Beautiful weekend with some new friends and old cars.
Frank Clarici came out to visit with his buddies Joe
Meccia and Steve Bell. Joe, you may recall, is
Frank’s partner in crime with similar mechanical gifts
and knowledge of LBC’s and parts. Steve is a Sprite
enthusiast from Massachusetts, near Plymouth. You may
have seen Steve’s stunning white Bugeye with the black
hardtop with the “Sprite Lightning Bolt/Arrow” emblem
painted on top in some magazines. The boys were
coming out to check out Peter C.’s parts and to have
some fun.
Steve arrived Friday to a perfect midwest evening (the
kind where an 85 degree day turns into "turtleneck
weather" as the sun goes down), and we had a few hours
of good conversation over some killer barbecued steaks
and beer. Steve is a teacher by profession, and I
enjoyed watching him help my son Bobby learn a little
bit while we were stargazing with Bobby's telescope.
Frank and Joe rolled in around midnight, and we stayed
up BS’ing till all hours. Saturday it was up to
Peter’s, me and Joe in the Sprite, Frank and Steve in
the rental. Great day of parts digging followed by a
cookout at Peter’s farm in rural Wisconsin. The
torrential rains came, but it didn’t seem to dampen
anyone’s spirits. I left the Bugeye at Peter’s.
Sunday morning we trekked up to Peter’s to meet for
light parts sifting and a caravan to the Winery and
car show. We were early, and after a few minutes we
heard the ripping sound of my car’s exhaust from ½
mile away or so. Peter and his daughter Genevieve
came tearing into the parking lot grinning ear to ear.
Peter shouted “HOW MUCH YOU WANT FOR THIS THING?” as
he pulled in. I think he’ll be a Bugeye owner again
real soon (Pete, maybe we can work a deal for the ’31
Morris Minor!). From Peter’s we made it out to the
winery with our families. The show was really nice,
with a good variety of British cars, Wisconsin wine, a
pretty good band, and spectacular scenery. I was a
little preoccupied, as I had to referee for a while
after my sons discovered how much fun it was to beat
the crap out of each other while rolling down a hill
toward the vineyard. I still managed to break away
long enough to pick a slightly beat up 1960 Lotus
Elite as the car I'd most like to take home (you can
keep your garage queens, thank you). After some
excellent homemade bread chased with wine of somewhat
mixed quality, we started what began as a perfect
rural back-road drive home. After nearly 3 hours of
detours, we had all had enough, especially me in the
Sprite with a decent sunburn starting and bugs
embedded into my forehead.
The weekend wrapped up with a tremendous feast of
Chinese food and champagne, complements of my guests.
I want to thank the guys for coming out – these guys
are as good as it gets, and the concern and effort
they made to include my family into everything is
greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank Peter
and Jane Caldwell for their graciousness in opening
their business and home to us. It would have been a
great time even if I didn’t get to put 400 miles on
the Sprite! We have to do it again soon.
Get out there and drive,
Ron
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