Saturday, Steve was on his way back from a glamorous excursion to northern Indiana, in his boss's newly customized Peterbilt truck. We've spent too much time apart this month so I climbed in the car and met him in Winslow which is about 4 hours East of Havasu. It was nice because if I hadn't gone up there I wouldn't have seen him until sometime on Sunday.
First, I must explain the truck. We flew back to Boston to get this truck back in the spring of 2006. It was sort of restored; a 1979 semi truck with a super duper engine in it and some of the interior had been done. But the rest was still quite rough. Steve began researching the shops in Arizona who could handle the amount of work the truck needed, and at the same time he did some work on it himself. We spent a lot of time driving to Phoenix trying to wrangle the needed work but in the end the job got done by a place called ICT in Indiana. It took them nearly a year, because Steve's boss was really good at adding changes and such. The end product is a masterpiece, though.
Where we stayed in Winslow is an adventure in itself. Rodney Rucker is a rare vehicle collector and he has a pretty good sized piece of property that he's developing into a car museum. Some of the collection is in storage in California, but some was available for me to photograph in Winslow. Rodney was not what I'd expected. He is a pleasant guy who speaks with a very soft voice, and apparently has a very twisted sense of humor. I say that because we were looking at the "RollerSkate Car" of his and he said he built it as a "joke." That's some joke!
Here I am in the cockpit of the Roller Skate Car:
He has built hot rods and pure monsters, all with the attitude that it's all about having fun. Here's one of the country's first monster trucks, that Rodney built back in the days before Bigfoot was even popular:
The stage coach is powered by a big block engine, and it will be our ride around town when we return for the car show this coming weekend:
Many who remember the Monster Garage show with Jesse James will probably recognize this shopping cart:
And those who desire to be a drag racing Liberace might enjoy this little creation, a piano car that can be driven down the street as the keys are played:
There's the wine barrel car:
Not pictured are the tractor cars, which are enormous monstrosities that are just what the name means; cars that have been made from tractor parts. I will get better opportunities for pictures of those because we will be back to Rodney's place very soon. Also I didn't get a picture of the Scissor-Lift car that was used in the movie the Great Race. It was Jack Lemmon's car. Rodney also owns the original "Eleanor" from Gone in Sixty Seconds. It is in storage.
Besides the weird stuff, Rodney is the owner of several awesome collector cars. His driveway in front of his house had a Mustang, Roadrunner, Corvette, Fairlane, GTO, Galazy 500, and geez I can't remember the rest. They were all 1960's era cars. Beautiful.
When Rodney gets closer to having his museum done, I will go up with the video equipment and get some interview footage as well as footage of each of the cars. Should be a good show.
