Michael Adams


When I was about 14 years old, a few decades back, my older sister and her family lived in Modesto, CA. Her husband was going to college to be a phys-ed teacher (and cheating on my sister at the same, as I would learn later). He took me after his classes one day to see Gene Winfield’s shop in Modesto, which I think is where he got started.

I think the building had a custom Mercury in the front window and he just walked in to the shop area, and started looking at the stuff. Turns out, he hadn’t asked anyone if he could visit with a teenage relative but he did know the brother of a guy in school. We stayed maybe 20 minutes and there really wasn’t lots to see. Winfield wasn’t there and no one seemed to care that we were.

I didn’t see much that I remember except for the Mercury and I remember that the next month or so, I saw a new issue of Rod & Custom Magazine at the store and it had that car on the cover. I talked my mom into buying it for me, maybe 25Cents at that time. I’ve always been interested in his work.