History Cleaning up the Ancestral Manor, Thinking About Selling the Cars

The folks have been gone for a number of years, and it's long overdue for me to clean up the house and sell off what I don't need. If they were alive, they'd be old enough to be really, seriously dead. As one of my favorite T-shirts says, "In Dog Years, I'm Dead."

I'm digging out various interesting things -- the '37 English Austin is now clear of rubble, the '27 T which you can't see behind it will be dug out in a couple of days.



Here's the T in the mid 70's -- mom and dad coming back from a ride somewhere. Judging by the Dodge instead of Ford windshield posts, the 6 2's instead of the dual quads, and the fact that mom and dad haven't lost weight yet, it has to be the mid 70's.



A number of interesting things have turned up -- the Samurai sword dad won in one of those WWII ubiquitous as dog **** poker games, and the cut-a-way McCulloch supercharger that Gene St Henry made and gave to him. Gene worked for McCulloch and made one of those deals with his boss that was not uncommon at that time to do a large company job on the side. He and another McCulloch employee whose name is lost to my aging memory banks for all time rented the garage bay next to my dad and showed up everyday after work to make a hundred or two of them for dealer and trade show displays. I'll post a picture soon.

Hard to tell, but dad is wearing a McCullogh hat; through Gene he accidentally became a McCullogh dealer when he signed a contract to buy every single bit of s**** they generated when they discontinued their lawnmowers (which were hella dangerous and resulted in a number of lawsuits against McCullogh). That would be part of the story of how McCullogh engines ended up on go-karts and mini-bikes.

My gl*** bottom L.A. Roadster Show mug from 1970 showed up, too. I've been looking for that for 30 years or so. Lots of other things, too -- but enough for now . . .

 

Cool, a treasure hunt. Sounds like there's an interesting story coming.

 

That T Bucket looks like it was a cool ride. Thanks for sharing.

 

Ran when parked . . .

 

A friend of mine has one of those Austins in a slightly more "modified" configuration.

 

We like automotive archeology (and entertaining writing). Let's see more.

 

hey, I see Andys GMC panel in the background.

 

Great story! I'll bet you have some great memories father son type. Thank you for sharing.

Sent from my SM-G900V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Thanks for sharing. That T is neat, I hope you post up more stories.

 

What was wrong with Mac lawnmowers ? I had a Mac 10 on a mini bike back in the 60's. Now THAT was dangerous !

 

Nothing outran a McCullough back in the day.... Those engines RAN!
I lived in ****e, Montana back then and Evel Knievel had 3 of them across the back of his go kart.

 

The first day doing that would cause one of the sleeves on my shirt to get damp.

Got to be hard to do, good memories aside.

 

Neat story. Love the T. Looks like it rolled right off the pages of 1001 Custom & Rod Ideas magazine. Is it still together? Austin is cool too, right down to the black plates. Would love to see more pics of the cars, etc.

 

- - -

The lawnmower itself was dangerous; think George Foreman . . .
On each mower they hit some of the blade case components with a sledge hammer so that they weren't going to come back to life like the mummy in a 1930's horror movie, then they went to my father and an employee or two of his who dissasembled what was left, including the engines. The remaining 8' or 10' high pile of s**** I got to play on occasionally as a little pup.

The billiard table came from ****e, Montana in 1962 or so; more on that later.

Cars are in one piece; current pictures to come.

Here are a couple of pictures of the cut-a-way McCullogh supercharger. Someone more knowledgeable than me can comment on which model it is. I place the time frame at the late 50's or early 60's. Gene was an interesting guy. One day a number of years later, after he had retired from McCullogh, I was sent to deliver or pick up something at his house. He took me on a tour of his garage where the entire space was taken up with a twisted, perverted, menagerie of small machinery and jigs. Beautiful raw wood in on one end, custom gun stocks and pistol grips in small batches out on the other end. I wasn't smart enough to randomly buy a pair for the 25's -- I should have. Yes, as I might have implied, strange things are turning up in strange places as I work at this everyday. Yep, all the guns have turned up, too, and now I could use a pair of those grips. What's the expression -- a few decades late, and a dollar short . . .

 

Consider that this a disorganized cleaning process; 55 years of detritus will do that. Consequently, random things turn up in random places. I’m embarr***ed by my left handed chicken scratches in a right handed world, but dad must have been going down to see Els that day to pick up some parts, hence my note to him to get me an item I wanted.


For those of you that don’t know Eelco well from the earlier decades when Ellsworth Lohn owned and ran it, there is the dog, and there is the tail. Contrary to the romantic image on this and other forums, I don’t believe that the tail ever wagged the dog. Els main business wasn’t hot rod stuff at all, it was aircraft, military, and job shop parts runs. It was near LAX, and had some very, very large equipment; it wasn’t some small corner machine shop, run by some guy with an unhealthy focus on one subset of automotive accessories.

I was walking past my dad’s desk one afternoon when he uncharacteristically called me over. “I screwed up and forgot to order some backing plate studs, and we’re almost out. Els says he’s swamped, and it could be as long as 6 weeks. The moment he calls, I’m sending you down there to get the order.” To my surprise, 2 days later dad said, “Els just called. Go down there right now and get the run.”

When I got there I chatted with Els for a few minutes in his office. He said a job they were putting on the automatics got pulled at the last minute, and the two swing shift guys he would have to send home with no pay were two of the harder working employees that he had, and he didn’t want to do that, so they threw dad’s job on.

Then he asked me if I’d like a look, and he gave me a personal tour around the plant. That was a lot of years and a good number of 10-shot pitchers of Jack Daniels and Coke ago, so my memory is not one of photographic lucidity, but I do remember some of the equipment being as big as the average living room; a size of equipment I wouldn’t see again for the next 10 years until I started handling occasional print jobs that required 5 color web fed presses, another object pretty much as big as the average living room.

In another post I’ll tell you about the economics of making a deal with the job shop that doesn’t have a reasonable time constraint. More to come . . .


Go-Kart seat back mount fuel tanks. I’ve got two new ones laying around.

 

If I were you, I'd be really careful with that Samurai sword.

While it might be a semi-m*** produced blade, it's also possible it's a cut down something interesting that will fund a decent retirement kind of bit o metal.

I've learned not to underestimate what people will pay for that kind of stuff.

 

The cars are dug out enough to access them.

 

A fantastic trip down memory lane. Thanks for sharing and don't stop now, please!

 

That T is awesome! Love the Halibrands and what look like Firestone Indys...
Oh, and the fact that the Austin is a touring is over the top!

Steve

 

I know that guy too, as bugs would say...what a "maroon"

 

Here's a picture for HalibrandSteve:

 

Great story and some interesting pieces in the garage too.

 

“Eelco 101”

A number of job shops at that time were run by people who understood economics and had busy places whose work load fluctuated. If you were a reasonable person to deal with, a repeat customer who paid his bills on time, and didn’t cause other ***orted problems, you could sometimes make the deal my dad did. In return for allowing Els to run his parts whenever Els wanted to and not on a crisis schedule, dad was able to get a good reduction in his pricing.

It worked like this: marginal cost plus fixed cost = total cost

Total cost + profit allowance = selling price.

Els was well aware that some jobs could be used as ‘filler’ to save him money. He could order the material when he wanted, which might save him some money if combined with other material orders, and might save him space or handling costs if timed to his needs. He could run the job when he wanted -- when some other job cancelled or the machine was not in use – which could reduce scheduling problems or conflicts and could allow a crew that might otherwise be sent home to work instead.

He also understood that he could make some money as long as the selling price was more than the marginal cost, even if it was less that the selling price he might otherwise charge. That was why my father was worried that the parts could take six weeks to come back.

Also, the quan***y to be delivered had a loose definition. Unlike a military or aircraft job which might require the exact # of parts ordered to be delivered, dad’s order could vary plus or minus a percentage without anyone getting upset. If he ordered 500 parts, a delivery of 475 to 525 pieces was more than acceptable.

Sometimes shops like this would overrun a good customer’s job on purpose, and put some of the run on the shelf so that if the customer ran out of parts, there was some finished product there waiting for an immediate sale. I was having a conversation a few weeks ago with a friend that does EDM machining (who would even think that I would have a friend?), and he commented that one way that he keeps his customers is that he keeps some of their overrun on the shelf without explicitly telling them so. Then when they make a mistake and are freaking out that they are about to run out of parts, he can immediately supply them with emergency quan***ies prior to starting their next run.

I'll be starting to look through the surviving business papers in the next few weeks; I hope to come up with some interesting stuff, perhaps some invoices from Eelco, maybe an old catalog or two, and who knows what else. Stay tuned . . .

 

I find stories like this fascinating. The history of the people and their relationships and the things they left behind is interesting and the "treasure hunt" element with the potential for surprises is fun too. I look forward to more posts on this. Thank you for letting us tag along.

 

I love both of these ...wouldn't mind having either one if I was in the market.
What's in the Austin for power?

 

Curious about the Austin also.

 

Good old 12 spokes...

 

Free-bee's:
5 wheels, several are early Ford bolt pattern, 1 or 2 are 50's Dodge (I think), which should be similar. 5 for free, you pick-up.




2 two drawer small file cabinets, 18" deep, with a Gas Monkey Garage style original rust patina flawlessly installed by mother nature. Just waiting for you to 'clear' it. All the cool kids clear coat things . . .


The drawers actually work properly, despite what they look like.

The rules: to be eligible you have to have an earlier join date than me, more posts than me, and you pick them up.

 

...............................I qualify except for the "you pick them up" part!!!