[Bruce_MO]

I was hooked on Model "A's at age 8 when my brother Doug bought one when he was 15. He surprised me one day when I was 12...he bought me my own car and let me work on it up the street at his house. I finished it (a '29 CC pickup) when I was 17 and me and a buddy of mine planned to drive it from St. Louis to Memphis in 1971 to the 2nd Annual Street Rod Nationals. We left at 3am and got about 10 miles before we had burned out the headlight bulbs and all the spares I had. Seems I had a loose wire at the terminal box; later in Engineering school I learned it was a practical example of Ohm's Law. We slept beside the road until sun-up and then drove the rest of the way to Memphis. At Memphis, we saw countless (well, 600 anyway) neat street rods all over the fairgrounds. There was also a local club hosting a show for restored cars and so I entered my truck. I remember a '29 Town Car also entered. I won "best commercial" and "longest distance", and I thought that was pretty neat for a 17 year old kid. We planned on camping one night (no money) and then staying 2 nights at the host hotel with my brothers and some other buddies who were driving down the next day. We slept on on the ground that first night until the mesquitos got so bad that I couldn't stand it, so then we tried to sleep in the truck. I woke up with my face swollen and dozens of bites on my arms, and I had killed about 20 of them and lined them up on the dash rail to scare the others off. It was the most miserable night I've ever had. But the rest of the trip and the cars (and drinking beer provided by older brothers) was a blast. I traded the pickup for a really nice original '32 Victoria when I was 19, and the story of driving it from St. Louis to Miami, FL to be my daily driver in college was another memorable adventure for another day.

Merry Christmas