I know I'm not the oldest on the list but I have to be in the top 10%. I
was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1952 and other than 4 years floating the
oceans for Uncle Sam (EN2 for you Navy guys), I have lived all my life in
Ohio. First car I remember Dad having was a '48 Hudson Jet. I used to
sleep in the rear window shelf on long trips. About 1965 Dad started
getting into 'different' cars and we had a bunch of strange little foreign
cars, but that's a different story.
My first car was a '63 Karmann Ghia convertible. Great rust bucket, lousy
car. That was sold for a '66 Saab 96; great winter car, especially after
the motor seized. Rebuilt it with Saab racing components! From there I had
a 63 Ford Galaxy convertible, a '58 Ford station wagon, a couple of Ford
Cortinas, a Sunbeam Rapier, Subaru 1100, and finally when I got out of the
Navy, my first new car, a 1977 Toyota Corolla SR5 Sports Coupe! Go married
to Kathy back in 1977. We celebrated our 25th anniversary in August this
year. She is still the love of my life and very tolerant of my Datsunitius!
For a long time I got stuck in a rut of 'practical cars. Then a beautiful
candy-apple red Opel GT followed me home one day. Then a Spitfire. Then in
1996, my first Datsun, a 1600 roadster. I had been searching for one for a
long time, trying to find one that wasn't rust riddled from Ohio winters. I
still have it and recently a 510 wagon has joined it in the garage. I'm
still looking for a RL411 to round out the collection. For a short time I
had a '84 200SX Turbo that I autocrossed for a summer. Fun car to power
slide around cones!
My son was born back in 1979, and on December 21 this year will graduate
from Toledo University with an Industrial Engineering degree and a Business
degree. He had his first car at 13 and was on to his second car before he
got his license. He currently drives his 7th car, a 2002 Nissan Sentra SE-R
Spec-V. He has been autocrossing for several years now and has placed
second and third the last couple of years. Haven't seen this years results
but he thinks he was third again.
After 25 years of working in Material Control for several large
manufacturing firms in NE Ohio, I started a new job in sales this summer. I
sell material handling equipment; from racks, bins and shelves, all the way
to modular buildings and mezzanines. While my territory is limited to Ohio,
the company does sell modular buildings and mezzanines across the country.
Take a look at http://www.amezz.com if you'd like to see more.
Currently, most of my spare time is spent crewing for Sloan Racing. It's
a small family run, father/daughter race team running two Datsun 1600s in
SCCA G Production. Jim is only 2 points out of first place for the local
track championship and his daighter, Cathy Ann, has a grip on third. Last
weekend, Jim blew a motor and Cathy Ann lost a shift fork. The scramble is
on to see if we can get both drivers back on the track this weekend for the
final race of the year. I have been crewing for four years now and will
continue to work with the Sloan family as long as they let me. The racing
is a blast, the friendship is fantastic, and as my fellow crew members and
waist line will attest to, the food makes it all worth while!
A couple of weeks back I had the pleasure of crewing for Tom "Iron Butt"
Phelan when he debuted his vintage 2000 at Summit Point. Tom has always
been a class act and his race car shows his attention to details. The car
looked beautiful and performed almost flawlessly all weekend.
Sorry for rambling on so long but at my age .....!
Paul Kort
Ohio
1969 1600 roadster
1972 510 wagon
Sloan Racing
SEROC
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