Still Here

 8-4

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The last day of Hot August Nights has come all too soon. Well, the last day that I’ll be around, at least. For some reason all of my friends like to leave by Saturday morning, so I guess I will too. But I’ve still got a whole day to hang out before hitting the road again.

I started the morning with some wrenching, wrangling my friend Jeff into observing (for emotional support) while I checked the valve adjustment on the passenger side bank of Jane’s motor. I just wanted to make sure that that persistent tapping sound – which I thought was an exhaust leak – wasn’t actually something far worse. So while everyone else was still groggily making their way through their morning routines, I was out in the parking lot, pulling the valve cover and spinning the motor over to check the valves.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) I found nothing amiss, so I buttoned the car back up and wandered around the parking lot for a few minutes. This close to the weekend, you’re more likely to see some of the fancier or more extreme builds showing up in pursuit of one of Hot August Night’s fabled prizes. Lots of fun to look at, even if they are wholly impractical for general use as actual automobiles.

I call this one "The Creamsicle". It is BEAUTIFUL but would probably be awful to drive, especially without sunglasses

A beautiful cream and yellow interior, but boy that is a lot of light to have to squint through!

Whatever this is

Pulled by whatever that is

I returned to the hotel lobby after a brief spin around the lot. By then various other people had straggled in with their coffees and assorted pastries, so we decided to get started with the day’s plans: a trip to the National Automobile Museum!

For those not in the know (I wasn’t in the know, certainly), Reno is home to one of the best automobile history museums in the US. It originated as the remnants of the massive car collection of Bill Harrah, one of the city’s great “architects” (read: a very successful casino owner) who was an especially voracious automobile collector from early age until his death in 1989. His collection has apparently been recognized as one of the most historically important collections of automobiles in the world, as Bill did not discriminate in the cars he rescued. Everything from the very earliest vehicles through the late 80s and beyond ended up in his collection, beautifully restored and lovingly preserved.

We took an Uber over to the museum (yes, still saving parking spots) and spent a few hours perusing its halls. The main core of the building is set up like Main Street, USA, with cars placed in displays reflecting the culture of times long past, when America’s obsession with cars was bright and shiny and new and joyful.

To the sides, a number of unobtrusive doorways lead into cavernous galleries, each dedicated to a certain period of automobile innovation. And wow, what a collection! When they said that Bill Harrah collected everything – they meant it. As we stepped inside the first gallery, I was shocked to see how many extremely early concept cars were housed therein. But more shocking was looking at the timeline and considering how quickly the early “cars” took shape into something easily recognizable as a car.

I took more than a few very blurry, poorly-lit photos of the cars in this museum, and debated not putting them in this post at all. But then I figured, why the hell not. It would be cool for this post to take a brief tour through the history of the automobile. After all, I am now armed with enough knowledge and photos to make a bit of a story of it. So let’s take a quick spin.

The early 1880’s saw the development of steam-powered quadricycles, which became steam-powered carriages, which became internal-combustion-powered – all within the span of a decade or two! By the early 1900’s, Ford had established their name and in 1908, the iconic Model T was born. Just imagine living at that time, going from horse-drawn carriages and steam-powered transportation to a very modern internal combustion-driven vehicle within the span of one generation. Amazing.

An 1982 Philion, a steam-powered quadricycle

An 1897 Leon Bollee, a miniature automobile and one of the first to use an internal combustion (one cylinder) engine

A 1910 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, one of the earliest luxury automobiles. "The Best Car in the World"

A 1914 Buick, another very good-looking car.

It was wild walking through the assortment of vehicles, looking at all of the things that engineers were trying at the time. Clearly, many things didn’t work. But it was very interesting to see how early on people were starting to try new things, testing far-out concepts and cobbling together ideas in pursuit of continuous improvement. You look at this collection of cars, and you realize just how hard mankind was bitten by the “Go-fast” bug.

Holy moly is all I've got to say about this one

A good visual reminder of why "cylinders" are called "cylinders" in motors!

A 1914 Detroit Electric, one of the very earliest electric cars - and one with a range of up to 200 miles! (at 25 mph)

Even as the powerplants behind the vehicles were evolving, so too did the supporting bits and pieces. Wagon wheels gave way to rubberized smooth tires, which were quickly fitted with treads of various designs. Taillights – originally lantern housings with actual lit candles placed inside – were rapidly upgraded with incandescent bulbs in better reflective housings. Hell, they even had to invent turn signals!

Now that's a familiar brand... 

"Non Skid" - an early attempt at improving traction!

The original turn signal - note the cable attached to the top which needed to be pulled to flip the turn signal out!

The Roaring 20s – well through into the 40’s – was a time of a different type of innovation. Having mostly sorted out the details of the internal combustion motor, designers instead turned towards aesthetics and comforts. With the Art Deco movement in full swing, the previously carriage-like body style favored in early cars was instead discarded for varied shapes strange and wonderful and inspired. Although the big automakers were still cranking along, a lot of boutique companies cropped up and tested new designs, hoping they would catch on. Amazingly, Bill Harrah managed to get his hands on a lot of these kind of one-off gems. It’s incredible that they still survive today.

A one-of-a-kind all copper-bodied 1921 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, which was made using full sheets of copper for the body panels.

This odd beast is a 1937 Airomobile prototype, which was designed to be as aerodynamic as possible.

Remarkably, the seal-shaped chassy actually DID work as intended, having no problem going 80 MPH and averaging 43.6 mpg. Same as a modern Honda Civic! Unfortunately, the design was too strange-looking and it failed to get enough backing to go into full production.

A 1937 Cord, a good-looking beast that was as fast as it was cool! It's supercharged and had a very impressive (for the time) top speed of 112 mph. This particular car is a speed record setter, driving 2,441.3 miles in 24 hours at an average speed of 101.72 mph (holy cow).

A 1949 Jaguar Roadster next to the iconic Mercedes Gullwing. Two verryyyyyy expensive vehicles, both then and now.

My absolute most favorite car in the whole collection - a 1936 Mercedes-Benz Type 500K Roadster. My god, look at those CURVES. Absolutely gorgeous.

The 1950’s saw the real blossoming of the automobile industry, as cars went from a luxury item for the rich, to a tool for the everyday man. Cars got big – big enough for families – with incredible eye-catching chrome and fins to celebrate the opulence that had finally reached the middle class. I didn’t take too many pictures of these, mostly because there are better examples (in far better lighting) parked right outside. But notably, Bill Harrah didn’t seem too keen on keeping representative examples of the more common 50’s cars, instead preferring to keep historical examples and oddballs that were ultimately failures.

By the 1960’s and 70’s, auto development had advanced to a point in which the cars – and the amenities they had – were quite similar to today’s cars. Engineers had figured out and implemented the concepts for many of the systems that we still use today – brakes, power steering, air conditioning, things like that. There were even a lot of features that we consider to be higher-end today, such as multi-directional switch-activated mirror adjustments, power windows, power seat adjustments, tilt-away steering wheels, power convertible tops, etc. But there were still some interesting approaches to how different effects were achieved. Many items were operated by vacuum, with a million little vacuum hoses routed all through the body of the car instead of the now-common electrical motors. These are the little things that make the cars of that era endearing, a little reminder of the progress we’ve made since then. But I didn’t really need any exhibit to tell me that: this is something that I know on a personal level, from my many years of working on Jane and other assorted classic cars of the era.

I guess that’s why I started to lose interest once we got into the 60’s and 70’s gallery. So many features of those exhibits were so familiar to me that it seemed almost strange to see them in a museum, placed on display like some dead thing, a relict of a different age. To me, the 60’s and 70’s-era cars are very much alive, and Hot August Nights is the proof. With the true brilliance of the classic car culture, with all of its creativity and innovation and love and dedication, on full display on the streets right outside, the dark halls of the National Automobile Museum felt a little sad, a little forlorn. Funereal. I found myself wanting to return to the land of the living.

Having seen more than our fill of cars, we left the museum and wandered off to get some pizza, then made the all-essential run to Summit Racing. They were doing a cracking amount of business, and I added to that with a purchase of some header gaskets to try out on Jane. After that, we took another lift back to the Grand Sierra. In that span of time, an abrupt downpour had opened up over all of Reno, leaving all of the cars glittering like wet jewels amongst the consternation of their owners.

Jane, of course, is no stranger to being wet, and had not changed in appearance nor diminished in impressiveness one bit.

I elected to go up to my room for a nap while I waited for the showers to pass, then headed back down to take a stab at fixing Jane’s probable exhaust leak. My friends dutifully assisted, knowing that I’m completely incapable of simply leaving the car alone during any Hot August Nights stay. After verifying that the aft end of the headers didn’t have an exhaust leak, we concluded that it must be the fore end, so I pulled the headers away from the motor and spent a very dumb hour or so incrementally scraping away at remaining header gasket material stuck to both surfaces. I say “very dumb” because the task would have been accomplished in about two minutes if I had remembered to buy replacement gaskets for the aft end at Summit when I got the other gaskets (which would have let me just drop the headers entirely, freeing up a lot of space for scraping) or if I had remembered that I actually had a pretty good wire brush in the toolkit which would have been substantially more effective than a flathead screwdriver. Alas. So I scraped away while various people took turns supervising and holding a shade for me.

As the sun began to set, I finally buttoned Jane up and released my friends from shade-holding duty. They gathered round for the engine start-up, to see if my problem had been resolved.

I dropped into the driver’s seat, slotted the key in, primed the fuel pump, and cranked the ignition. Jane’s motor roared to life victoriously. And…. The sound was still there, completely unchanged or possibly worse.

You might think that I would have been very annoyed about this. But I really wasn’t. I’ve learned from Jane over the years that as long as I make a good-faith attempt at fixing the car, whether or not I’m successful is really irrelevant. I’ll always make it home, as long as I tried. But if I don’t try… so help me.

We spent the remainder of our last night together shooting the shit in the parking lot, same as we always have. I immersed myself in the night, soaking up the laughter, the camaraderie, the energy, the specialness of it all, branding it into my mind to be viewed again and again in the future. You see, this might be my last Hot August Nights for quite some time. We had all agreed that this would be the last big get-together, in part because of rising costs but also because people’s lives are changing, different things taking precedence. And as much as Hot August Nights is about the cars, it’s more about the people. The chance to take Jane somewhere truly awesome notwithstanding, of course.

But you know, at events like this, there is always one thing that always leaps to the forefront of my brain: “Still here.”

There’s the classic cars, relicts of decades long past, remaining evidence of times when the world was a different place. Time capsules of new ideas, new concepts, creative designs, ultimately unsuccessful strategies, all the little innovations and alterations and changes that led us to where we are today. Still here.

Their caretakers, lovingly working to keep those memories alive, burnishing in every passing year like just another layer of wax, passing the responsibility down through generations. Still here.

The hot rodders, finding new and creative ways to improve, to personalize, to push the boundaries of what has previously been imagined, continuously expanding to keep the hobby fresh and interesting and attractive to newcomers. Still here.

The community, a myriad of individuals spanning a vast landscape of experiences, all with their own beliefs and values and educations and backgrounds. Yet somehow all coming together in unity, forming a massive motley patchwork quilt of people that is the fabric of our community, the thing keeping our love of cars alive. Still here.

There’s my friends, just one group of many, but special above all else because they are mine. Each of us held together by the bond of a single model of car – the Ford Mustang – a bond which should be tenuous, but which is inexplicably strong. Each of us, moving through our own lives, getting married, having children, buying cars, selling cars, having all of our own adventures, but still tethered by an invisible thread to each other. Still here.

And then there’s me and Jane. Nearly thirteen years of propping each other up, and almost a decade of years of road trips. Over 70,000 miles of roads traveled, through good times and bad, through sun and rain. Each of our parts gaining in age, in wear, and sometimes requiring replacement. But still here.

We’re still here.