Car, car, c-a-r-...
Today we did something we've never done, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We went to the annual car show and exhibition at LeMay and Marymount center.
This was in two pieces. For the ticket price of $10 we drove to Washington High School in Parkland, got on a bus to the LeMay family estate, took the shuttle to Marymount, and reversed the process. From alighting the first bus to go buy our tickets, to getting off the last bus to go back to our car, we spent three hours. I have no idea how many cars we saw.
Harold LeMay was nuts about cars. He brought them home from all over. When persuaded to sell some, he bought more. He bought the first ambulance ever created. He bought Bristol double-decker buses from Pennsylvania made in England. He bought a 1924 Chevrolet Phaeton in Johannesburg, South Africa. (That one was very rare and particularly gorgeous.) He crammed cars, antique fire trucks, tractors, steam engines, you name it, everywhere he could figure out a space, with a very tolerant wife.
He made money by going into a business no one particularly wanted: garbage. His company still has the contract out in the county. One of the first recyclers, his trucks are a familiar sight. He died a few years ago, but Tacoma has a world car museum downtown, opened just a year ago, largely on the strength of his collection and his contacts, and this separate family exhibition space south of the city.
Marymount Academy was dedicated in 1922 as a boys' military academy, run by Dominican nuns. After fifty years, it tried to stay alive as a non-military boarding school, but five years of that was all they managed. When there were expensive problems cropping up with the property, the Dominicans tried to sell it. There was no other bid but LeMay's. That was all right, because he promised to keep it up, fix it up, and allow the use of it to the nuns for as long as they needed it for their own retirement housing. A senior center and two churches use space now, and there was all this room for cars. Buying, selling, buying more, switching them up, restoring them.
(I didn't have my camera, so these are all gleaned online.)
Have you ever seen a three-wheel vehicle? This is a Messerschmitt, we saw a white one just like this--.
But the most fun was a Mercedes-Benz of comparable vintage with only one door--in the front. You opened up from the handle on the left, swung out the door and climbed into the space and turned your body in under the wheel. There was one seat, but it had a little space behind, inside, for your things. The engine was in back. It was the little Smart Car of its day, I guess.
What makes this one Saturday a year unique is that the local car clubs come and set up their cars all over the lawns to show them off. There's also an auction. Run out of money for your dream and want to sell it someone else? Been looking for just that year and model for ages? This is the place to come.Otherwise, just walk the rows and gaze.
Amid the entries laid out on the fields, I loved the teardrop trailers. Each custom done, I have seen them on the road--mostly years ago--and thought they only carried stuff, as low-drag, small untility trailers. I looked at these and said, those are the mummy bags of trailers...but I suppose more accurately they are the pup tents.
They have a double bed size (thin) mattress on the floor, typically with shelves on the back end which are raised off the floor enough for your feet. Heaven help you if you're very tall or if you toss and turn--you could wake up with bruised ankles. Then opening out of the back curve to the outside, you can create whatever small shelves or bins you want. You can buy the plans to make your own--check ebay.
For my parents and siblings, someone had the 1947 version of a pop-up trailer. The top cranked up and was locked, with tent sides, but there were no pull-out beds on the ends. It was simply that big, the size of the 'box,' and two people could sleep by putting the dining table down level with the benches.
We saw Packards, Chevrolets, Hudsons, Daimlers, Nashes both the little Metropolitans and the 'saloons' (sedans). Model A's and Model T's to the first Mustang--Fords from all decades. Companies we'd never heard of before. There was a car that drove FDR, one that drove the first Chancellor of the new West Germany when he visited Stuttgart. There were so many convertibles. One1947 Ford Fairlane was set up stopped in mid-reveal, with the roof half-retracted, the back lifted, and the clear space needed for the mechanisms dwarfed the luggage box carefully set aside in the center of the back.
There were 1930's cars with huge running boards and conspicuous ornamentation. One of those, with a two tone mulberry paint job, I took one look at and declared it a perfect gangster car.
All the things that man has created, played with, altered, used. Polished, restored, rescued, solving their damages and wear. Things that at one time or another someone thought no longer useful or worth bothering with. A sense of history, tracing the desire for status, speed, beauty, or utility--these machines we create for our use that sometimes completely captivate us. Amazing.
This was in two pieces. For the ticket price of $10 we drove to Washington High School in Parkland, got on a bus to the LeMay family estate, took the shuttle to Marymount, and reversed the process. From alighting the first bus to go buy our tickets, to getting off the last bus to go back to our car, we spent three hours. I have no idea how many cars we saw.
Harold LeMay was nuts about cars. He brought them home from all over. When persuaded to sell some, he bought more. He bought the first ambulance ever created. He bought Bristol double-decker buses from Pennsylvania made in England. He bought a 1924 Chevrolet Phaeton in Johannesburg, South Africa. (That one was very rare and particularly gorgeous.) He crammed cars, antique fire trucks, tractors, steam engines, you name it, everywhere he could figure out a space, with a very tolerant wife.
He made money by going into a business no one particularly wanted: garbage. His company still has the contract out in the county. One of the first recyclers, his trucks are a familiar sight. He died a few years ago, but Tacoma has a world car museum downtown, opened just a year ago, largely on the strength of his collection and his contacts, and this separate family exhibition space south of the city.
Marymount Academy was dedicated in 1922 as a boys' military academy, run by Dominican nuns. After fifty years, it tried to stay alive as a non-military boarding school, but five years of that was all they managed. When there were expensive problems cropping up with the property, the Dominicans tried to sell it. There was no other bid but LeMay's. That was all right, because he promised to keep it up, fix it up, and allow the use of it to the nuns for as long as they needed it for their own retirement housing. A senior center and two churches use space now, and there was all this room for cars. Buying, selling, buying more, switching them up, restoring them.
(I didn't have my camera, so these are all gleaned online.)
Have you ever seen a three-wheel vehicle? This is a Messerschmitt, we saw a white one just like this--.
But the most fun was a Mercedes-Benz of comparable vintage with only one door--in the front. You opened up from the handle on the left, swung out the door and climbed into the space and turned your body in under the wheel. There was one seat, but it had a little space behind, inside, for your things. The engine was in back. It was the little Smart Car of its day, I guess.
What makes this one Saturday a year unique is that the local car clubs come and set up their cars all over the lawns to show them off. There's also an auction. Run out of money for your dream and want to sell it someone else? Been looking for just that year and model for ages? This is the place to come.Otherwise, just walk the rows and gaze.
Amid the entries laid out on the fields, I loved the teardrop trailers. Each custom done, I have seen them on the road--mostly years ago--and thought they only carried stuff, as low-drag, small untility trailers. I looked at these and said, those are the mummy bags of trailers...but I suppose more accurately they are the pup tents.
| want to sleep in there? |
| see the relative size--tiny! |
They have a double bed size (thin) mattress on the floor, typically with shelves on the back end which are raised off the floor enough for your feet. Heaven help you if you're very tall or if you toss and turn--you could wake up with bruised ankles. Then opening out of the back curve to the outside, you can create whatever small shelves or bins you want. You can buy the plans to make your own--check ebay.
For my parents and siblings, someone had the 1947 version of a pop-up trailer. The top cranked up and was locked, with tent sides, but there were no pull-out beds on the ends. It was simply that big, the size of the 'box,' and two people could sleep by putting the dining table down level with the benches.
We saw Packards, Chevrolets, Hudsons, Daimlers, Nashes both the little Metropolitans and the 'saloons' (sedans). Model A's and Model T's to the first Mustang--Fords from all decades. Companies we'd never heard of before. There was a car that drove FDR, one that drove the first Chancellor of the new West Germany when he visited Stuttgart. There were so many convertibles. One1947 Ford Fairlane was set up stopped in mid-reveal, with the roof half-retracted, the back lifted, and the clear space needed for the mechanisms dwarfed the luggage box carefully set aside in the center of the back.
| just like this--even red and white! |
There were 1930's cars with huge running boards and conspicuous ornamentation. One of those, with a two tone mulberry paint job, I took one look at and declared it a perfect gangster car.
All the things that man has created, played with, altered, used. Polished, restored, rescued, solving their damages and wear. Things that at one time or another someone thought no longer useful or worth bothering with. A sense of history, tracing the desire for status, speed, beauty, or utility--these machines we create for our use that sometimes completely captivate us. Amazing.
| Vintage Packard |
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