CROWN POINT | For Crown Point native Phil Schmidt and Bartlett, Ill., resident Bob Ray, being part of the Hot Rod Magazine Power Tour is an item they now can cross off their bucket list of things to do before they die.
Both men joined the tour at its start in Charlotte, N.C., and will be there when the tour ends Friday in Wisconsin Dells. Their vehicles are indicative of the vast variety to be found by the thousands of people who flocked to the Lake County Fairgrounds for the one-day stop Wednesday.
Schmidt and his wife, Sue, who now live in Florida, were doing the tour in a 1948 Cloverleaf Dairy delivery truck Schmidt has spent the last four years restoring. Schmidt formerly worked for the U.S. Postal Service in Crown Point and worked for the city’s water department after retiring from the postal service. He got the truck from a man in Sumava Resorts about 12 years ago.
“This tour is like work,” he said. “If you’ve got mechanical problems, you’ve got to fix it and make up for lost time. It’s hard when we stop for gas because everybody wants to talk to you. It takes half an hour.”
Sue Schmidt described the tour itinerary as “eat, sleep and drive.” The couple remained upbeat despite having their arrival at the fairgrounds delayed by the need for a transmission fluid transfusion for the truck.
Ray and his wife, Heather, like most of the classic car and hot rod owners, spent much of the afternoon wiping the rain from their vehicle, a 1939 Chevrolet. Heather said it was the first real rain the tour had encountered since leaving Charlotte last Friday.
The couple left Bartlett early in order to make a couple of stops in Nashville, Tenn., which also were on Bob’s bucket list, and see the Vanderbilt mansion. They took a picture of their car in front of the American Pickers Museum. Heather said they wanted to do the tour for several years but she was a teacher and it would have interfered with the school year. Now she is retired. They expected to log about 3,000 miles on the car by tour’s end, and, after a brief rest, they plan to head to Minnesota.
Along with the more than 4,000 cars expected to be on exhibit, more than 50 vendors were on hand, including Sta-Bil with Bobby Cleveland, the owner of the world’s fastest lawn mower. A nine-time U.S. Lawn Mower Racing Association champion in his 19 years on the circuit, Cleveland now works as a spokesman for Sta-Bil and its parent company Gold Eagle.
A lawn mower at a hot rod show? Cleveland said he has a T-shirt that says, “My hot rod is a lawn mower.” His Snapper mower hit a top speed of 96 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats, and, as part of the requirements for the record, he had to put the blade carriage on and mow a patch of sod put down for the purpose. This is his seventh year on the power tour.
Waiting out one of the several rain showers beneath the awning of the Continental Tire display, Ricardo Guerrero, of Hobart, said he came thinking the event might have a swap meet where he could could get parts for an 1958 Chevy Apache truck he has. He wasn’t disappointed to learn there was no swap meet.
“I always go to car shows and swap meets to see what I can find,” Guerrero said.
James J. Parker, of Merrillville, was drawn to the event because he used to build old cars and race stock cars “back in the day.”
“I’m seeing quite a conglomeration of different engines and cars,” Parker said. “Everybody has their own ideas.”
And some just have a bucket list that just got shorter.
Crowds brave rain to see hot rods, classic cars and trucks
Marcus celebrating his Arena Cross Victory
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