East is Neat

In my ninth year at Harris Graphics Systems, the company was taken over by AM Graphics. The new owners decided to reorganize the company. The Champlain operation was to be combined with Commercial Press and moved to their facility in Dayton, Ohio.

I ran the Technical Publications Department at Bindery Systems and my position was duplicated in Dayton. The company decided to retain my Dayton counterpart and try to find another position for me. They asked if I had any questions. Since I already had another job lined up, I said “How long do I have to stay to get severance pay?” I never saw anyone in such a hurry to break for lunch. When they resumed the meeting a half hour later, I was told I could leave the company in one month with a severance package. It wasn’t enough time for me to coordinate the Dayton move, but I agreed. The company was annoyed with me when I overstayed the deadline.

The new job was selling printing machinery rigging and installation. The office was in Moonachie, NJ. For several months I commuted 300 miles to New Jersey every Sunday night and 300 miles back to Sciota every Friday after work. When we started looking for a house, we realized that we could no longer afford to live in North Jersey. We looked at a lot of houses in Eastern Pennsylvania.

We finally found a ranch house in Tannersville, PA. It had an attached two car garage on the West end of the house. On the East side, the land dropped away about ten feet and there was a rollup single garage door to the basement. Two cars could be pulled in single file. Since we could garage four cars, we immediately bought a fifth so one could be parked outside. The only progress I made on the coupe in the two years we lived in Pennsylvania was the purchase and installation of Stainless steel sleeved Corvette calipers front and rear.

My next job was as a product manager on Long Island. We told the real estate agent that we had to have a two car garage. After we bought a house in a rural area of Eastern Suffolk County we found out that the agent did not show several homes with three or four garage spaces because we had to have a two car garage. Of course, the coupe occupied one half of the garage.

Now the problem with working on the car was not lack of time, it was lack of money due to the size of the mortgage payments. Another two years without progress.

Then I got downsized. The economic downturn included a concurrent fall in Long Island real estate prices. It took us a year to sell the house, and we lost about 40 grand.

My wife Nancy and I bought a general store and gas station in the Nevada desert. We formed Way Out West, Inc. and operated the store for two years without having a clue how to run a business. We then sold the store back to the guy we bought it from and had to sue him to make him pay for the inventory.

We moved to Sparks, NV where I drove for Auto Parts Club, a members only operation similar to Sam’s Club and Costco. Nancy died of diabetic complications in 1994. I felt far older than my age. A woman I worked with introduced me to her mother, Suzanne Bond. Suzanne made me feel young again. We dated for six months then married in a civil ceremony at John Asquaga’s Nugget Casino in Sparks. She saved my life.

I mailed a resume to Machine Design Service in Denver, CO. Seven months later they called and asked me to come to Denver for an interview. They described two jobs to me and asked which one I wanted. I chose, and was told the Project Manager position paid more money, so I changed my mind and took it.

The project was a $2 million installation at The New York Times new satellite plant in Queens, NY. I would have to live in Queens, but the company would pay my rent plus a per diem. There would be a bonus for bringing the job in on time. I wouldn’t have time to work on the car, but I should have enough money.

I called my old friend, Rich Schulz to find out how to contact Ralph Truppi about building an engine for the car. Rich told me that he had a shop called Rustic Street Rods and that there was an engine builder in the building complex that he owned. I agreed to have the work done there.

Rich observed that maybe I didn’t want the car too nice. He hit the Nailhead, so to speak. I’ve never seen any sense to show cars. To me, fun with cars involves driving, not vanity. I wanted a decent looking driver, one that a friend calls a 50-50 car. (One that looks good at 50 yards or 50 miles an hour.)

Rustic’s first task was to pick up a ’64 Buick Riviera in Stratford, CT. I looked at seven Buicks that the owner thought (or said) had 425 Nailheads, but that in fact had 401s. In one issue of The New York Times Sunday classified ads, there were two Rivieras. One in Shelton and the other in Stratford. I called about the Stratford car. The ad in the paper said it was a 430, but the owner said it was really a 425. I asked him if it ran (it did) and to get me the engine number (7K1082768) and code (KW31). Bingo. The K meant 1964, the W stood for 425 cubic inches. During a visit to hear it run, I negotiated the price down from $500 to $400 due to the fact that the bottom foot of the doors and body was rusted away.

The engine’s new life started with a two week bath at the bottom of a 55 gallon drum of diesel fuel to loosen up the gunk inside of it. Then it was bored .030”. The build generally followed the ten part article in Street Rodder magazine which ran from January to November, 1997, including the use of a Kenne-Bell MK-C-118 cam and a J&C double roller timing chain. (More on this later).