The day started off sunny but just a little on the cool side as I fired up my Ambassador and hit the road to Lindsay. We met in the parking lot of the now closed Target store and headed off to the show. Those who were able to make it were Peter Lewko with his Rebel Machine, Ken Edwards and Roberta Sommerville in Ken’s AMX, Ken & Irene Perrier in Ken’s AMX, John Vander Meulen in his AMX, Al Rogers in his Rambler and myself in the Ambassador.
We got placed on the main street (Kent St W) on the north side and got our chairs, tents, etc set up. I don’t have any figure for attendance at this time, but Kent St W was closed from Lindsay St S to Albert St N which is about 6 blocks. Several of the sides streets, mostly south of Kent St W were closed and had vehicles parked on them so I am guessing there were around 300 vehicles. There was a great spectator turnout. The temperature soared to 28 and I heard with the humidex factor, reach 32. It was very hot and every once in a while, we would get a slight breeze which we greatly enjoyed!
As Ken Edwards, Peter Lewko and I went down to complete our registration, we came across this Hudson Terraplane that a friend of Ken’s had brought – along with his very cool Corvette that I personally loved – custom-made rims with dragons instead of spokes; dragons racing down both sides of the Corvette from the hood back – apparently something like ¼ to ½ a million sunk into the car!!! But the Hudson was very cool as well and HUGE!
Another member of the club, Jeff Spratt, brought a VW hippy midget bus complete with a Peace symbol on the grill! He and Carol are going to drive from Port Perry to California starting mid-week. We wish them a safe and incident-free trip!
I saw two other American Motor cars, a Gremlin and a Javelin as well. There were lots of very nice looking vehicles and one participant mumbled that he wasn’t sure he would even get a trophy this year because of all the really great looking and wonderfully restored vehicles.
We wrapped up around 3:30 and as I was leaving, our group set up an applause as they just found out that Peter had been presented with the Rick Broomer Memorial Award. Peter said: “from what we were told at the completion of the show, the family of Rick Broomer picks a car for this award and it is then presented to the car owner in his memory. The award is sponsored by Everyday Specialties Inc. From what I understand, Rick was one of the volunteers that helped make the show the success that it is today.” Here's Cody standing in front of Peter's car. His mother wrote that "he is very proud to pick a car in memory of his grandfather every year".
The show was a success and we enjoyed the day – out with our ‘pride & joys’ and friends!