Day 6: Small Town Museum
Missouri was a state of mountains compared to what we encountered before and after. Illinois was surprisingly sparse on trees which had all been replaced with empty fields. Many areas had not yet been plowed, which seemed strange to this farm kid, to see corn field stubble on May 21. We got off the freeway onto 66 a few miles before our lunch stop in McLean at the Dixie Truckers Museum and restaurant. The food was decent and we picked up a couple more Ghias. One was a local who's T34 I provided major body parts to a few years ago. It was great to see that car looking so good and to finally meet Doug Narczewski. The other Ghia sported Colorado plates and I was surprised to find that Rich Mason had worked late into the night to get his Ghia ready and towed it many more hours to catch up to us. He left the tow vehicle and trailer with a friend who had talked him into sticking with it and joined us on a freshly built engine. We drove north for a ways before turning east to miss the Chicago traffic. As we passed miles of corn stubble I heard from the photographer at the rear that I should look for a photo op. I mumbled that I would do my best but there wasn't even a good looking barn to grace this back road. Then we came into the little town of Cullum, IL and I started looking down side streets seeing a grain elevator as a possible. We crossed the railroad tracks and then I saw it. It looked like an old gas station so I pulled up in front at an angle and everyone else followed suit. We all piled out and covered the street and yards across like a swarm of ants. The lady across the street came out with her own camera and people passing by stared as they went past. A few minutes of this commotion brought out the owners of the station from behind a closed gate. They urged us to come in and visit so we wandered to the back door where we beheld a magnificent collection of autos and machinery. The first vehicle was a Model A taxi cab and in front of it were a Model T truck, an old tractor, more Model Ts and a bunch of little hit and miss engines. The walls were filled with all of the tools and spare parts of a true car junky. Even the kitchen was set up in this space. Walking to the front of the house we saw one room filled with a toy car collection like I've never seen and another room, the pride of the missus, full of dolls of all shapes and sizes. As we were discovering, when you get off the freeway there is a lot to see in America. All too soon we had to get on our way to get to our dinner stop at Team VW in Merrillville, IN. After dinner I took a turn on the service lift to check out my steering that was starting to pull. I diagnosed it as a left inner tie rod end (the holy grail of T34 parts), shrugged, and adjusted it in a bit extra to compensate. The sad part is that somewhere in my garage sits that part still undiscovered.
Day 7: An escort with sirens wailing
Lunch today was at a big all comers car show on the
outskirts of
