Country music crooner, Don Williams wrote a song called “Living on Tulsa Time”. Well this morning at darkthirty we were LEAVING on Tulsa Time. For the third day in a row we started with rain. Rural Oklahoma (near Tulsa) from the windscreen of a Deuce Roadster looks much like Tennessee except it is flat and not as green, and a lot more wind. Well,…I guess it doesn’t look like Tennessee at all!
Honest Mike and I got to chew the fat with Chuck Gollohan from Brookville Roadster over some 6 AM coffee. It was fun to learn that he has done quite a bit of varied things in his life and is still quite a character! I look forward to stopping back by Brookville, Ohio to check out his cars next time I’m thru there too! Chuck, Ray, Kenny and Donna Gollahan make some really great sheet metal! If you have not seen their new Deuce (32) three window coupe,… you should really check it out! Its a work of art! Honest Charley can sell you one too!
By the first gas stop on Thursday the temperature had warmed quite a bit. Mike and I de-installed our DED “Double Exposure Deuce” high tech Lowe’s inspired side curtains and cruised into Crawford, Texas for a wonderful photo opp at the Conoco Tower on Route 66. It is a fully restored art deco era “filling and service station. You could sort of feel the history, folks n cars who had traversed that cool place. Some took some great pictures of the hot rods at this cool setting. Brian Brennan, the Editorial Director of Street Rodder magazine took some cool shots there. He was also busy hanging out of Steve Moal’s high tech duece roadster snapping shots of cars n countryside most of the afternoon. He took a very important picture too of Ken (Dutch) Fenical riding in his wild 46 chev highboy ON THE TRAILER, while Josh Shaw pulled him! I look forward to seeing them in Streetrodder Magazine!
Honest Mike called Jerry Slover at Pete n Jakes today while I was driving. We both had to tell Jerry how pleased we are to sell their chassie’s and the one they built for us for Double Exposure is perfect! She looks cool, tracks true and handles well!
Posie detoured us to the Frimmel Brothers Farm, which was just off the highway on the way toward Amarillo. They farm about 10,000 acres. The tractor and plow I saw in their big workshop is navigated by satellite and could probably plow my 42 acre farm back home in about 10 minutes! The purpose of the detour was to weigh our hot rods on the big scale they use to weight their grain trucks. Double Exposure is a lite weight at 2660 lbs. I bet we had 300lbs of junk (tools n stuff we have NOT needed) in the back though.
The winds were really knocking all of our cars around on our way in to Amarillo. Kind of felt a little eerie cause one would be constantly steering the car toward the wind, then the wind would briefly stop causing the car to dart toward the wind!
Ray and Ken Gollahan had a minor breakdown for a few hours when their 32 coupe had a fuel pump problem. They got er fixed and caught up w the crew in Amarillo.
We stopped in to see Mark Warrick at Soncy Road Rod n Custom Shop. He has a really modern shop and does all sorts of custom work, really wild choppers and collision repairs. Mark’s dad, Bill Warrick stopped in and took us to see a few buildings full of cool engines, finished cars, projects, signs n stuff. I thought I had a bunch of stuff n things! Bill Warrick is clearly winning!
By the time we finished at Bill Warrick’s place the winds had whipped up to 40 to 50 mph’s and the temperature dropped a bunch. Mike n I put our handy dandy DED lexan Lowe’s inspired window curtains back in our car when we got back to the hotel. The Weather Channel is barking about a blizzard in Colorado which reaches down to the New Mexico border. The Tour guys are to head into Albuquerque Friday without me. It sounds like we have just missed the big October snow storm but Friday’s drive will tell the tale!
I am jumping back to Somerset, Kentucky for the day to help finish up the Somer Nites Cruise-In season. (http://www.somernitescruise.com) Dr James Sawyer asked me to be keynote speaker at their banquet Friday nite. Then the plan is for me to catch back up with the Driven Dirty Tour in Flagstaff Saturday to finish in Vegas on Sunday. One good thing about jumping off the Tour for a day is that I will be with more car folks in Somerset! Hotrodders and antiquers are the best people in the world! I’m biased though!
I will catch you up on the westward wayfarers trekking without me toward Albuquerque later!
From the road,
Corky
