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Aerial view of our booths at Hershey
I’m often asked how I find gaskets. Usually it involves inventories (now called “picks”) we line up during the year and track them down on road trips. If those picks are between here and the east coast then we try and see them before or after Hershey. I don’t travel alone. For many years I traveled with Paul Weaver of Weaver’s garage. After Paul’s death I generally travel with one of the guys who has cut gaskets for us, Tom Pennington. When we get to Wisconsin we meet up with my good friend Al Suehring, who specialized in flywheel ring gears, and hit the picks together.
This years trip was a little longer than usual, but otherwise pretty typical. Most days we were up at 05:30am and on the road by 6 or 6:30, in bed by 10:00pm covering about 700 miles if there were no picks.
Sept. 21: Leave Port Orchard at 1:00 pm, sleep in Kellogg, ID., 405 miles. This time Stan Daily is traveling with me. Stan is restoring a 1946 Nash Ambassador.
Sept. 22: Sleep Glendive, MT, 711 miles.
Sept. 23: Arrive in Fargo, ND at 1:10pm, deliver ignition parts to Tom VanMeeteren, who had bought Morris Tonda’s inventory this summer. Arrive in northern North Dakota at 4pm for our first pick of the trip. By 8:30 we had loaded five of the large Walmart tubs full of gaskets mostly truck, tractor, and industrial. Sleep in Cavalier, ND, 589 miles.
Sept. 24: Spent the afternoon and early evening at my cousins in Minneapolis, sleep in Hastings MN, 449 miles.
Sept. 25: Noon, arrive at Al and Betsy Suehring’s in the Stevens Point-Iola area of WI. Al deals in engine valves and gears: flywheel, standard transmission, timing, and distributor. 2365 miles from Port Orchard.
Sept. 26: Unload gaskets purchased ND. Move Carlisle and Hershey gaskets to Al’s trailer, repack truck, do laundry, and get a good nights sleep.
Sept. 27: Start for Utica, NY, our next pick. Sleep in Erie, PA, 644 miles.
Sept. 28: Arrive in Utica, NY at 1pm, an old machine shop that’s still doing engine rebuilds. Another good pick, more truck, tractor, and industrial. Sleep in Scranton, PA, 464 miles.
Sept 29 to Oct 1: We’re running ahead of time and there are no picks lined up until after Hershey so we play tourist for a few days. Valley Forge, Amish country, the Harley plant in York, PA, spend one night in a Caboose motel, and went to the AACA library and museum. Arrive Harrisburg, PA, our home for both shows.
Oct 2 to 5: Carlisle swap meet. This meet is similar to the Portland, OR meet: mostly 50’s, hot rod and big block, plus some other stuff. It has proven okay for us because a lot of folks from from overseas come in early and they can get two swap meets for the price of one plane ticket. When they come to our booth to order their gaskets, if I don’t have it with me I can have our shop ship their gaskets to my hotel and we can deliver it to them at Hershey. Tom Pennington flew into Harrisburg to join us. Weather and business is good, I find a few head gaskets to buy.
Oct 6: Betsy sees to it that the “boys” are in church in the morning. In the afternoon we take in an Antique Studebaker Club (ASC) event which had us going to a private wagon collection. Included in this collection was a commercial Studebaker wagon and a Conestoga wagon that delivered supplies to Washington at Valley Forge.
Oct 7: A full day with ASC, touring the countryside in Studebakers and a tour of a museum in Boyertown, PA. A wagon company founded in 1872 that was in business until 1990. They made the transition from wagons to custom truck bodies.
Oct 8: Move in day at Hershey, good weather, some shopping, and even a few customers.
Oct 9: Stan, Tom, and Betsy run the booths. Al and I rent a golf cart and shop 8am to 5pm. The Carlisle swap meet is 3 or 4 times the Portland, OR swap meet and Hershey is double what Carlisle is. Also Hershey is much more concentrated on early cars, and original equipment. Shopping is good. Weather is cool but clear. Sales were okay but Thursday and Friday are usually the big days.
Oct. 10: Weather cool and light rain. Stan goes shopping while Tom stays to help me in the booth. Sales are brisk from 7:30am to 1pm, only a few minutes pass when there is not one or more customers in the booth. Several of the pre-orders from Carlisle are picked up, over the counter sales are good, and I take 23 orders that I need to phone into the shop back in Port Orchard. At 1pm the heavy rain starts and only the true Hershey die-hards continue to shop. This evening we do the DIVCO dinner (for owners of home delivery vehicles), a good time is had by all, but the heavy rain continues.
Oct 11: We set up, but heavy rain continues and vendors and public start to leave, a few die-hards hang in there. At 4pm we call it quits as heavy rain continues into the night, with 9 inches reported total. I ship 5 tubs of gaskets home from Hershey with Mike Barret from Mt. Vernon, WA to make room in the truck and trailer. Total mileage so far 4,776 miles.
Oct 12: Car show day at Hershey. The rain let up during the early morning hours and the car show people are okay. We sit in lawn chairs along the entree road and the show drives past us. At 11am we head west. Our first pick is in Blairsville, PA at Chuck Vatter Auto. Chuck at 85, is still running a Packard and Pierce Arrow repair shop. I deliver him a Pierce 8 cylinder head gasket. We buy a few gaskets and other parts. Sleep in Washington, PA, 175 miles.
Oct 13: Two picks in the Columbus, OH area. First pick is good. Second pick is a bust. Sleep in Indianapolis. While the others went to a Texas steak house for dinner I spent the evening with my oldest son, his wife, and grand-daughters.
Oct 14: One pick in the southwest corner of WI. Good pick for Al but a bust for me. We make Al’s place by 10pm.
Oct 15: Unpack, repack and load previous pick from ND, do laundry.
Oct 16: On the road home by 5:30 am, sleep in wall SD. See some of the damage from their unexpected winter storm 10 days earlier. 740 miles.
Oct 17: We check out a wrecking yard just outside Boseman, MT. Stan finds a couple parts for his Nash. Sleep in Missoula, MT, 746 miles.
Oct 18: Stop in Plains, MT to pick up gasket material from one of my suppliers, stop at Antique Auto Ranch in Spokane. Stop in Othello to look at a Caboose for sale. Dinner at the Cottage Cafe in Cle Elum (a tradition), drop Tom and Stan off. Home at 10:04 pm. 619 miles.
Totals: 8143 trouble free miles, 27 days, 22 nights in hotel rooms, 660 gallons of gas, one oil change. And we are still all friends…I think.
We’re already looking forward to next year, got a hot lead on the east cost.