Quite a Day – July 6th

 July 6th, Quite a day.  By Ken Perrier

 On July 6, Ken took his AMX to a car show held at Durham Dodge in Oshawa for two reasons: being that he had purchased his “Ram Hemi” pick-up there and he had not attended  or put a car in their show in the past16 years. As everybody knows, the weather on that weekend was spectacular with 75 degrees of sun and a nice breeze all day long. Just that alone was enough for the car people to enjoy a day out. Durham Dodge, only one year ago, opened up the entry category to ALL makes and models cuz the numbers had dropped off from the days of more than 100 cars; (the general manager was very satisfied to have several Fords, a handful of GMs, a dozen street rods and even a couple of “rat rods”on site.) The day rolled along smoothly as prizes were handed out for “lucky draw” random winners and when I heard my car ID number, I went up to the DJ table to pick up my bit of “lucky treasure” to take home. Being four or five hours into the day, I assumed that the prize items would be more or less the leftovers like a x-small T-shirt  or an envelope packet of car wash soap, so I was stunned to see a large (20”) wall clock on the table along with a large appearing  T-shirt. The DJ says “reach into this plastic pail and take out a paper ticket”; so I do that and hand him a ticket with prize #11 on it. He goes over to the front of the table and turns over the big clock and on the bottom is half of a roll ticket with #11 on it!  The DJ hands me the clock and says”here ya go, you have no idea how many people were commenting on how much they would like to win it!” I thanked the man and went back to my car to put the clock in the back seat? Thinking, cool! A nice little bonus for the day and this thing will look good in our new abode (we are moving sometime this year).

 About an hour and a half later, it is time to hand out the prizes based on tally votes by the people that bring a car into the show. There were around 75 cars there and the show organizers had provided 18 trophies to be handed out for the 18 cars collecting the most total votes. Each ballot had room for six votes to use for cars you like. First name and car ID was the Orange ’68 AMX.  Hmmm I thought there’s some VERY NICE cars here that I picked, this is cool. After the trophies were all out, the General Manager came up to the PA and thanked everyone for coming out and stated that he had the pleasure of picking the Durham Dodge first choice award winner for their 2014 show and proceded to say that this was not that east a job with all of the beautiful vehicles on site but he finally decided on a car that had a connection to the Chrysler Fraternity ( I thought holy cow he’s picked my AMX)  and YES he did! Super bonus to get that recognition that day.  

 The last piece of business was to announce the winner of the 50-50 draw. I had been razzing my friends all day that I was going to win the 50-50 draw because I had a few tickets, one which ended in “409”, one of my favourite Beach Boys songs and a pretty decent motor to have as well. There I was, staring like a hawk at the ticket while the numbers were called out and I never heard “409” but after a few seconds it finally clicked in my (slow) brain that he said 3410. I yelled out “I GOT IT” and grinned like the proverbial cat that just ate the canary as I marched up to collect a bag with $146.oo in it. Yes there were several people shaking their heads in disbelief but smiling while saying things about a horseshoe somewhere or going out and buying a lottery ticket with all of the numbers that worked today.

 Can you believe that???   A lucky draw prize, a trophy from votes from the car owners, the first choice trophy from the dealership and then the 50-50 draw to boot!!!  A few days later I was in Durham Dodge to order some pieces for my truck and one of the guys in the parts department looked up and said ”hey there’s that guy that one everything on  Sunday” I just smiled and said “never happened before and probably will never happen again but it was fun!”  See ya’next year.

 Like I titled this story “QUITE A DAY”.    keep on Ramblin’        Ken