When on-the-road good eats are a must, the Peculiar Drive-In (called PDI by the locals) features a beef tenderloin sandwich worthy of any hot rodder on a long drive. After we indulged ourselves, we went onward to St. Louis, Missouri.
Upon arriving in St. Louis, we stopped at the shop of Jack Stirnemann, who was in the midst of finishing the restoration of the originally owned and built Walker "Mo" Morrison dark maroon 1932 Ford highboy roadster for Pebble Beach. It was originally featured in the January 1952 issue of Hop Up, September 1954 issue of Rod & Custom (then combined with Hop Up), and, later, Best Hot Rods from Fawcett Publications. The car would finish second in the Deuce Finest Nine competition as part of the 75th anniversary of the 1932 Ford. (See next month's coverage of Pebble Beach by Ken Gross for the rest of the story.) If the name Stirnemann sounds familiar, go find the August 2007 issue of SRM and you'll see Jack's nephew Mark Stirnemann's '34 Ford five-window coupe.
The Deuce highboy roadster had been missing for 50 years until Jack unearthed it. It is powered by a 284ci Flathead with Evans heads, triple manifold, Vertex Magneto, and a Winfield Super 1A cam and Belond Tri-Y headers. It ran 134.50 mph on the lakes in its original form.
After visiting with Jack, it was on to the shop of another local hot rodder, George Lange, to look at some of his late-model hot rods. Afterward, we stopped at the home of Gary Kessler to take a look at his ongoing project-a Deuce highboy roadster. Granted, we have all seen our share of Deuce highboys, but Gary made a splash at the NSRA Nats in Memphis back in '71 with his yellow Deuce highboy roadster, and rodders still talk about that car to this day. While it may be true you can never go home, he is trying to make a close reproduction of the once-famous '32 highboy roadster. This car should be worth the wait.
I can say that the remainder of the drive was everything a roadster ride should be with sunny (and hot) weather, no mechanical woes, plenty of open road, and no traffic to deal with. We did make one last stop before arrival in Louisville to see Matt Held and Bill Tichenor of Holley. We did avail ourselves of the Holley staff expertise and they made one last fine-tune to the carb (you guessed it, a Holley) and then it was off to lunch. Well, what did you expect? After lunch, it was on to Louisville where the chores of cleaning the roadster began. I made myself scarce and told Steve I had another pressing engagement. (See "For Starters" for the rest of this tale.)
Soon after leaving the Nats, it was on to the westward journey to Bonne-ville with the first stop at the Spring-field, Ohio, store of Lobeck's V8 Shop to do some additional fine-tuning. We also paid a visit to Brookville Roadster while we were in Ohio, and another stopover included a visit with Dave Lane of FastLane in Iowa.
As for Bonneville, we will give you a glimpse, but all we can really say is wait until next month when the ol' veteran of the Salt, Frank Oddo, fills us in on this year's excitement. Watch the pages of The Rodder's Journal if you want more on the exploits of Steve and myself as we crisscrossed the country. Should you want to run with Steve and me next summer, let us know-there just might be a second running in the offering. In the meantime, peruse the following pages and you will see what all the excitement was about at the NSRA Nats and why it is always worth the drive.