My father, Robert L. -- or just “Bob” -- got that car guy gene also, only on steroids! Being born in 1940 and raised in the automotive heyday of the 1950’s, he was building hot rods throughout his teenage and high-school years. After learning to drive in Grampie’s ’53 Merc, he got his first car, a ’51 Ford Club Coupe. To make it all his own, he proceeded to nose and deck the front, and install a Mercury Grille, followed by a slick, new Maroon paint job. Now this got the attention of everyone in his high school and he quickly became the go-to guy for light customizing and paint work.
He built and maintained many of his buddies’ cool cars in Grampie’s old cinder-block detached two-car garage. Work included custom paint jobs, with a little Frenching of the head and taillights, as well as numerous drivetrain swaps. He remembers painting cars in the middle of winter, with the potbellied stove glowing cherry red, and the air so thick with paint fumes that you could hardly see, much less breathe. It’s a miracle he didn’t blow the roof clean off the garage!
Dad sold the ’51 Ford for a ’53 Ford Victoria. He nosed and decked this one as well, added Lake Pipes, but left it in primer for the old-school look. One of his early favorites was a ’39 Ford Deluxe Coupe with a dropped front axle. He Frenched the lights and rolled the wheel-well openings using brazed-in copper tubing with a lead finish, for added wheel and steering clearance. He painted this one a Midnight Black and finished it off with another set of Lake Pipes. I believe this was the final straw for Grampie, not being able to use his garage for weeks on end. As a result, dad got kicked out of the garage and had to find someplace else to work on his and his friend’s cars.
After his high school graduation in 1958, dad completed two years of Junior College at Broome Tech and then four years as an Airman in the U.S. Air Force. He was stationed at Eglin AFB in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, from 1960-64. The car scene was still in full swing and the base was fortunately loaded with gearheads and their cool cars! They had a full machine and fab shop on-base, to build or modify whatever car they wanted when off duty. For Dad, this was a dream come true.
As a result, about every minute not working or sleeping was spent tinkering with his and his new Air Force buddies’ cars. With such a collective following of the car culture on-base, including several ranking officers, it wasn’t long before they were able to convince the Base Commander to let them open a sanctioned drag strip on one of the decommissioned runways. Street and drag cars came out of the woodwork to grudge-race their buddies at this little-known Florida Panhandle Drag Way!
With uncle Al being only two years younger than dad, they looked a lot alike. Al came down for a visit from Binghamton, to check out the scene that dad had been raving about. Well, he looked so much like my dad that he stayed in the barracks, ate in the mess hall and basically impersonated my dad for everything but actual work. By this time all his buddies included Al as one of the gang. Dad had been working nights, so it worked out until . . . The Master Sergeant saw them both one weekend walking down the stairs together. Needless to say, that extended visit came to an abrupt end for Al, with emergency leave for my dad to drive him back to New York. Fortunately, only a stern reprimand was all he returned to -- though fully expecting a Court Martial.
Besides the year-round beautiful weather and a dragstrip at their disposal, there was also some of the country’s most beautiful beaches are right there in Florida (Fort Walton, Destin, San Destin, etc.). It was during this stay at Eglin AFB that he first met my mother -- and at the beach, of course! Unfortunately, timing wasn’t the best as it was the summer of ’64 and he was about to complete his four-year stint in the service, and then head back to New York. To complicate things slightly, my mother’s father, Major Col. Edwin S. Day, was a decorated WWII B-17 bomber pilot with the 8th Air Force, and a career officer. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with his daughter dating a non-commissioned lowly Airman, and actually had forbidden it!
Well, after several weeks of sneaking around, they announced their intentions with or without the major colonel’s blessing! I guess my dad was convincing enough, as they were married a short time later with his soon-to-be in-laws’ full support, and off to upstate New York they went. After a pleasant fall, and long, cold winter (my mother’s first experience with snow), I arrived the next summer in late July of 1965, “with a wrench in one hand and a
Hot Rod Magazine in the other” as my dad said.
Now with mom and dad living back in upstate New York, he started his new career working for Corning Glass Works, in Corning, NY. Coincidentally, uncle Al was also working for Corning, but at a different factory in another part of town -- the brothers again reunite! Al had also gotten married and had a son, Douglas, about six months prior to my birth. Now the stage is set, and the 4th Generation of car guys in the Young family is taking shape.
Again, that car-guy gene got passed down to its next generation, fully intact and raring to go. Dad built a detached two-car garage behind their first house to continue with his car-building hobby. He decided that there was more money to be made rebuilding wrecks, than in light customizing of local cars. With all that going on, it seemed like every single day involved something to do with cars. As a toddler, I’d carry around hubcaps or loose tools. One time I filled a friend of my dad’s gas tank with water while playing Gas Station Man with the garden hose! It wouldn’t surprise me if ole Great Grandpa Homer was looking down and smiling!My dad had many cool cars throughout my early childhood, but I was too young to remember. Most were wrecks he rebuilt and sold, with the proceeds to put towards their nest egg for the next chapter. I do have a brief memory of my mom’s first car, a Black 1964 Mercury Comet. I shut my finger in the door when I was 3 or 4 years old and it was my first kid trauma of sorts! I forgot to mention that the stork brought me a little brother, Christopher, in the summer of ’68. Now it was time for a bigger home. Dad put enough money aside building and selling wrecks that they were able to move out to the country, into a modest story-and-a-half Cape Cod home with some acreage. Now he had his own private Idaho, without neighbors complaining about the beating and banging going on in the garage!