Somewheresville

People shouldn’t do coast to coast road trips across America in modern a Chevy. It’s just plain wrong. Irony is, try it in something that fits my rigid idea of the right kind of car, and we probably wouldn’t make L.A. at all. However, I’m always on the lookout for what could have been, and so we screeched to a halt outside Crumley Customs on the outskirts of the metropolis that is Luling. Eric Crumley restores and resuscitates everything, and he showed us what he currently had in his yard, from a TransAm race car, hog-hunting truck (‘they chase it down get out and cut its throat and sling it in the back’), a 1947 coupe, Oldsmobile, Chrysler, and Bonnie and Clyde era old Ford. He demonstrated how suicide doors opened, hinged at the back, (‘popular in the old days for throwing dead bodies out’) and how pumping nitrogen into lowriders made them rise up and drop down on the chassis. Dave wanted the orange truck, I wanted the purple sharky one. Anyway if you happen to be in Luling, looking for a car, or you’ve picked up a pile of rust in the hope of a miraculous restoration, try Eric in Luling on 830-263-0104.

Postscript on this: be careful what you wish for. Four short hours after looking at the Chevy through narrowed eyes, hating, hating it for all its modern bits, it packed up and we were towed to Austin.