Going Absolutely Nowhere

by Gabe Dellinger

The '55 never moved when I was young.  It remained a collector of dust and dirt from the dry Piedmont clay rustling in from the unpaved drive in summer months.  My dad always left the driver side door unlocked so I could climb up on the bench seat covered by blue button and tuck interior and play around until my heart was content on evenings after school.  I made all the usual "vroom, vroom" sounds while twisting the steering wheel and jamming the Hurst shifter from side to side, imagining the entire time I was racing past the likes of Richard Petty or Junior Johnson.  The inside of the Chevrolet proved to be a ticket to any destination my mind could venture and the unknown beginning of a lifelong appreciation for all things hotrodding.

The stillness of the car, the lack of life from the engine, the 1975 North Carolina license plate, the oxidizing blue and white lacquer paint, the well worn bias-ply radials, the rusted tail pipes, all combined to speak of a past era in a silent and subtle voice.  My intuition was even more confused by the eerie reverence my dad exhibited for the car.  But why did it remain motionless in the second bay of a garage owned by my father?

If the '55 was the most prized among the stable of vehicles my family owned then the logic of a six year old boy deemed it should be fixed- right? I often tried to dislodge my mind from the confounding thoughts associated with the car by milling around the shop.  Some distractions came in the form of handing my dad a wrench, playing in the vermiculite, rearranging the oil cans on the shelf by color, and creating little monsters from discarded AC plugs, half-used welding sticks, and other debris thrown about.  However, my dad repaired only customer's vehicles and just kept repeating that he would fix it one day.

Twenty years since the mid-1980's, that day eventually arrived.  In 2007, happenstance left my father and I jobless at the exact same time.  It seemed fate had intervened and inconveniently blessed us with some time to put this mysterious and storied car back on the street. The work on the '55 began by tearing apart the front suspension to replace worn bushings and shocks along with replacing the brake shoes, wheel cylinders, and cutting the drums.  Next we moved to the 327 small block that occupied the engine bay in place of the original blue flame six.  We replaced the stock 1.75" valve smog heads and GM 929 cam with a late model set of GM Vortec castings combined with an aftermarket solid grind.

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