Coker Tire's Garage

Wednesday morning all of us PDDT pilgrims were anxious to head west toward Amarillo, but because Posie said 930 AM start, we were all standing around outside the hotel like we were waiting for the start flag of the Gumball rally. There was a speech about things like “plenty of time today” and “we should hang together on the road today” and then we were off like a bat outa H E double toothpicks…and the wrong way at that! We fell for it because we hadn’t set our GPS. I expected the little femine voice on the GPS to say “bout time you listened to me and not Posie”!We had a few hundred miles before our scheduled detour to check out the restored Conoco station at Shamrock, Texas. Since Posie and Whitaker had high-tailed it, the group took a vote to eat lunch at a “normal time” and quickly put Honest Mike and Wayne Pugh in charge of finding Mexican. They were up to the task because 15 miles later we coasted off to Burrito Heaven! Mission accomplished.

With our belly tanks full we got back on I-40 headed to Amarillo with a short pitstop to see the restored Conoco Station. We all took pictures of our hotrods in front of this cool art deco piece of automobiling history and got back on the road.

Now you probably don’t drive in an open car across the country often, let alone in a 32 Ford on bias ply tires. It is a cool experience. We all get so spoiled not having to worry about the weather blowing through the side curtains because our computerized temp control keeps the air in our Lexus or Mercedes precisely at 72 degrees and if we feel the slightest vibration in the seat at 86 mph, we take to have our certified automotive dealer technician tweek the balance and electronic control suspension. Nope, not us guys! We are out there driving and working it, and its liberatin’ ! You gotta do it! If you have a hot rod or collector car, shame on you if it stays in the garage! I believe we need to campaign against garage kings and trailer queens! Bring back the Sunday Drive!

We arrived at Mark and Bill Warrick’s Soncy Road Hot Rod shop to see a bunch of their friends there waiting to greet us and feed us! Bill and Linda had secured a cowboy chuck wagon cook out crew to whup us up some great barbeque and beans. They even had their original 1913 chuckwagon sitting there inside Bill’s shop.

I met Mark’s young daughter Kenedy (one N) who proudly showed me that she was local Amarillo Champion of the soap box derby.

Mark is a good body and paint man and has a nice business going but the impressive thing is all the engines, bodies, collectibles and cars and bikes he and his dad have. We met some nice local car guys and even some roughian friends of Bills who had escaped from Denver just before the 2 feet of snow that dumped that morning.

After good food and fellowship we thanked our gracious hosts and headed toward the hotel. We started hearing chatter at the hotel by the PDDT pilgrims that there was snow between Amarillo and Albuquerque! Oh no! What will we do?

From the road,

Corky

PS. Captains log PDDT4: after cc’ing my good friend and hot rod scholar Ken Gross on our previous days experiences, I received a kind response indicating that the plane at Glenn Pray’s was” a Lockheed L-10 Electra, similar to the aircraft flown by aviatrix Amelia Earhart. It’s much smaller than a DC-3.”. He’s so smart! You can fool some of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time! Btw, we are taking pictures but since I dint bring a laptop and am typing these out on my crackberry, we will download all the pics ina few days so ck back on the blog later.