We started our PDDT Tuesday morning in Springfield, Missouri with a couple of bananas and a cup of coffee. It had rained pretty hard all night long and was still coming down when we were called together by our illustrious potentate-Posie for a quick meeting to jump start our day. After a wonderfully inspirational message, (insert tongue in cheek here) we set our GPS’s, cranked our flatheads and hit the road heading West. It was funny that although we all set our GPS systems for quickest way, and were all going to the same place, ours took us the scenic route on old Route 66,..and we didn’t mind at all! We saw some remnants of the coolest neon signs, old gas stations and motels. Wade and I agree that it would not take too much effort to make any of these cool Route 66 towns into 1950′s Movie sets. GR3, is the affectionate name that all of our Honest and Coker guys call our Roadster pickup. She developed a miss about an hour after Wade n I were on the road. We opted to drive on to our first stop and simply put up w the slight miss for the rest of the morning.

Ok, so I mentioned the GPS took us a different way than the rest of the boys traveled. Our scenic route was clearly more fun and was supposed to be faster but when we arrived at Glenn Pray’s in thriving downtown Broken Arrow, Oklahoma…. All the other cars on the PDDT were already there. We took the “scenic” route, meaning LONGER.

First thing I saw was a military version DC-3 fuselage. My imagination ran wild with cool stuff to do with a DC-3 body until Wade said I was crazy and that my wife would kill me so I came back down to sanity and stepped into Glenn Pray’s bldg. Glenn Pray was the first guy to produce second generation cars…most people call them reproductions. Cars like the Pray Auburn speedster, the Pray repro L-29 Cord with the Corvair motor, and a Duesenberg. There were still a number of his cars around, and dang it if Glenn Pray was still around too!! He looked like he had survived a heart attack or two and had a little trouble speaking but he came out to greet us and show us around.

After touring all the cool stuff, spare Auburn and Cord parts, Honest Mike took a look at GR3 and thought we might have a bad plug wire or something. Mike did a full forearm check of the MSD shock value of my little truck and then changed a plug so we could head out to lunch. BTW, it is really important to insert here that I told the guys that I was pretty sure the distributor cap was the issue. (please do not give Honest Mike Goodman, the flathead expert, a hard time because I told him the distributor cap was probably the problem.

Ken Gross has been a buddy of mine for a few years. He is a wonderful writer, hot rod expert, and author of the wonderful ART OF THE HOTROD book featuring all the cool artistic car builders. Ken also likes cool restaurants and experiences. We pulled out of Pray’s following Ken but had no clue that he was not going to follow the crowd but find another unique dining experience. We ate gormet hotdogs and hamburgers in basically a roadside vending trailer with an outdoor patio and indoor dining too. The indoor was accomplished quite uniquely with a British double decker bus! The burger I ate was good! Afterwards, we signed his bus, took pictures and headed west toward Tulsa. If you are ever in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma stop in to see Zesty Freddies. Wade n I agreed we will probably see Guy Fieri of Triple D fame at the SEMA Show and would recommend he visit Zesty Freddie’s dive.

It is really cool to see Father and Son do well in a business together. Our next stop was in Sand Springs (outside of Tulsa) Oklahoma to see Jim and Jason Smith’s Hot Rod Garage. Jim is the dad. He and his son Jason have built up quite a little business buildin Hot Rods for folks around.

The cars in the shop we’re all tastefully done. There was a cool Model A coupe w a Model A quickchange rear, wires and a wicked two carb Miller overhead Model B engine. It sounded and look bad!

Jason had furthered a nice 32 roadster Honest Mike had sold our friend Gene McKinney from up in Riceville, TN. Jason traded him a few Ben Franklins and a nice 34 Cabriolet body. It was fun to see how small the car guy world is. There was a cool mural painted on the deck lid which said, “Buy War Bonds”.

I learned something about choppin 32 windshields from Ken Gross. The best chop is exactly 3 1/4 inches. The way to check it to make sure its right is to hold up a US one dollar bill on the glass and both ends of the bill should barely touch chrome. Kinda cool I thought!

Mike and Wayne Pugh changed the distributor cap n rotor on GR 3 and it was terribly hard not to say “I told you so!” So, don’t tell Mike I did on the blog!

We left the Hot Rod Garage and all clearly had ribs on the cranium, so we made a right straight into the Tulsa’s famous RIB CRIB. They had an all you can eat deal for $10.99 each. We did damage, real rib damage. You know why? Cause we are eatin our way cross the USA dudes and dudettes! All for now! Over!

From the road,

A rib packed Corky n Wade.

Oh yes. Captains log day 3. You remember the little detour provided by the GPS? Wade figured out and admitted he didn’t read one of the GPS prompts when she asked him if he wanted to bypass toll roads! He’s embarrassed so don’t rib him.

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