The 1st Annual Jenkem Spank'em 69 Road Rally

When my buddy Marcos was in town for the Snowball Rally in April, he invited me to drive the Crosley up to the Bay Area for the first annual "Jenkem Spenkem," what he described as a half-assed, ill-planned "shitty car ride" he was organizing for his birthday, 6/9. The idea was to get a bunch of his pals with old cars to meet up in the parking lot of a nearby Grocery Outlet, drive 69 miles on back roads around the bay, and end up at his house in Oakland for an afternoon BBQ. No entry fees, no cut-off dates, no fancy cars... just a goofy fun trip on some less-traveled roads.

I was glad to be invited, but wasn't sure about going.

A) Oakland is almost 100 miles from Sacramento, so I'd be doing 200 miles on top of the 69 mile rally - that's a lotta miles for a Crosley. B) My brother's birthday party was scheduled for 6PM that same day.

I hemmed and hawed and finally decided to drive out to meet up with the Rally as they stopped in Port Costa, a tiny old town in the backwoods near Benicia. I could take the River Road most of the way there and just hop on Highway 4 for the last bit. Then, depending on how the car was running, I could hang out in Port Costa or drive along with them for a ways before heading home for my brother's party.

I got up early Saturday morning and loaded the car with tools, jackstands and work gloves.  By the time I got coffee and was on the road it was about 9AM - I figured that would give me plenty of time to get to Port Costa before the Jenkemz. Taking the route I'd found, Port Costa was 85 miles from Sacramento.

The Delta was beautiful and the weather was perfect.  The Crosley was running great... I'd rebuilt the carb a few months back and had tested it on short drives, but this would be the first real run. I settled in at about 50mph and cruised on the winding levee road. Temp stayed just above the halfway mark and the engine sounded happy.  I zipped through Courtland, Locke, Walnut Grove, Isleton. As I passed the turnoff for Rio Vista I realized that the last time I'd driven this route in a Crosley was when I'd driven my convertible to Morro Bay in 2000.
I headed up the Antioch Bridge, a long, long grade that crests over the San Joaquin River at 135', giving an amazing view of the Delta. Immediately after I got off the bridge the surroundings became more industrial and I soon saw the signs for Highway 4. I couldn't remember being on 4 in this area, but according to the map it was a state highway, not a freeway.

Whatever. As soon as I got on, it was clear that 4 is, for all intents and purposes, a freeway. I stayed in the slow lane as much as I could, but cars entering from onramps blew past me at 70. I nudged the Crosley up close to 60mph. The engine still sounded great and the temp gauge needle stayed at the 3/4 mark. Oil pressure held tough at 60 pounds.

Most drivers gave me a wide berth and I got a lot of honks and waves as they blew past me going 15-20 mph faster than I was. Surprisingly, no one gave me the finger.

I obsessively watch the gauges when I drive, and everything looked good - except the gas gauge. I'd left Sacramento with more than 3/4 tank and had just below half when I'd gotten on the freeway. But driving this hard was really draining the tank - the needle was getting close to the 1/4 mark after 10 miles of freeway. I decided to gas up since I didn't know if there would be gas anywhere near Port Costa.

I hopped off the freeway and made as quick a fill up as I could. The station had no bathroom, so I discreetly watered some of their plants once the car was full of gas. I checked my phone and saw a that Marc had sent a text that the drive was going to leave Oakland around 10AM. I got back on the road about 10:45 and started to wonder if I'd be late to meet the Jenkem.

A few miles down the road I noticed that the Crosley seemed to be "pushing." Where before I could tell that the motor was working hard, but running smooth, now it seemed like it was surging and slowing. It was handling fine and it sounded OK, but I didn't like the feeling. I got off the freeway and pulled over at another gas station. The car was idling fine, gauges looked good -- the only thing I can figure is that I'd hit a windy patch - I've had that exact sensation when driving in high winds. I got back on the road and the car seemed fine, so I suspect my hypothesis was correct.

I saw the sign for Port Costa and exited on to McEwen Road. McEwen is two miles of PERFECT Crosley road: a tiny asphalt strip that wound through golden California hills. It was two lanes, but even in a Crosley I was glad that there was no traffic coming the other way. Houses started to replace ranch buildings as I got closer to the water, and I followed my navigation directly to the "center" of town - an old hotel, a post office, a bar and a couple of shops, all clustered near a gravel parking lot that bordered the bay.

I pulled into the lot, driving past a wide-eyed guy sitting on a Harley. I no sooner had the car parked than he came rushing over, saying, "I haven't seen a Crosley in 40 years! You're not gonna believe this, but I used to race a Crosley!"

His name was Steve, and he told me that he'd bought an old handbuilt special with a Crosley engine back in the late fifties when it was no longer competitive. He told me a bit about it and I asked if he remembered who he had bought it from. "I bought it from a guy named Doc Young."

Doc Young is a little-known but legendary figure in early Crosley racing history - an amateur engineer, he'd designed and built his own twin-cam conversions on modified Crosley blocks. And he won races.  Steve seemed surprised that I knew about Doc Young and even more surprised when I mentioned Doc's stomping grounds, Hanford/Lemoore. We talked a few more minutes and Steve promised to see if he could dig up any more info if I followed up with him, which I plan to do.

After Steve left I got a text from Marcos that they were running late, and that arrival was going to be closer to noon. I got a water at the one coffee shop in town and wandered down to look at the water. The bay is so skinny here that it looks more like a big river - except for the full size cargo ships bearing international markings that slowly made their way out to sea.

The Jenkemz finally pulled into town around 12:15. Marcos and Amy led the way in a white 240 Volvo wagon - Marcos had blown up his '70s Volvo two-door on the Snowball Rally and still didn't have it back on the road.  Also on hand were a Pacer, a '64 Ranchero, a Datsun B210 wagon, a Chevy Mark III van, some Toyota pickups and maybe a couple other cars. Most participants were decked out in "Jenkem Spank'em 69" t shirts.

While administration was kept to a minimum, Marcos is a natural-born event coordinator (his day job is organizing the annual Burger Boogaloo Music Fest) so each participant still got a T Shirt, map/guide and swag bag. I got my swag bag, which included all of the above and two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, handmade by Marcos' fiancee Amy. Despite all this seeming structure, the slapdash nature of the Jenkem Spank'em 69 was intact: the event name was spelled at least three different ways on the printed materials.

After a quick ogle of the cars we decamped for the bar. There isn't much in Port Costa, and the most imposing structure is an old concrete wheat warehouse that also doubles as the post office. Part of the ground floor is now a rambling cafe/bar, crammed with art, knickknacks and two giant taxidermied bears. Given that the Jenkem was now over an hour behind schedule, all pretenses toward structure were abandoned. We milled around for 45 minutes or so as participants loaded up on carbs of all kinds. Eventually Marcos gathered everyone up for a picture with the bears and then we headed back out to the lot.

By this point it was after 1PM, so I needed to start heading back to Sac soon. The Jenkem clan was continuing to the Marin headlands - I decided to follow them for a few miles and then turn off for home before we got on another freeway.  

We climbed away from Port Costa with me in the middle of the pack. The road was twisty enough that I had no trouble keeping up, although I was doing a lot of shifting between second and third. After a few miles we got to Crockett, and a freeway entrance. I peeled off and doubled back toward Port Costa. 

I'd skipped lunch at the bar so I was getting hungry. I pulled off on the side of the road and dug into the PBJs.  After I polished them off I noticed a deer slowly approaching me. It kept closing in, twitching its tail and taking a few steps at a time, staring at me the whole time.  Just as I thought it was going to get in the car with me it turned and bolted up the hill.

The trip back was uneventful. Highway 4 was busier than before, but the traffic kept the speeds slower. Several times cars pulled just ahead of me, rolled down the passenger window, extended a phone to take a photo, then sped off.

Once I got back on the River Road it was smooth sailing. Car ran great, temp stayed between half and three quarters, oil pressure was good. It felt great to have the car out on a beautiful day, hanging out with friends, driving some of the best back roads in California. I thought about Frank Bell, my old friend who owned the car for half a century before he died. Sometimes I feel bad that I don't drive the car as much as I could, but today I knew Frank would have been proud.

I pulled into Sacramento a little after 3PM... plenty of time to get cleaned up and make it out to my brother's by 6PM. As I put the car away I checked the odometer - the day's trip was 179 miles total. 

That's the most miles I've put on a Crosley in one day since 2003 when I drove from Sacramento to Visalia in a brutal 12 hour marathon. That time I ended the drive exhausted, covered with oil, grease and dirt from multiple roadside repairs, and not sure my Crosley would even make it home the next day (it did). Today's trip could hardly have been more of a contrast. 

This is the kind of Crosley long-distance driving experience I've always hoped for - unique, but not harrowing. It hasn't always been that way. Part of it is my budget, of course - in the old days I was scraping just to keep a car on the road and couldn't afford to improve the niceties... like padding on the seats. And parts availability is better now, too... I once "rebuilt" the brakes on my convertible reusing old cables because there was no production on new ones. But, I also like to hope that I've learned a few things in 21 years of working on Crosleys... these days I'm much less afraid to tear into something that's kinda working; in the old days I was always worried that I'd take something apart and never get it back together again. At this point I've worked on everything on a Crosley except a rear end, so I'm more willing to 'dig' in to a mystery.

And of course, there's the car. Frank poured 50 years of love and attention into this car, and I can tell. It's night and day between this and my old convertible. Not that there aren't some places he skimped or made weird choices... but Frank spent a lot of time working on the car - and DRIVING it. It had been sitting for a while when his family sold it to me, but the underlying essentials were all solid, and it just took a while for me to get it dialed in again.  I can't say I'd just hop in and drive it anywhere, but I'd do the Jenkem Spank'em again in a heartbeat.