The Black Dog Garage is a home garage that belongs to a friend of mine, Tom Pesula. Tom lives about 50 or 60 miles north of me. For the last 7 or so years, Tom and a group of his friends host a blow out, by invitation only, for rodders. For me, this is THE event of the year. Featuring a barbeque feast, door prizes, and best of all, a chance to see old friends and make a few new ones. I pulled in about 10 am and was by no means an early arrival. By noon, the place was packed with hot rods and rodders from all over Florida. After a short benchracing session, we were treated to the barbeque. Sliced pork, sliced beef, baked beans, cole slaw and potato salad were the bill of fare. Drinks and cupcakes and brownies rounded out the meal. Lunch was followed by more benchracing, oogling at all the neat cars and checking out Toms' garage. Along about two pm, door prizes were awarded by a drawing. Again this year, I got squat! However, my luck at this type of stuff has always been crummy. For the second year, I had made up an award for presenting to the nicest guy there. Not an easy decision because if you were invited, you were probably a pretty cool guy to begin with. This years recipient was Lee Bearror, also know here as Grandaddeo. Now, on to the photos !
Thats cool hot rods good food and good friends. Wife and I used to do a July 4th pool party. thing every year for about 12 years, we called it Hot Rods Hot Dogs and Hamburgers, we had to stop it just growed from 10 or so to about 120 when we had to stop no place to put that many cars and people, sure do miss it. Hope your Friend keeps it going a good thing for friends for sure
Sounds and looks like a good time. I can see why Norm (Plymouth wagon with the teardrop) was in such a hurry to get to Fla. from New Mexico. Thanks for the pics.
I have spent quite a bit of time with that Lee Bearror guy and am wondering about all this nice guy talk. Just messing with you Dad. I am fortunate to live one street over from the Black Dog Garage and if I ever get my butt in gear will have the 32 frame over there in the jig and finally make some progress. Had to work so I was only able to spend about a hour over there today but as usual a nice selection of cars and great people.
Don't know about all this nice guy talk either Tim, there goes my image. It was a great day at the Black Dog Garage hanging out with old and new friends alike. A big thank you to our host. Tom. Thanks for the really neat handmade "ARDUN" artwork Fred. Since my dog's name is Ardun it couldn't have been more appropriate. Very old friend and H.A.M.B member Normspeed made it all the way from New Mexico in his hopped up '53 Plymouth wagon towing his '47 teardrop. Norm will be hanging out here till we head west to the Lonestar roundup. Hey Tim when are we working on your frame again? You pick the time and I'll be there. We got hot rods to build. Lee
Sorry to say Tom's Black Lab passed on late last year. There will be a new Garage Dog coming when the time is right. Soon we all hope. Lee
Lee, it was good to see you again. As always, I had the time of my life. I went to the Abacoa show but it was full by 3 o'clock. That was a little disappointing, but, it was good to get back home. Tim, it was nice to see you there, too.
Who can provide some info on the red oxide roadster pickup in the first set of photos. I've been looking at it for an hour and can't figure out what the body started out as.
Rich, I'll try to give you the lowdown on that roadster pickup as accurately as my memory will allow. I may not get all the facts correct but here goes. Around eight or ten years a bunch of us were in the Daytona Turkey Run Swap Meet. There was this 1912?? Oakland touring car body front half sitting there. As I recall there were no doors and little much else with it. Some of us looked at it and wondered why the guy even bothered to bring it. But one friend, I guess with a whole lot more vision than the rest of us, saw it and fell in love. I didn't even know he bought it until some time after we were all back home. As with most projects like this with an off brand body, every thing was hand made. He built the frame and used an old mopar bent tube front axle with a Columbia two speed rear end. Obviously he used the warmed up Ford flathead with a top shifter 3 speed. He made the steel doors, used a forty Ford dash. The pickup bed is hand made as is the windshield frame. Grille shell is from a '32ish Ford truck. It has flattened maroon paint, elk hide interior with fringe, antler door handles, and a REAL small animal skull for a shift knob. The taillights are mid '30s Chrysler and the headlights use hand made buckets with the same shape as the taillight buckets only larger Since Oakland never made a roadster pickup, the license plate on it appropriately says "1 OF NONE." It has "Blazing Saddles" lettered on the dash, has had at least one magazine feature, and had some good footage by ESPN when they covered the Daytona meet a few years ago, much to the dismay of the big buck street rod owners who thought there cars should be picked for TV coverage. The owner loves to make something out of nothing and is very good at it. You never know what he's going to come up with next, but it's always cool. Hope I got most of the facts correct. Lee
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