[This is the last of a three-part story on my journey to Hershey and my
trip around the World's Biggest Automotive Swap Meet. Kind of long, and
not always Forward Look-related. Sorry for taking so long for this
part, but I've had to work a lot of late hours in the past couple of
days. Anyway, feel free to click DELETE now if you'd like.]
HERSHEY
Day Three: Deja Goo
Now, I've slept in a lot of places. Airplanes, bowling alleys, under an
ice cream truck, during tornados and hurricanes... and once, while in a
thunderstorm while roaring down I-95 sitting on a motorcycle that was
stowed in the back of a semi-truck full of hogs (another long story).
I've slept a lot of places, under a lot of strange conditions. One
place I couldn't get any sleep was in my Mercury at Hershey.
I mentioned that this car was not the most comfortable in the world.
It's actually not comfortable at all. At all. No matter which position
I tried to sleep in, I seemed to have a steering wheel, seat belt, or
-something- jabbing me somewhere on my body.
Or maybe it's not the car. Maybe I'm just old now (I will be 30 in a
year & a half). I just don't know. Either way, the second night at
Camp Mercury was not a pleasant one. Nonetheless, I survived.
I woke up around 7:30 am and had a bowl of cereal. I did manage to pack
a nice cooler full of sandwiches, milk, OJ, and 2 cases of Dr Pepper.
Oh... I also had food my mom & dad wanted me to take with me. An odd
assortment. There was an entire cheesecake, a pack of Shitake and
Portabella mushrooms, and even some smoked salmon.
I may have been living in a car, but I had a gourmet restaurant in the
trunk.
Anyway, when my eyes could focus once again, I got dressed and headed
off to the show. Fortunately, the rain had finally stopped about 5
minutes after I woke up, so for once, I wasn't starting the day soaking
wet. Things were looking up.
I decided the best course of action was heading to the Chocolate Field
Extension, which is paved. I would give the mud a chance to settle for
a while before I went swimming in it again. The first person I ran into
was Harold Doebel, of Ocean Video. He has 50,000 different old movie,
TV and promotional clips he has transferred to video. He has a number
of videos dealing with the Forward Look cars, including 2 very nice 1958
and 1959 Plymouth videos. If you check out Usenet at all, you probably
have seen my postings for him helping him to sell these videos. (You can
check out a partial list at
http://www.geocities.com/~forwardlook/oceanvideo.html ) I do it on an
exchange basis -- I sell 10 videos for him, and he sends me a couple of
free ones for my collection. He's a nice guy, and I try to help him out
when I can.
One thing he's going to do for us, is take all of his 1955-61 clips, and
break them up by Make and Year. He thinks there's enough to do a 2-hour
video on each one. I'll keep you posted of his progress, and let you
know when he's ready to offer them up for sale. I'm going to try and
convince him to give us a good price on them as a member of the FLML. I
think he'll do it.
After that, it was my basic wandering and poking around for parts and
such. I had that 1958 Plymouth theme song stuck in my head all day
long... "Star of the Forward Look... Car of the Forwad Look..." It
bugged me at first, but later on I got used to it. =)
Anyway, my next stop was the car show. It was pretty impressive in size
and scope. Cars from the 1890's up until the 1970's were all
represented. There were 3 1957 300C's among the other dozen-or-so
Forward Look cars there for the show. I kind of wished I'd brought my
Plymouth, as there were no 57/8/9's at all, but I realized that it
probably wouldn't have been a good idea anyway, with the rain and all.
It was about this time that the sun poked out for the first time all
week. Standing there in the brief bit of cold October sunshine, I
realized that my misery was Hershey was mostly due to the fact that the
summer, and thus the car season, was ending. This would be the last
hurrah until spring.
It's never easy to tuck away the Duchess (my car) knowing it will be
months before we can go out cruising aimlessly on warm summer nights...
Months before the hot summer afternoons at car shows, talking MoPar and
getting a tan... Months until another Plymouth Summer. It's kind of
sad, in a way, but it's also a chance to make things better.
I realize that I will never have THE PERFECT PLYMOUTH. THE PERFECT
PLYMOUTH is a goal to shoot for, but it can never be the result.
There's always be someone with a better headliner, a nicer grille, or
more factory options. I can never achieve THE PERFECT PLYMOUTH. Even
if it WAS perfect, to ME it wouldn't be. You probably know just what I
mean.
For me, the fun is in the journey -- finding that part that's just a...
little... bit... better. The fun is in taking that battery hold-down
tray out and giving it a fresh dip in that liquid rubber stuff. The
fun is in tracking down the correct colors for the engine. Polishing
the window switches. Rubbing out the stainless. The fun, my friends,
is in our journey.
So now I lay my Plymouth down to sleep, I pray the rodents do not
creep. If the battery dies before she wakes, the trickle charger's all
it takes... (The Plymouth's Prayer).
Besides, this now gives me the chance to focus a little more on the web
site, and some of the other projects like the T-shirts, the calendar,
and the Service Training Film video transfers.
Hershey wasn't bad at all this year, when I look back. There's a lot of
good things I saw, nice people I talked to, and interesting things I
did. I had a good time, I really did. (Except for sleeping in that
#%$#$% Mercury. Never again.)
The mileage, for now, is ending. But the journey has just again begun.
-Dave
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