All during the winter, we received emails advertising this show from Rick Perry, show promoter that made us want to go due to all the features he’d aligned for the event. Due to other commitments, our attendance last year and costs, we decided not to go.
About 2 weeks prior to the show date, pal Ray Dalke called and invited me to accompany him and help show his beautiful ’41 Ford Carson topped convertible. The car comes with a lot of history, originally built by Gene Winfield of LA and the Carson was the first built by Sam Foose in Gene’s shop. It is painted Porche India Red with subtle tan pin-stripping, on air bags, nicely detailed and the leather interior and top is covered with material from the Rolls Royce plant in England.
We were to meet another friend, Larry Kline who I met at Blackie’s show last year, and stay in the host hotel, Embassy Suites (where we stayed last year). I jumped at the offer and packed my bags. We planned to leave on Tuesday the 17th but as the Siskyou Pass was snowed in and chains required through Dunsmuir, Ca. (why would anyone want to live there, either pouring rain, sleeting ice, snowy and chains required to travel??? We put our departure off to the next day. Good decision too.

Mapquest advised the road was open and we left from Central Point, Or. at 7am.
It was overcast and had rained a bit overnight but the early traffic had almost dried the
highway and we made good time. In a couple of hours, the sun burned through and the Ca. skies were clear and bright. Before we got to Redding, Ca. we hit rain and decided to stop at the Black Bear café for breakfast. By Red Bluff, it had cleared and we motored to the 509 turnoff to meet Larry at Midway. As we were ahead of the afternoon rush, we drove straight to the Cow Palace just off the freeway in Daly City, arriving at 3:30pm. Inside the building, vendors were busy erecting their displays, several rods and customs were already staged but the actual registration would not be ready til 6pm. We located our spaces and noticed that if Larry didn’t get spotted now, it would be almost impossible to get to it. Rick Perry gave us the OK to bring his car in early. Larry owns an all steel ’41 Willys coupe that he had Tommy Carr paint in ‘Jazzy Blue’ (a medium blue metallic) that looks 10’ deep with a pale yellow front and red flames running from the front and half way down the sides. Recently, the car, Tommy and Larry were honored by being selected to grace the September page of the ’09 Dupont ‘Hot Hues’ calendar, so you can see I’m traveling with some of the best!!! The Willys is powered with a 540 cu.in. Merlin blown engine with a ‘Bug Catcher’ peeking through the hood. Needless to say, its not only gorgeous but one of the most popular rods around.
We brought his trailer into the ‘tunnel’ (the unload area at the rear of the Palace), once the car was out, drove it to his space. Next we brought in all the display material, carpeting, lighting and signage. It was now after 5pm, more cars were entering the main floor and the place was filling fast. One of Rick’s staff gave us the OK to bring Ray’s car in and we repeated the unloading process again. Ironically, Ray’s space was the same one we had with our ’40 Ford conv. the year before and is a swell site for public viewing and picture takers. As usual, we are constantly interrupted to say ‘Hi’ to old friends, meet new

owners, show staff and get the cars safety checked. We parked the trailers in the secure compound and headed south to the hotel. We checked in at 8pm, dropped our bags in a huge 2 room suite on the 10th floor and went to the house café for dinner. We finished the day with a couple of drinks and all us ‘old-timers’ hit the sack pretty well worn out!!!
The hotel room rate includes a great buffet breakfast offering almost everything one could want for breakfast and we took advantage of a good feed knowing Thursday was a work day and we wouldn’t eat again til dinner. We shuffled the cars to get the carpets down, repositioned them for the best stance and began assembling the surrounding stanchions and running the lighting cords. Again, all during the day we talked to other owners, traded tools, met some of the vendors we knew and worked til 6pm doing the final waxing, wiping, placing the signage and checking lights to get both cars looking spiffy for the 1st round of judging. Back at the hotel, they hold a Manager’s Reception in the courtyard with no host free drinks bar, nachos/cheese, finger food etc. so we joined some other rodders while we drank and nibbled to closing time.
Friday, the 1st day of the show, opens to the public at 10am and us entrants must finish our dusting etc. and be out of the space before opening or risk disqualification!!! We ate another great breakfast and rushed to the Palace to do the ‘Women’s Work’ and just made it out in time. At breakfast, I ate with an old friend I met in the ‘60s, Pete Paulsen who has a wheel mfg. co. out of Sacramento (you must have seen his ads in almost every publication out of Ca.). We bench raced a few meets when I met him in our Sprint Car days, caught up on our activities in the past few years and promised to see each other more during the weekend. Ray and I spent some time talking to ‘Jimmy G’ who was an Adams dealer and now has his own line of Carnuba polishes etc. I got a few minutes to talk to old buddy Roy Brizio while they were setting up, he obviously knows so many people its hard to have much conversation without being interrupted, he invited me to come by the shop tomorrow. They had 6 outstanding finished cars adjacent to their booth and a couple other customer’s cars on the main floor. I wandered up to say Hi to Herb Martinez, one of So.Ca. renowned pin-strippers, I was impressed he remembered me from ’08 and even commented on the graphics Tommy had done on our car. John
d ’Agostino came over, was glad to see me at the show and said ‘Where is the ’40?” I asked him to come over and meet Ray and see his ’41…naturally, he invited Ray to Santa Maria (the old Passo Robles show). John was exhibiting his latest custom, ‘The Egyptian’, an exquisite ’58 Olds chopped hardtop ‘Lead Sled’ (he’d smack me for that comment) covered in ‘Crushed Diamond, Mother of Pearl golden paint with the neatest hidden stitched Parchment upholstery and sitting right on the floor!!! As Ray and I were setting up, our next door neighbor rolled in an all gold pearl custom ’58 Caddy with all the chrome just a gleaming, a custom grille, lowered and one of the best interiors I have ever seen…a huge man, 7’3”, 300 lb mountain of a man excited and stunned us on-lookers. Turned out it was Robert Gallery, an Oakland Raiders linesman!!! Just an aisle from him was a ‘Pimpmobile’ as I call them, that turned out to be Joe Conforte’s (Mustang Ranch owner) Barris Custom recently rebuilt by another LA custom coach builder, David Pygeorge. Its long, low, swoopy, gilded, ornate and ugly!!!

Being a lover of almost ’34 anything, I was knocked out with the Steve Moal ’34 Zephyr. Cam Grant, (a BC builder) eat your heart out!!! This all black, aluminum hand built, elongated boat-tail roadster is a modern flashback of the early ‘30s custom coach builders. It’s powered with a 450 hp Buick nailhead, rack & pinion with Franklin steering, torsion bar Indy style suspension, a Cord dash & instruments with Aligator leather upholstery and Kelsey Hayes wire wheels.
Rick Perry and staff took a bold step this year by deleting the Rat Rod ‘junkers’ limiting the show to about 25 ‘Suede’ vehicles. Two of the standouts were Art Himsl’s
Packard, a set of ‘rails’ with a large rear tank, an open 2 seater partial body, straight 8 flathead, spoked wheels and motorcycle fenders, done in light grey primer with red primer accents…looked like a blast to cruise in. Sparkey Bullock used a beat-up ’34 Ford body, chopped the open-air top 5”, added wide reversed rims and powered it with an old hemi sporting 8 97’s on a log type manifold. Two old racing style bucket seats are bolted to the ‘no floor’ frame with aircraft belts…asked what he was planning to do next, he laughed and said “That’s it, and what a great driver!!!” The North Bldg. contained all the ‘Suede’s’, several bikes, Joe Gibbs “M’nM” NASCAR car that Kyke Busch drove to get his 1st Sprint Series win, the So Cal booth along with several other vendors selling everything from clothing, auto parts, wallets, wood carvings, knick-knacks, signs and insurance. My pal Pete Paulsen has come up with a new wrinkle, along with his huge wheel inventory, he’s now selling flamed, high heeled ladies sharp pointy-toed patent leather shoes, in all colors at $75 a pop!!!
I’m not much of a bike lover but one has to marvel at the ingenuity of the builders, the imagination of design, the fantastic paint jobs and finishes they come up with and this show is no exception. Orange County Choppers debuted a long sleek bike they had just finished for the owner of the ICEE company and painted it in pearls the same as the colors of their drink cartons, it was pretty and the S&S V Twin 110 hp mill just gleamed.
The ICEE company plans to give the bike away at the end of the ’09 show season.
Back in the main hall, right across from Ray’s booth was an array of bikes built by now famous Cory Ness following in his also famous father’s tracks. Every one was different, a tribute to his craftsmanship and attracted a lot of public attention to our end of the show.
Local car builder and friend, Roy Brizio displayed 6 of his latest creations, a candy apple Ferrari/Ford roadster with a V12 Modena mill stuffed in a stretched frame, built on a Indy theme and Halibrand knock-offs, stunning car. He also showed 2 deuce coupes, a 3 window with an early Red Ram Hemi and a 5 window running an Ardun OHV set-up.
Their shop had just completed an outstanding ’41 Willy coupe for Mike Madeiros of San Jose who was one of Larry’s competitors in the ‘Street Machine’ class. This 513 hp Hemi was painted gold with green flames up front, chrome everything and upholstered in African Elephant hide. The car was angle mounted on a turntable and the whole space was surrounded with Tusks for stanchions!!! It’s easily a ¾ million dollar showpiece and through Larry I met Mike, a very personable chap as we got to know each other, he owns a drywall firm that specializes in high-rise buildings in the San Francisco area. Just down from his space is another just as rich, glass candy apple ’41 Willys coupe owned by

Sparkey Bullock and built in his own fabrication shop. Also rotating on a turntable, this Hemi, blown, injected gorgeous car is going to grace the pages of all the car magazines. It is upholstered in real Aligator skin and another one in Larry’s class, judging will be tight.
If you were a teen in the ‘50s, you had to love Deuces and any model, but the cream of the crop had to be the fenderless hi-boy roadster!!! Zane Cullen from Cotati, Ca. has specialized in building ‘32s resembling the old ‘board track’ speedsters, the Bonneville salt- flats racers and early hop-ups that emanated from the LA area. His entry was one of the neatest, cleanest, smooth, sits just right rods I’ve seen in a long time. With a dark blue paint, chopped windshield, hair-pins, low full sized headlamps, fully louvered side panels, all black bigs ‘n littles, reversed rims with caps and rings and an all black leather interior.
At shows of this magnitude, it is interesting to see some of the tow vehicles that arrive from all over the country including custom ramp trucks, custom trailers, custom trucks,
custom buses and motor-homes. In the South Bldg. a 5 ton ’97 Peterbuilt semi was entered in the ‘Humongeous Class’ (just kidding) sporting 500 hp twin turbo equipped B.B. Chevy with beautiful orange pearl fenders and chassis paint with a black upper area. To separate the 2 colors was a wide swath of blue/white tipped flames circling the whole rig, very impressive. As if that wasn’t enough, the 50’ trailer was painted to match.
Another custom semi was a ’46 Diamond T 5 toner driven all the way from Arvada, Co.
The 3rd in this class was ‘Millenium Mack’, a ’56 B-73 semi that took 8 years in the restoration includes an all pale yellow exterior with tasteful tan leather upholstery and an ARC bug-bucks audio system, it’s a perennial favorite at the ‘Kool April Nites’ Friday night cruise through downtown Redding!!!
After devouring a scrumptious breakfast, filling our thermos’ with free coffee, filling a bag full of fresh fruit, we went to the show, dusted the cars and then spent most of rest of the day wandering the show, yakking with other entrants, vendors and watching the judges go in and out of our spaces…are we up for some of the special awards? One night we ate an Italian dinner at Cecilia’s, just up the road from the hotel and another at a Lyon’s café where the meatloaf was like mother tried to make!!! Sunday was another long day, as we waited for the awards ceremonies that started promptly at 5pm. It was over an hour before they got to our class and I was honored to receive Ray’s 1st in class Radical Custom conv. trophy. Soon after they got to the Street Machines and as we suspected, Larry placed 3rd after the 2 high dollar glass Willys. But in the next category, Best Paint, Larry got 1st and $50 too, then for upholstery, his ‘Gabe’s’ super neat threads beat out the Elephant Hide and Alligator Skin for Best Upholstery!!! We were really happy
For him and a nice trophy goes with the win!!! I always marvel at the fact it takes us 3 days to set up for the show and as soon as the awards are over, the arena clears out in a remarkably short time…tonight was no different. The only exception was us old boys were still sore from setting up so decided to take our time with the teardown. We made good time and were all packed and ready to trailer load at 8:30pm. Our only complaint of the whole weekend was the lack of show staff and organization of trailers wanting to

exit the buildings. Entrants who were not packed kept many of us waiting to enter the tunnel while they yakked and broke down their displays. Some vendors who had a lot to bundle up were at the head of the line and plugged the alleyway. Exhibitors in the north and south buildings constantly had to back across our path to get to their spaces. It had begun to rain and I felt sorry for the few rain-soaked show staff who were trying to help us. By the time we got both cars in the trailer, all our display items loaded, it was after
mid-night before we parked the rigs at the rear of the hotel. We decided to order in a pizza (cause we hadn’t eaten all day) that arrived quickly, was hot, tasty and we washed it down with a couple of toddies!!!
Morning came awful early, a bright sunny sky broke in our room as we opened the drapes, we did our constitutionals, packed up our belongings and headed for the checkout counter. Not wanting to get into morning bridge traffic, we all enjoyed our last free buffet breakfast and pulled onto the 101 N just after 9am. The weather was sunny, clear skies and dry roads as we wended our way north. We said goodbye to Larry as he pulled off at the Midway turnoff and Ray and I continued north, up the I 5 and all the way to Weed where we stopped for a sandwich before continuing all the way to my place in Central Point. We got here before the sun set and said our goodbyes after a swell trip, good company, good eats and a rewarding venture.
To recap, it is my opinion Rick Perry and staff planned and pulled off another great show
with a lot of top name exhibitors, top builders cars, top artisans of the custom car culture, fantastic show vehicles, great displays, a lot of 1st time debuts, new attractions for the public, a good variety of displays and vendors with a finale rewarding almost all the vehicles in the show. Although the email advertising announced this could be the last show at the Cow Palace, it was encouraging to hear RP Promotions had cemented another 3 year contract with the Palace taking future events into 2012.
As compiled by RVSR member Bunny Jeboult for Ray Dalke and Larry Kline.