There was once a little boy who spent hours playing with his small Matchbox and HotWheel cars in the dirt flowerbed in front of his parent's house. He used to build orange plastic HotWheel Superfreeways in his bedroom and down the hallway much to the dismay of his mother. His miniature automobile collection was the envy of all the kids on the block.
When he wasn't playing with his little cars he was terrorizing the neighborhood in his pedal car. Once he even drove through a patio door in his pedal car and by the Grace of God was unharmed.
At the age of six, this little snotnose could tell you the name of almost every automobile on the road. Playing the "guess what car that is?" game became a family favorite during vacations in the Johnson's tan-colored 1966 Chevrolet Biscane Station Wagon.
When around 8 years old, his HotWheel cars were neglected and building model cars and riding bicycles became more of a pre-occupation. He built dozens of model cars and
modified them in every conceivable way. Sometimes he used his sister's Barbie doll accessories for his projects like when he "borrowed" Barbie's TV and kitchen cabinets to customize the interior of his 1965 Ford Econoline van - to the dismay of his sweet sister.
He carpeted interiors of models with scraps of material he "borrowed" from Mom's sewing room and applied outrageous paint jobs to everything with wheels.
All that glue and thinner must had a terrible effect on him, because after a couple of years
he stopped building models and started acting crazy. Patterned after his hero Evil Kneivel
he discovered new thrills by jumping trash cans on his bicycle. Somewhere around that
time he even started talking about liking girls and stuff. Crazy. The model cars were proudly displayed on his shelves in his bedroom but his well-intending mother "dusted" them until they were left in pieces and finally placed into boxes and stored in the attic next to the Matchbox and HotWheel collection.
At sixteen, out of a necessity to express newfound juvenile autonomy, he bought his first car. He paid for the car with money he earned from mowing lawns and cleaning barnacles off of dry-docked shrimp boats. His first car? A clean, stock 1969 Plymouth Barracuda Fastback purchased from a neighbor for $600. It immediately received slotted aluminum wheels and 50s-series Mickey Thompson tires (but no Barbie accessories on this one). It ran great until one day on the way to the beach a Mustang owner ran a stop sign and became Barracuda bait. Humans ok, Cuda not ok.
A few years later the young man went off to college and patiently waited for the day when he would graduate, get a job and buy a cool car again. Graduation finally came in 1985. His thoughtful parents anticipating the lad's need for wheels, surprised him with a monetary gift that allowed him to search for another classic. His peers were buying Hondas and such but he wouldn't be swayed. He purchased a restored 1965 Chevrolet Malibu Convertible for $4500 in Houston, Texas. For the following five years that car saw more places in Texas than Colonal Steven F. Austin ever saw.
One day that Malibu, longing for home I guess, headed west straight for Malibu Beach. It got there just fine. While in California our classic car guy met some other classic car guys and accepted a job working at a world-renown classic car dealership. His knowledge of automobiles increased. And he developed relationships with some of the most outstanding automobile builders, collectors and specialty car enthusiasts in the nation. He sold automobiles to people all over the world, located cars for people who had expensive and exotic tastes and appraised all kinds of automobiles for buyers who lived far away.
He's still living in the land of shiny metal street rods and soft leather interiors where crusin' is an art form practiced by many savvy Californians. He's a grown boy now and still loves cars of course. He never became a mechanic or a race car driver or anything like that. But he's a faithful enthusiast of design, craftsmanship and ingenuity. And he's owned some really neat classics over the last few years too.
To share his enthusiasm with the world he started a fun website for classic car lovers like himself, and made it a friendly place to visit with lots of useful information for classic car guys. It's called, well, ClassicCarGuy.Com. Maybe you've heard of it.
