary,” they spent about 20 min­utes film­ing and inter­view­ing me about the car, don’t know when it will air, but they promised to for­ward me a copy of the show on DVD when it is ready,  Can’t wait to see it when it is done.

As the day fin­ished, I was at the award cer­e­mony and when they announced the Lin­coln as the first run­ner up, I’m think­ing WOW that ’57 Vette is a sure win­ner now!  Then they announce the Corvette as the sec­ond run­ner up, now I’m think­ing I’m going to be really PO’d when a mod­i­fied car wins in a stock divi­sion when they announce we are the first place win­ner.….…..  It is the coolest tro­phy we’ve won so far, and while they did not announce it as such, I believe that the tro­phy was made by the kids them­selves, mak­ing it extra spe­cial!  It will cer­tainly rest in a spe­cial place and not soon be for­got­ten!  What a way to cel­e­brate Father’s Day, you can be sure we will be back again next year.….…

I’ll post more pho­tos when time per­mits, until then.….…..

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Our week­end was a washout.… I know many parts of the Coun­try are in severe drought con­di­tions, but we have had quite enough, Thank You, go on and help some­one else now.

We were look­ing for­ward the the Shriner’s Melha Vin­tage Auto Show, but it was not meant to be. Rained out both Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. The rain also kept us away from the Our Lady of the Blessed Sacra­ment Char­ity Car Show on Sun­day.
Busy week com­ing up though, we are going to try to do the Cruise Night spon­sored by the Elks in Lud­low, Tues­day night and another spon­sored by the Moose Lodge in Chicopee on Thurs­day night all weather per­mit­ting of course. We just found out that we also need to be at But­tery Brook Park right here in South Hadley on Fri­day night too, because they are doing a spe­cial award that hon­ors past show win­ners. We get to go in the line-up with other pre­vi­ous show win­ners and be judged by the atten­dees! Come on down and vote for us.……

Sat­ur­day, if we are not to exhausted, we’ll be at “The Cars Are The Stars” event in Somers, CT. and Sun­day at the CT Children’s Place in East Wind­sor, CT., both ben­e­fit shows for great causes.

Fin­gers crossed for good weather.….…..

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Or that is what every­one is say­ing.…. After yesterday’s fiasco, Mary Lee and I went up to Cruise Night at the Knight’s Of Colum­bus last night.  It was a short field with about 50 cars due to the 95+ degree heat.  The evening started out well, but they had to cut it short and abbre­vi­ate the award pre­sen­ta­tions when the dark clouds rolled in and thun­der could be heard in the dis­tance, it was only a week ago under sim­i­lar weather con­di­tions that the tor­nado struck just a few miles away.  Remark­able sound when you hear about 2 dozen clas­sics all fir­ing up at the same time and try­ing to squeeze out the small entry and get home.  We made it back to the barn before the real storms began.……

Alright, I won’t keep you in sus­pense any longer, the “Gray Lady” won first place, best in show!  She’s still bat­ting a thou­sand, with 4 awards in 4 events, how­ever, we did have to scratch, claw and climb our way up past a really nice 1930 Rolls Royce to get there.  OK, I promise this is it for a while, I’m not going to post any more show results on an event by event basis, I’ll do it once a Month to recap events.  Although you can’t really blame me for brag­ging a lit­tle, can you?  It has been a cou­ple year process, with more than 3000 hours invested and mucho dinero to get us here.  Vin­di­ca­tion is sweet, can you see the big grin on my face as I write?

Hon­estly, I didn’t take on this project with awards in mind, and in fact never expected them, because younger crowds tend to grav­i­tate more towards the ’60 era mus­cle cars.  The Caddy gen­er­ates a tremen­dous amount of atten­tion where ever she goes pri­mar­ily because there are never any on dis­play.  I’ve seen just a cou­ple 1959’s over the years, but in fact have not yet seen another 1958 in at least the last 2 years.  I did meet a guy who is restor­ing a 1958 Series 60 Fleet­wood Spe­cial, but it won’t be done until some­time next year.

If you are local and want to visit, we’ll be at the 31st Annual Melha Shriners Clas­sic Car Show at the Moose Lodge in Chicopee on Sat­ur­day.  It is a fundraiser for the Shriner’s Hos­pi­tal For Chil­dren surely a good cause, stop by and say hello.

Till then.….….….…..

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