This ‘50 Ford Custom Convertible, fondly named “Duke of Earl,” is owned by Barry and Suzy Solomon, new VAE members from Westford, Vermont, and San Antonio, Texas. Beginning on page 6, you will read how Barry’s love of automobiles began when he was 15 years old. This car is almost identical to the one he purchased in 1956, although this one is much nicer. Notice the lack of hood ornament or other chrome on the hood. It is called being “nosed.” Also notice the rear wheels without the fender skirts.
As a teenager in the ‘50s, my bedroom walls were not adorned with pictures of Marilyn Monroe or other semi-clad beauties but with pictures of classic cars and subscription to Sports Cars Illustrated, costing an exorbitant 35¢ an issue, $4 a year (ha-ha), was met with an excited and palpitating heart. I was obsessed. The thought of owning one of those sleek and cool MGs, TR3s, Austin-Healeys, etc., made my heart race even faster. Jaguars, Porsches, Ferraris, and that ilk were, of course, out of the question. Furthermore, my beloved, only-Buick-driving dad, would not allow me to get any type of sports car – “There’s not enough metal around you to be safe, son!” So, I was relegated to only be able to get a larger.
At that time, and for the previous two years, I worked as much as possible at Jim Kinsey’s Sunoco station in Baltimore, just down the street from our house. Jim paid me 75¢ an hour for pumping gas and allowed me to keep any tips. He also paid me $1 to wash a car. In the middle of with sub-freezing temperatures, I would put an electric heating coil in a bucket of ice-cold water, warm it up, and then wash a car, hosing it off and drying it with towels before the water could refreeze. In addition to the dollar that he paid me, I would often get several dollars in tips from most customers. We did have a few hotsy-totsy wealthy customers who would also want me to up and deliver their cars back to them, which I did by using Jim’s car for the shuttle. One much older lady, Mrs. Korvath, actually tried to pull a Mrs. Robinson on me, but I wouldn’t have known what to house as fast as possible. Some days I could $14 to $20, a huge sum at that time for this little pisherkeh.
Jim Kinsey was a character… married, short, bald, usually smelled from liquor, and a ball of fire. One day, I walked over to him while he was changing a flat tire and asked him, as only the innocence of a 14 year-old could, “Hey, Mr. Kinsey! What’re ya’ doin’? Changin’ a tire?” Without skipping a beat, he said, “No, Barry, I’m taking a flying **** to the moon!” I was embarrassed at the time, but that is funny as hell now, and I still laugh about it to this day, as well year, I stashed away a couple of hundred dollars and also decided that I didn’t want to continue to be a fat kid anymore. So I put myself on a strict diet, often sated my hunger pangs by sticking the garden hose in my mouth and drinking copious amounts of water, and worked my butt off (literally). I became thin. My goal was to look like the Everly Brothers, those ultra-skinny, gorgeous, Tennesseans who were huge stars at the time, singing such blockbusters as Wake Up Little Susie, Bye, Bye Love, Dream, etc. It was my dream (pun intended) to be like them. So one day I got out my hidden envelope of cash and went to a downtown fashionable men’s clothing store and bought a couple pair of nice pants, finally not from the “husky nice sports jacket. than I had the previous year.
Shortly afterward, now being fifteen-and-a-half, I bought a beat-up, used 1951 Ford convertible and continued to work in the gas and walkways when it snowed. Every dollar I made I put into that car, adding a dual exhaust manifold with, of course, loud dual Glass Pack mufflers, rear fender skirts, continental kit on the rear for the spare tire, blue-dot rear taillight lenses to glow when brakes were applied, 1956 Oldsmobile spinner hubcaps, fuzzy dice (of course), and a floating 1954 Pontiac grille, had it nosed and decked (removing all the chrome and ornaments and making the hood and trunk totally smooth), and had it painted with seven coats of metallic maroon lacquer. Chocolate-colored rolled-and-pleated Naugahyde upholstery beautifully finished off the interior. Then,I hand-painted pinstripes all around the metal dashboard. Even though I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, I removed the two-cylinder heads from that flathead Ford V-8, had them milled down at a machine shop to increase the compression a bit, and painted the outside of them bright red. I first put them on without new gaskets and quickly learned that was not a good idea as the cylinder heads kept leaking air and fuel. So after cursing a new head gaskets, replaced the heads, and installed very shiny chrome bolts to secure them. They looked great. Man, was I cool or what?
For hubcaps, I had always loved the look of the ’56 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 spinner hubcaps. Those chrome beauties had some images of the planets with rings – hence, the name “Rocket 88” – raised over a stippled background under the three-pronged spinners. I got them from a guy named Bobby who worked at the gas station with me. He was a few years older and a real hot-rodder with a souped-up ’52 Ford that could lay rubber in all three gears. I traded him my two Roy Rogers Daisy BB guns for a of those hubcaps (which he probably had stolen). Then I hand -painted the background with the same metallic maroon paint to match the car itself. In all truth, if I may say so myself, it was a neat work of art. A few days after driving the car to my new school, some rotten, thieving @#$%*&! stole my hubcaps despite their having locks on them. So I rationalized that it was okay for me to get another pair the same way, which I did. Further rationalization carried my actions to be justified because it was okay to steal hubcaps from “other guys who steal hubcaps.” Seeing Oldsmobile spinners on any car other than Oldsmobiles in those days probably meant that they had been stolen. Certainly, to this day, I am ashamed of those immature 15-year-old, there was no internet or Mr. Bezos from whom to get another pair delivered to my house within two days.
Almost every available dollar that I earned at the gas station was spent on that car over the next few years. Making out with my girlfriend with the top down on a warm summer night, while listening to The Platters or The Fleetwoods or Johnny Mathis, still elicits mind-boggling memories!
Fast forward a few years – now in college. While studying for final exams at the end of my freshman year at the University of Maryland, I really bore down and put all my time and energies into preparing for them. I didn’t need a car because I never went anywhere other than to walk to the campus library or to the college dining hall. One day my girlfriend, Ellen (later to become my year of high school and did not have a car of her own. I said, “Sure, but just promise me that you won’t go joy-riding with your at driving a stick shift and handled the “three-on-the-tree” very well. I felt good thinking about her being able to use the car and showing it off.
The day that I finished finals, both my parents and Ellen drove from Baltimore to College Park, MD, to pick me up. I was so relieved that finals were over and felt like I had done well on them, which I did. We went out to dinner at Duke Ziebert’s, a really great and popular restaurant in Washington, DC, a place to easily see a lot of high-powered congressmen and, sometimes, even the President of the United States himself. We had a great dinner and drove home to Baltimore late that night. The next day I intended to get my car back, but at breakfast, my Dad told me that while I was studying for finals, his Buick needed to go into the shop for some work so he had taken my Ford from Ellen and used it for a few days. He then seemed a bit embarrassed to tell me that while he had it, he had to swerve to avoid an oncoming truck and had rammed my car into a telephone pole and totaled it. He was not hurt; that was all that mattered to me. While I was terribly disappointed, I could never be angry or resentful of my Dad for any reason in the world, the least of which would be for damaging my car. In the meantime, I could use his pink-and white 1956 Buick Roadmaster almost anytime I needed it. He said that we would go looking for another car for me in the next week or two.
A few days later, June 10th, 1959, was my 18th birthday. Dad walked into my bedroom to wake me up and said, “Get dressed and come with me. I want to show you something.” I asked what it was, but he just said, “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you later.” We drove to South Baltimore to H&H Motors, a used car lot owned by friends of my father. Perched on the corner display plat-form, raised about 10 feet in the air, was a shiny 1958 black Austin-Healey 100-6 roadster convertible, white top and chrome wire wheels. Dad said, “See anything you like?” I almost fainted. I lost my breath and started shaking. Since the first day of my pubescence, I yearned for a sports car, but my parents always said that those cars were too dangerous and much too expensive, so I had much given up the pursuit or even trying to pray for one. Now, here in front of me was one of the most iconic, cool, gorgeous, hot, desirable pieces of rolling metal art on the face of this earth. I said, “Dad, are you kidding me? Please say you’re not kidding!” He said, “No, if you like it, it’s yours. Happy birthday, son.” As always, he had followed his mandate of: “You can never spoil a good child.” I think that he paid Mr. Horowitz about $2,000 cash for the car (a fortune for us at that time) and followed me home. I spent the next week, day and night, polishing it with Simonize car wax every minute that I was not driving it. Even as I write this, I can still feel the joy and adrenaline of getting that car. Only in my dreams had I ever gotten to drive or own one of those beauties. Was that the best birthday present on the face of this Earth or what!? I was in Heaven.
Many years later, probably about ten or fifteen, Dad confessed to me that he really did not wreck my Ford. It was Ellen who did it. She had, indeed, ridden around gallivanting with the top down with her girlfriends, listening to loud rock ‘n’ roll music, got distracted, and smashed up my Ford. But my parents loved her, so Dad took the rap for her. Hell, I couldn’t even be mad at her. After all, her crash got me the car of my dreams. WOW!
Now, almost two-thirds of a century later, after decades of humongous efforts and toils, I have a few really old beauties to gawk over every day. I duplicated that ’51 Ford convertible (actually now a ’50) with those Olds Fiesta Spinners and ’54 Pontiac floating grille. Oh, what memories!
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