Just another old Illinois farm boy here……..think it’s something in the water?

For me I think it was just something that grew gradually in my early years. Dad was a farmer (and that was his first love) but also a damn good mechanic. He just didn’t like working on cars or trucks. I did have a couple of uncles on the other hand that were probably a big influence, 1 was into drag racing and the other hot street cars (when Uncle Curt would come down it was always interesting to see what he would be driving I particularly remember a couple year old 59 Belair 348 Tri-power).

Like most kids I did a lot of models in my pre/early teens, and it didn’t take too long after I got them built to start taking the motors out of one and put it in one it was never intended for (a trait that has stayed with me for the rest of my life). I also remember the Christmas my brother and I got a slot car set. It didn’t take me long to trade my interest in the electric train set we got a couple years earlier to my brother for his interest in the slot cars. What seemed like a good idea at the time was to convert a couple of my hard plastic models to slot cars……they sure looked cool, but the crashes (it usually only took 1) were rather spectacular with pieces flying everywhere.

By the time I was 14/15 I was restoring antique tractors. I started with the 36 John Deere that my Granddad had bought new and did a couple others, by then the tractor pulls were becoming popular and I built a couple for the hotrod class (Car V8s and transmissions coupled to the original tractor trans) plus had a restored F30 to pull in the antique class.

My HS had a program where you went to school half a day and worked the other half in a participating business (and got credits for it). I went to work in the local Chrysler Plymouth dealer (much to Dads disappointment who wanted me in the John Deere dealer). I was in heaven at 16 working in a Chrysler/Plymouth dealer in 68-70, and learned a lot, plus getting to work on the Road Runners, GTXs, and even had a couple of HEMI cars come thru…..and we also had a contract to work on the local districts State cop cars.

At this point it’s just something I’ve always done, and can’t picture myself without at least one active project.