Just a mile or two north of Springer, New Mexico there's a Shell travel center where you pay 25-30 cents more per gallon for gas than anywhere else in the area charges. As I filled her up, I could hear me grumbling to myself about that. When my wife returned to the car she told me there were some old cars on display inside. So after begrudgingly refueling the car, I pulled it out of the gas pump lane and went inside to look. There, tucked neatly in a snug corner of the store were four automobiles. A 21st Century Ford Thunderbird and three classic Fords from the last century of the previous millenium, the Fifties.
After ogling these oldies for a few minutes, I can honestly say they totally overwhelmed their newer cousin. Meticulously restored in every detail, their paint coats obviously contained hours and hours of effort and attention the new assembly line T-bird didn't. I should have taken a picture with the newer car alongside one of the others. The classics blindingly reflected the light--and love--that went into their restorations. You'll just have to trust me on that.
As I came to learn from the woman lovingly dusting these beauties with the softest of cloths, they belong to the owner of the travel center, Emory Russell. I also learned they are 3 of more than 25 rotating classics he displays here until his new museum on Interstate 40 just outside Amarillo, Texas is completed. It is there they will find their permanent home. I left the travel center realizing what the extra 25-30 cents per gallon I'd just paid for gas was going towards. And I felt much better. In fact, I felt I was one who'd gotten a bargain, so worth it was the tremendous nostalgia trip I'd just been on. And the extra mileage for the premium gas was excellent. Better than the 40 miles we'd been getting. This fill up we got 50+ years!
5 comments:
ahh yes, the old beauties...
i feel blessed as we have a place in town where they regularily have on display restored cars and motorcycles - check out their web site...they have some beauties also - the desert heat and lack of humidity make it a prime area for vehicle restoration and preservation...
thanks for the beautify pics!
http://www.hispeedcustoms.com/home.html
I love these old t-birds, esp that top baby blue convertible that reminds me of the one Suzanne Somers drove in American Graffiti. I've enjoyed your last few posts & am glad your home weathered all that flooding so well, dada. Floods, fires, hurricanes, what next, locusts? Yikes. Sorry for ranting about taxes on your last post. I've once again managed to injure my back & seem to be taking out my pain the world at large. D.K.
az: Thanks for the link to hi speed customs. You shouldn't have done that. Yes, I mean you SHOULD NOT have done that.
That's because I got side-tracked there looking at old, classic hotrods. And I found a great old early thirties Ford box for sale the owner said could burn rubber as long as you could keep your foot on the gas pedal. Asking price: if I remember, about $16,500.
But....BUT....the one I really want is the cool old purple '49-'51 era Mercury with chopped roof ala the Pharoahs' rod in American Grafitti. And I saw one there! My absolute dream car.
Thank heavens it was already sold. And it didn't say what it went for. Thankfully. (I probably couldn't have afforded it anyway.) But being already off the market kept me from wasting a lot of time dreaming about that one.
You really, really should NOT have sent me that. But thanks anyway!
dk: Speaking of American Grafitti, thanks for reminding me why that T-bird seemed familiar to me somehow. Suzanne Somers in Am. Graf.! YES!!
I just loved that movie--as I've noted before. It's such an acheological study I hope is one day recovered, maybe thousands of years hence by some species outside our own. (I doubt we'll be around then.)
But what testament to the car culture of the 50's-60's with drive-in movies and restaurants that catered to kids.
Interestingly, our last night on the road, we stayed at a very nice Holiday Inn Express in Raton, NM. It was adjacent to a Sonic. Not feeling like driving out for dinner anywhere, we walked over to the drive-in.
I went up to the window and asked if they would serve me w/o a car. "I could stand in a parking space and make car noises before ordering," I said.
The girl then showed me to a little outdoor table we could sit at while waiting for our order. Obviously from that area's size, their customer's are primarily "carred people."
It wasn't quite as much fun being a pedestrian. I'd rather pretended to have a car. Sigh.
So sorry to hear about your back. Don't worry about ranting. Rants are always welcome. But bad backs aren't, so get to feeling better real soon! (So you can walk over to a Sonic and pretend to be a car?)
sorry - i just HAD to do it!!
can you imagine the temptation living in the same town and being able to visit the showroom??? awww, i had to share!! big grin!
DK - hope you back feels better soon!
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