West Coast Crosley Club Meet in Buellton, CA: SEPT 10 - 11, 2011

The West Coast Region of the Crosley Auto Club will hold their annual meet on September 10 and 11, 2011 in Buellton, California!  I'll be there (natch) and I hope you will be too! Here's the details:

2011 Crosley Club Meet in Wauseon: Part III

I was out of the tent by 6:30AM on Saturday but there were plenty of folks already moving around- this was the big day!

2011 Crosley Club Meet in Wauseon: Part II

By the halfway point on the first day of the meet my brain was pretty well Crosley-cooked.  There were Crosleys everywhere, from hopped up drag cars to spot on restorations, from crazy old customs to barn cars up for sale.  I admit it, I was overwhelmed.

I'm there! 2011 Crosley Club Meet in Wauseon: Part 1

After drooling on the Fibersport in the dark for a while I decided I'd better get my camp set up.  I figured out where the bathrooms were and then set my tent up close enough that they would only be a short walk but far enough that I wouldn't be hearing flushing all night long.  It was almost midnite by the time I'd gotten myself situated but I set my alarm for 6:30 anyway.  I didn't need to bother - I was awake well before the alarm went off.

On the Road to the Crosley Meet

Got myself all packed and ready to go for the early flight to Detroit.  I'd opted to fly into the Motor City since it's about as close to Wauseon (about 90 miles) as any major airport, and I have a couple of good friends who live there now.  I decided to fly in a day early to visit them and to check out Detroit.

Richard and Mary were my roommates exactly ten years ago.  We lived in a big warehouse where I kept all my cars and projects inside and they made big, messy, hilarious art projects.  I'd met Richard through the music scene- he was in a killer band called Rik and the Young Rogues - five kids from the burbs who played a particularly snotty brand of garage punk, featuring one guy who cracked a whip on stage.  Richard was also in art school and we ended up hitting it off, especially when I eventually transferred to the same school.  They graduated and moved to New York, but headed back west after a few exhausting months in NYC.  I just happened to have a space in the warehouse at the time, so they landed there for year or so.

These days they live in Detroit - or more properly, outside Detroit - in Birmingham, Michigan.  They both got teaching jobs in the area, so that's where they went.  In true Richard and Mary fashion they met me at the airport with a tambourine and a homemade 'Welcome to Michigan' flag accessorized with pinecones.  I'd been hearing stories of Detroit's decline but I was unprepared for the tour they took me on when we left the airport.  Two words sum it up: abandoned skyscrapers.

The next day Richard drove me around for a few hours, explaining what I was looking at.  One of the most surreal areas was a once-ritzy neighborhood, now reduced to block after block of bare lots and collapsing mansions.  Most of the homes have either burned down or fallen over, with the remaining structures seeming to be headed that way.  Downtown proper is even more depressing, with abandoned, windowless skyscrapers dominating the skyline.

Even odder are the patches of the city that are holding it together.  We stopped by Lafayette Park- a neighborhood completely designed by legendary architect Mies van der Rohe.  Less than a mile from bombed-out sections of the city, Mies' leafy modernist subdivision is incredible, and perfectly kept.  The architect designed a group of connected townhomes, two apartment towers, a school and even a strip mall!  Everything is immaculate.

I was taking pictures and noticed a sports car parked behind a truck in one of the driveways.  Further investigation revealed that it was a TVR.  I was taking a picture when the owner came out- LeRoy had owned the car since new and was just starting to think about selling it.  We chatted about cars for a bit and then we had to get moving.

Richard and Mary drove me out to pick up my rental car at the airport,  and after a quick dinner I headed south on I-75 around 7:30.   By the time I pulled into Wauseon it was just getting dark.  I found the fairgrounds and pulled in, trying to get my bearings.  Even in the dark I could see plenty of Crosleys on trailers or parked next to campers.   I saw a guy near a big RV and asked him where I could set up a tent.  The guy turned out to be the best East Coast engine builder, Barry Seel.

I've talked to Barry many times - he offered a ton of advice when I was in the planning stages of building a hopped-up Fageol motor, even suggesting the perfect cam grind.  Barry just may know more about the Crosley engine than anyone else on the planet.  We talked for a few minutes and he told me a horrifying story about buying a Bandini Torpedo, only to have the seller refuse to turn over the car, and then scrap it out of spite!  That Barry didn't strangle the guy is a testament to his self-control.

Before the conversation got very far I asked if Chuck Koehler had arrived yet, and if he'd brought his new car.  Barry said Chuck was there and pointed to the only car sitting on the show field in the dark.
The Fibersport was there, waiting.

To be continued...

Doin' It!

I'm doing it: I dropped my registration form in the mail today, my airline ticket is bought, and this year, for the first time ever, I'm going to the National Crosley Auto Club Meet in Wauseon, Ohio.

The National Meet (called 'the Nats') have been held since 1971 if I remember right, and I think it's been in the tiny town of Wauseon almost from the beginning.  It's a three-day affair in early July, with a hundred or so Crosleys roaming the town and various Crosley-nerd-out activities filling the time.  Each year I wait expectantly for Crosley Club webmaster Jim Bollman to post pictures from the Nats, and each year I lose about three hours just going through the page after page of pics the day he posts them.

I'm a little shocked that it's taken me 14 years to finally do it.  I've been planning to go since I first started thinking about Crosleys back in 1997.  For the longest time I put it off because I always thought, 'next year I'll drive the Crosley to Ohio.'  It was always 'next year.'  This year I finally decided to stop waiting for next year.

I'm not sure what kicked me in the pants this time around, but part of it is having some old friends pass on and wishing I'd spent more time with them.  It's not like I really know the Crosley folks that I've been phoning, yahoo-grouping and emailing over the past 14 years, but then again, I sorta do.  Even though I've never been within a hundred miles of Dave Edwards, Butch and Fonda of Service Motors, Chuck Koehler, Barry Seel, Peter Berard, Jim Friday (and the list could keep going)... I talk or email with some of them more often than I do many members of my own family.  They're kindred spirits, even if they are a timezone or two away.

The other part is that I really love the folks in the Crosley Club.  I'm not a 'joiner' - the Crosley Club is one of the only 'official' groups I've ever belonged to in my life, and, at some point, I can't expect everyone else in the club to make the trip to Wauseon, put on a great meet and then post hundreds of pictures that I can look at and appreciate.  Even if I can't bring a car (this time) I can bring me, and that's something.

 I'm a little bummed that Liv can't go with me, but on the other hand, I don't know that I want to put her through that kind of Crosley-overload until I've been though it once myself.  The other good part is that I can save a little cash by just bringing a sleeping bag and camping out - wives always want to get all fancy,  like with hotel rooms and such.

So that's it- I'm going.  From now til July 7, I'm just killing time. 

All photos from the Crosley Auto Club Website

Harry Eyerly: Movie Star

One other thing I did while Liv was out of town: watched a car flick that's been on my 'to see' list for a long time: the original 1955 Fast and the Furious.  Liv is a movie nut, and she'll watch almost anything, but I couldn't ask her to sit through a movie this bad.  If it weren't for the racing scenes (OK, and Dorothy Malone) I probably couldn't have made it through.

Screenwriter Roger Corman lifted the basics of the plot from Hitchcock's 1942 classic, Saboteur: innocent man (John Ireland), accused of murder, escapes and kidnaps a young woman and steals her car.  As they travel together she begins to believe his story.  In this version, the car is a race-ready Jaguar XK120, and the goal is to drive the Jag in a road race that enters Mexico, and then just keep going south.

Whatever.  The plot is pretty thin and the only thing holding the flick together are the scenes with race cars.  I held out for an hour, almost, but not quite falling asleep, when WHAM - I was wide awake!   When  our hero pulls his Jag into the starting lineup, what should be directly behind him, but Harry Eyerly's legendary #54 Crosley special, the Porsche Duster, with  - I'm fairly certain - Harry Eyerly at the wheel!  After the Jag is out of the way, Harry idles up to his space in line and then rolls offscreen.  It's brief (15 seconds, maybe) but it was awesome to see Eyerly's car totally in context.

I hoped that the car would show up again in the racing footage that followed, but it only flashed by once as the cars took off.  I can't be 100% sure it was Eyerly driving, but it sure looks like his helmet, and, why would they have someone else drive it? 

I watched the movie on Netflix instant play, but it's also on HULU and even on You Tube, although the picture quality is lower on You Tube.  If you don't want to sit through the whole thing, Eyerly comes in at almost exactly the one hour mark; in my book, he's the star of this flick.