Side Glances: ?Girding Oneself For Battle With the Restorable Car - RoadandTrack.com (blog)
There is an elegiac peacefulness about a big old car slowly sinking into the earth, sort of like the sun going down behind an abandoned railroad station, only not so large, in some cases. Ashes to ashes, dust to rust. it's just another part of nature, like graying hair, or the serious back trouble I've had this month, but never mind that for now. For every abandoned old car (I have theorized), there was one moment when someone looked at the thing and said, "that's it. No more. There is a delicate balance point here, a moment at which a car may just as likely be abandoned as saved, and the hard economics of restoration more often points to abandonment. It's a special gift, like lumbar trouble, and it struck again last month, following symptoms that go back to the winter of 1994. That's when my old friend and neighbor, Chris Beebe, inherited a 1963 Cadillac from the estate of our mutual friend... A few extremely retentive readers may remember that I wrote a column about the old Caddy at the time, called "The Widow's Cadillac"(May1994). Chris spent many cold days in the cramped, unheated garage, freeing the stuck brakes, installing a starter and battery and getting it mobile enough to limp to a nearby garage for new brake lines and fuel pump, so he could drive it the 15 miles to... Source: www.roadandtrack.com
