Boys of Summer By Frank Adkins t was the summer of 1977. America’s Bicentennial had passed, Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and Heart’s Barracuda played endlessly on the radio. My buddy Kevin Pampuch and I were 12 years old, and we spent much of the summer riding our strippeddown bicycles on the trails through the fields and woods near our neighborhood, which sat mid-way between Newark and Wilmington just off Kirkwood Highway. It would be another year before we would graduate to dirt bikes and go-karts. One day, while exploring the trails behind St. Mark’s church and high school, we discovered an old Chevy that had been abandoned in the woods years earlier. The body was peppered with bullet holes and the windows had been blown out. Somebody had removed the engine and transmission, presumably before dumping the carcass in the woods. The caved-in roof had a gaping rust hole; time and the elements had ravaged the seats, reducing them to bare, rusty springs. I studied the grille, and when I got home, I consulted the Chilton repair manual that my father had purchased to help him service our ’63 Corvair. The Chilton manual covered domestic models from 1953-1963, and I determined that “our” Chevy was a 1953 model. The fact that we had little automotive knowledge and even less money did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm. We had each built dozens of plastic model kits, and we were adept at modifying these cars to suit our own tastes. Leftover parts from various kits found their way onto other cars; stock pre-war Ford bodies became dirt track racers while ‘50s classics became “gasser” drag race cars with blowers and multiple carburetors protruding from crudely-hacked holes in their hoods. Of course, we had to buy these models, as well as the paint and glue needed to assemble them. We each had sufficient mechanical aptitude to keep our lawnmowers running so we could earn the money we needed to buy these model kits and the related supplies. We also honed our mechanical skills and spent a fair portion of our grass cutting money keeping our bicycles going despite the 6
abuse we lavished upon them. Of course, we weren’t naïve to the fact that we had a lot to learn, but we remained steadfast in our belief that, between the two of us, we had a sufficient knowledge base to take on a project like the Chevy. It was our plan that by the time we obtained our driver’s licenses, we would have an operable car to share. Today, Kevin and I would each consider this car too far gone to revive. Truth be told, it wouldn’t have even been a good parts car, for I don’t recall any of its pieces being in a condition suitable to repair a road-going example. Furthermore, we had no idea who the legal owner was or how to obtain the necessary paperwork to own and register it. But none of that mattered. We would tackle what we could now, and we would figure out the rest as we went along. Our determination and hard work, combined with a few lucky breaks that were sure to come our way, would enable us to see this project through. Parts procurement was one of our first considerations. We knew where an engine had been discarded in a creek nearby. We didn’t know what kind of engine it was or what was wrong with it, nor did we know how we would retrieve it, but we figured it was a starting point. We also found what we thought would be a suitable transmission in a similar condition, though I’m not sure if it occurred to us that it probably wouldn’t bolt up to the engine. Our first objective, however, was to replace the roof. We reasoned that until we made the car weather-tight, the mechanicals were moot.
