On a bleak Saturday morn, several RVSR’s met at Mrs Q’s Café for a hearty breakfast before gathering in the Rogue Valley Mall parking lot to cruise Al Erickson’s Fall Tour. Over 20 of us (in our daily drivers, due to forecast rain) headed out Hwy 62 to Central Point to Mike’s Farr’s new building on Antelope Rd. This huge facility will soon become Mike’s painting outlet with a brand new state of art booth due next week. When we arrived, Mike introduced us to Simon, an air brushing specialist who was in the middle of training 15 locals in the art. We viewed Mikes award winning Dodge Challenger and a customer’s 55 Chevy 2 door, tastefully finished in pewter and blue metallics. A real basket case wagon was on the rotisserie under construction with a 2 x 2 Mustang and another Charger waiting their turn. Expansion plans include another shop where all the re-building will be done in the new year.

From here we drove to some acreage just off Table Rock Rd, where Bernie Zieminski, a local entrepreneur has storage buildings and fields chocked full of relics from the ‘20’s’ to the ‘80’s’. We estimated this assortment was 400 or more with more at other locations he owns. We all wandered in and out of the cold unlit building where the more complete and better cars in his huge collection are stored, including T-birds, Tornado’s, Studies, Packard’s, Caddies, Merc’s, Lincolns, early English models, Jeepsters, a nice Cameo P/U, Vettes, Crown Vic’s and some special interest vehicles like a 30 passenger “Towne-trolley”.

Bernie’s not known for selling anything, but is an avid buyer who has amassed the majority in this vicinity. Our gang then walked the 2 block long driveway in front of approximately 8, 5,000sq.ft buildings each housing as many as 50 vehicles just crammed in bumper to bumper and door to door. Stretching east from this driveway are row upon row of 40’s, 50s & 60’s cars, wagons, P/U’s suburban’s, panels, hearses, ambulances, RV’s & trailers. Next we walked another road heading east and the rows of relics went on & on. It was fortunate the sun broke through the clouds and we were able to meander the road in 60 degree sunshine. All of the vehicles in the fields will probably never see the road again as they sit rusting and slowly become engulfed in weeds and thorny bushes. Your reporter found it a real shame that the condition of some of them was deteriorating quickly as many had been driven to their final resting place. Bernie must have a keen eye for most of this collection were top of the line and rare models of hard tops, converts, coupes and wagons equipped with also had to find factory accessories.

It was almost noon as we left these ‘killing fields’ and cruised down to one of the clubs major show sponsors, Shari’s for lunch where they had reserved 2 large tables for our hungry bunch, you do work up an appetite trudging these tours!!!
From here we cruised to the nearby Medford Airport to the small planes area. Well known to most of us Butch Milani stores some of his collection here and also operates his light aircraft building business. Unlike our last tour, all of Butch’s treasures are well finished and maintained drivers. We saw a nice array of 60’s mopars, all with high powered wedge engines that his mechanic started up and explained the stats of each one. Along with a few early P/U’s, we all drooled over his completely stocked ’40 Ford Deluxe Coupe! In 3 other buildings, he showed us some beautiful sleek 2 & 4 seater mostly aluminum construction planes he & his son fabricate from scratch. Their workmanship parallels our hot rod traits, smooth, flawless bodies of aluminum and Kevlar skins all painted in stunning colors with custom controls & instruments. Their handmade aircraft are purchased by enthusiasts from all over the states, run in the $200K price range and are constant winners at aircraft events. We were introduced to Melissa who does all their interior and seat upholstery. It was a treat to see the work, she had just completed on past president Larry Stalions ‘48’ Ford P/U sporting a new headliner and door panels to match his custom seats. She is interested in doing more rod work and our crowd were all impressed with her talents.

Our last stop was in east Medford and after following Al’s “circuitous route” arrived at another friend to the RVSR, Mark Daly’s “Thunderstruck Custom Bikes” shop. Annually, Mark places 4 or 5 of his custom chopper creations in our February R&C show. We were treated to an array of 20 or so of his latest build-ups and saw some of the ones he plans to display next February. Although our group are beyond the ‘bike stage’ of our lives, once again the pains taking attention to detail, beautiful custom construction and awesome painting with air brushing on Mark’s cycles has earned him a well deserved high status among the “bike builders” fraternity. He has recently returned from a couple of prestigious shows in Kentucky and Las Vegas, returning with more orders for his unique talents. He stopped work for us and patiently answered all our questions and explained several of the processes of custom bike building.

As this was the end of our tour, we said our good byes and thanked Al for another super tour – Keep’em coming Al!