Chester shares some stories with us
The T’man was once a smart but timid little guy whose favorite past time was reading. He admired the older guys from around his neighborhood who drove cool cars and were already in high school or graduated. There was the Air Force guy, Pete with a 56 Chevy 2dr hardtop, the Ford tractor mechanic Gerald with several different vehicles (all loud and fast), Jace with a hand me down Ford Shoebox, Scott with his mom’s 52 Plymouth Mordor and Dean with his 49 Merc (go figure).
It was Summer
and Gerald needed some help driving a tractor from one hay field to another
and
found the Tman sucking on a Big Red (another favorite pastime at $ .07 a bottle)
at the general store. He took me with him and I obviously impressed him with my
tractor driving skills so that he hired me permanently for the task. Part of the
hay baling experience was driving a 49 Ford Street Rod pickup out in the fields.
It had an Olds overhead engine and a turbo hydro trans. Rolled and pleated
interior and white ivory (plastic ) steering wheel. I don’t know where Gerald
had gotten the truck because he certainly would not have built it that way. He
bled Blue and his blood cells were oval.
Anyway, at some point in time, Gerald became disgusted with the Olds powered truck and devised a way to obtain a 292 Ford truck engine and transmission (another story) for a “swap”. Now, Tman had heard and read about engine swapping in a few car magazines but did not really understand. Gerald enlisted my help, put me to work disconnecting bolts, nuts, wires, rods, hoses etc. speaking some foreign language-3/4 open end there, 9/16ths boxed here, slotted screw driver there. See what I mean?
Finally, the hood is off the truck, the radiator is out, the wires are sticking out everywhere and Tman is on a front loader tractor with a chain wrapped around the bucket and bolted to the engine. Gerald is standing on the frame rails straddling the engine and giving me directions” back up!, raise it! back up! lower it! All the time rocking the whole motor back and forth. All if a sudden, the thing pops out, Engine transmission and all hanging six feet in the air on the end of the bucket loader and I DID IT!! HOOKED FOR LIFE.
Tman had been tinkering with cars for a couple of years now. He had been driving an old 53 Chevy till it dropped, then had built a 34 Ford with a Chevy V8 and developed a little reputation with his buddies as the guy that could fix it or tune it. But now, it was time for college, girls and some new experiences (Wink wink). The 34 was not the car he needed to make the daily trip to school and back so he traded the barely running 53 Bel Air for a not running 56 2dr post- the start of a life-long love affair with 56 Chevys.
Now, Tman’s dad thought this was mighty strange. Tman’s dad didn’t have much to say to Tman around that time. Must have been the old bull young bull thing. but finally, he did give tentative approval to the plan to buy a 283 from the junk yard and swap it into the 56. Tman got all the parts assembled under the mesquite tree beside the garage and scheduled his good buddies to come help. Well, wouldn’t you know it started drizzling rain and nobody showed.
Tman, needing to get it running for school the next day, turned to his Dad and asked for help. Dad agreed but allowed as how he didn’t know anything about these “new cars”. Dad proved an able helper and willing to take instruction. Three hours, a little cussing and some mud later, and the car was fired up and moving. From that time on, Tman was a grown up whose knowledge could be trusted, whose opinion could be sought and to whom advice could be given with out parental authority (because I told you so!) to back it up. We were friends until he passed on.
ITS NICE TO HAVE A HANDY GUY AROUND
Tman and his lovely wife, Mrs Tman and new baby take a trip to West, by God, Virginia with T’man’s parents to show off the kid to the relatives. Of course, because they are so poor they are traveling in the parent’s 69 Chevelle 2dr hardtop with a 305 and a 3 speed. That way Mom and Dad are picking up most of the tab.
The plan is for everybody to ride to West Virginia together and then for the Tman, wife and kid to take the car back to Texas with Mom and Dad flying back. Logic: they get to stay longer. Tman and family strike off down south to Florida then across to New Orleans to visit some more relatives and mooch some free food and bed time. However, on the way, the 69 develops a nasty habit of stopping dead in its tracks about two miles away from the gas station after a fill up. About the second time this happened, with an angry mother and a crying baby (no wink wink), Tman contacts Dad and is told “oh yea, it had done that once or twice before we left Texas…”.
Tman correctly surmises a vapor lock from a weak fuel pump and decides to take measures to fix it. A proper length of gasoline hose, two clamps and a hack saw are purchased on credit from a car parts store in Biloxi, Mississippi. The ever practical Mrs Tman says “let’s go to the beach for a picnic” and so, in between baloney sandwiches and sand everywhere, Tman installs a length of neoprene hose from the fuel pump to the carburetor routing it over to the inner fender, away from the exhaust headers to avoid any heat and tying it up with a piece of string (ever the shade tree) all with a minimum of environmental damage to the hot white sands of the Biloxi beachs.
Mrs Tman is much happy with this turn of events (wink wink). And the remainder of the trip goes just swimmingly. The real kicker for this tale is while the string rotted out and was replaced, the neoprene bypass surgery lasted far longer than the owner and the pump was never replaced.
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