'55 Chevy

     At 4:08 p.m., it roared to life.  It roared because what was left of the leprous muffler had scraped itself off on the cement threshold of the barn as it crossed over, ending thirty years of captivity in that barn.

     This time it was different.  It wasn’t my hand turning the ignition switch to the right to activate the starter.  The starter drug down a couple of times.  Release the switch, then try again.  On the third try, it took off.  The unmuffled roar challenged the south wind and rose above it.

     The new owner smiled, waved, shifted the Hurst Mystery shifter into first gear, released the clutch and he was off.  It was a reunion of sorts.  The new owner had driven the car when he was a teen and his buddies had revamped the car. 

     “Revamped” meant replacing the column three-speed shifter with the Hurst conversion.  They installed a rear end lift kit with chrome brackets that raised the back end of the car and made it look like it was going downhill permanently.  Two chrome bugles channeled the exhaust over the rear axle and terminated about a foot or so before reaching the back bumper.      

      Only one of the bugles ported the exhaust.  The other was a dummy.  Those chrome bugles would be the first thing the car would shed during our ownership.  The dummy left with a rough bump on some highway somewhere.  The real one rusted out and had to be replaced with a real tail pipe.           

     The rear wheels were chrome.  The chrome wheels were relegated to the trunk sometime in the early eighties when I was still driving it as my second car.  One of them functioned as the spare.  Now as it left the yard, one chrome wheel served as the right front wheel.  It was the only tire that refused to hold air when the resurrection process began this summer.

 

     The sixties revamping included covering the car with a coat of sky blue paint.  We concluded as we conducted the obligatory presale inspection that the car was probably originally two-toned with a white top.  When we raised the trunk lid, the drain channel running around the trunk perimeter was still original white.

     We were probably the fourth owner.  None of us knew the first owner.  The revampers were probably the second owner.  The third owner was a young lady from Genoa.  She bought it from the revampers who moved on to a GTO.  The young lady wanted to get married, needed the money, didn’t need the car because her intended had a car.

    It was 1969.  The Goodwife, who wasn’t that yet, was entering her final year of “Normal” school.  To complete her degree, she must do her student teaching.  Her appointment was in the Greater Denver area.  She would need some way of commuting to and from her “job.”

     She was looking at all kinds of used cars, like MG’s and Volkswagen beetles.  I knew this car was available, and I preferred it because if I was going to be responsible for maintenance and upkeep, I was much more familiar with the Chevy.  At the time I was driving my skunk, a black four-door 55 Chevy with white top.

      Her father okayed the car deal, but he remonstrated with her long distance over the phone from Hawaii (expensive call) when he found out she had bought a Chevy.  “Why didn’t you buy a Volkswagen?” he asked.  “It would have better resale value.”

       “Yes, but it has a better resale value now, too.  I couldn’t buy a Volkswagen.  Too expensive,” she explained.  She paid $250 for the Chevy.

      When we got married a few months later, it was our only car.  The old skunk bumped out a rod as I returned to my Kansas job after attending her graduation in Greeley and meeting her family for the first time.  Our wedding was a week after her graduation.

      It was replaced as the primary mode of transportation in August of that year when we bought a new 1970 Ford pickup in Montrose while on an end-of-summer camping trip.  After that, the Goodwife drove the new pickup and I used the ’55 to drive to work and to the golf course and airport. 

      We actually had it sold once in 1971, for the original $250.  But the kid backed out of the deal at the last minute.  It stayed on until 1979 when it was demoted to third place by the acquisition of the Molly McBride Dodge.

      It was rarely used for a couple of years.  Then in 1981, I was commuting to Goodland to attend Vo Tech school.  The price of gas went up to over a dollar.  The Dodge and the Ford both got about 14 or 15 miles per gallon of gas.  The Chev could do nearly twenty on the road.

     I had this propane conversion kit that had been installed initially on the skunk when I first started teaching.  In those olden days, I could fill the propane tank for $3 and go about 250 miles on that. 

      When the skunk died, Dad sold it for $50.  Before the guy towed it off, I pulled the propane equipment. Later, I would install it on the 70 Ford pickup.  The tank wasn’t big enough (22 gallons) for that application.  The pickup would only go a hundred miles or so on a tankful.  Plus I experienced fuel pump problems when I ran it on propane.

      In 1981 when the price of gas went over a dollar, propane was still going for 70 cents.  It wasn’ too hard to convert the blue 55 to propane, since I had all the stuff.  It cut down the expense for my Goodland commute considerably.

      At first, I filled at the Coop in Goodland about every other day.  After a while, they said they wouldn’t fill it unless I put access hoses to the outside of the car.  I opened the trunk and hooked their hose directly to the propane tank.  Against safety regulations, they said.  The truth was it was too big of a pain for the propane guy to mess with two or three times a week.

      I found a local propane dealer who set up a 300 gallon tank near his bulk tanks.  I could fill from it and have him fill the main tank as needed.  It was a much better deal.       

     Until 1985 I used the Chev for a work truck.  I had the pickup, but the problem with it, I had to be continually moving tools in and out, lacking a cover for the bed.  I could keep a few tools locked in the trunk of the car, out of the weather, and it was still more economical.

     In 1985 when we moved to Colorado, the Chevy was a superfluous expense we could no longer afford.  Into the red barn it went, still equipped to run on propane.  There it sat until 2015.  The tires were all flat.  I had managed to keep the mice out of it until a couple of years ago.  They got in and made a mess. 

     A neighbor “kid” knew we had this old car collection.  I think he must have been a piano student who snooped around when it wasn’t his turn at the piano.  He always wanted to buy the 1960 Pontiac rusting away in the current bushes.  As I didn’t own the Pontiac, we never could make a deal.

      Then he found out his dad had a history with the ’55 Chev.  His dad was a good friend of the revampers.  The quest was on.  Dan struck a deal with the Goodwife.  It was during the rainy wet Spring of 2015 when all the farmers were idled by the rain and mud.  The car would be a birthday present for his dad.  It was my obligation to get the car out of the red barn where it could be trailered to its new home.      

      The coming-out effort began during the wet weather during harvest.   Brother Harry ferried the air bubble back and forth from air compressor to car.  Remarkably, all the tires except the right front one inflated and stayed inflated.

     After removing the worst of the mice nests and droppings with the shop vac,  I worked on getting the engine to run.  I had to remove the propane conversion from the top of the carburetor.  There was no propane left in the tank. 

     The electric fuel pump worked, for a while.  It pumped some pretty rotten stuff at first.  Adding a a couple of gallons of fresh gas didn’t get immediate results.  Harvest beckoned and the project was abandoned temporarily.  The battery had to go back into the Ford tractor that ran the auger.

      Sometime after harvest, I returned to the project.  I had to replace a leaky fuel line or two when the electric pump shoved the new gas up to the carburetor.  By trickling a few drops of gas into the carburetor throat, I got it to start and run, roughly for a few minutes.  The dust flew, the blue smoke wafted.  I was dialing Brother Harry so he could hear it roar.  Before the phone connection was made, the engine stopped running.

     It was a lengthy process to determine the fuel pump had ceased working.  I replaced filter, added gas, before taking the fuel pump off and determining it was shot.  Some weeks later, I finally put a new pump on it, but not until I had tried a couple of times to repair the old one.

      With the new pump, it fired up and ran, eventually fairly smoothly after it warmed up.  A more thorough vacuuming followed.  All the stuff was out of the way.  Time to try backing out of thirty year old ruts. 

       The car started, but depressing the clutch pedal produced no results.  I couldn’t get the transmission into reverse, or any other gear.  The clutch plate was rusted to the flywheel.

      Out came the battery and back into the Ford tractor it went.  With the tractor, I pulled the Chevy out of its tracks.

     Then around I went and hooked to the front and the Chevy saw the sunlight for the first time in thirty years.  Out in the open, I reinstalled the battery, put the car into first gear and tried the starter.  Reluctantly the starter pulled the engine and the car.  The engine fired and we were off.  I made two or three big circles around the farmyard, pushing the clutch pedal down, releasing, down again. 

      Finally, the clutch plate left the flywheel and I could shift gears.  Not too fast, the brakes were not working.  Oh well, I thought.  We can get it on a trailer now, with a winch.  Time for one more cleaning.  This time, I gave it a bath.  Some of the thirty years of dust was kind of oily, from tractor exhaust?

       Well, there it was, ready to go.  I eased it into the garage and there it sat for a couple of weeks until the deal could be consummated.  Wet weather again.  Dan called.  Did I think they could limp the car to their place?  Their trailer wasn’t exactly made to haul cars.

    “The brakes don’t work, Dan.”  He decided to try it.

     So Dan and his father showed up on a windy cold early October afternoon.  I jacked the car up, one corner at a time.  While Dan operated the brake pedal, I opened up the rusty bleeder valves and bled all four brakes.  They worked!

     I fired it up and backed out of the garage.  Fifteen minutes later, Dad drove the 1955 Chev known as the Patti Wagon into the sunset.

  “Don’t wreck it!” Dan hollered as his Dad eased out on the clutch.  I laughed.  How many times had his dad told him the same thing?

      The new owners promise to keep us up on the progress of the restoration.  I look forward to the new old car.  While I am sad to see it go, I am relieved that someone else has charge of its care from here on.