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My Uncle Bill Bill and Joe also drove around
in a '62 Thunderbird for a time, really neat car, I don't recollect what
happened to that one either, I think that was Uncle Bill's real dating car if I remember
correctly. They always had a couple of
complete engines laying around the shop, and a couple of Dodge Hemi heads for
an uncompleted project sat in the corner of the shop for years after they had
moved on to other things. Things changed after Bill got
married. He and Gwenne bought a house
in NW Grand Rapids and Bill became a Plumber.
We still saw him some, more in a work setting. He worked for Powell
Plumbing, he and Alvin Houg made quite a team.
Since economic conditions were not the best in Grand Rapids, he moved to
the Cities and started working for a company that installed fire suppression
systems in restaurants. He would come up to the Rapids quite frequently and
install systems here. Eventually he got
a job at Honeywell, or Honey Bucket as he called it. Our wish was that he would retire out of
Honey Bucket with a big pension and come back home, I think that was always in
the back of his mind but it never transpired.
A
landing spot for us when we went to the cities was the house on Oak Terrace,
where Bill and Gwenne lived. On our
infrequent trips we would drive by, usually unannounced, stop in and hopefully
not track in mud on the white carpet.
One time I stopped by after a long day of trucking and Gwenne could see
I was a little famished. She offered me
some cantaloupe, previous to this I couldn't stand the stuff, but decided I
could try it. It was the most delicious
thing! Now I eat it every at every
opportunity. One
year, Dad, Bill, Joe, Herman Suemnick and I made a trip up into Following
Bill's footsteps, I did start racing cars.
I built up a couple of them and one race night Bill happened to be up
and went racing with me. My cars were
never too fancy, I couldn't see spending much money on them but did have lots
of fun. I think Bill had a lot of fun
that night, he served as pit man for me, I wish there had been a pit man's race
and then he could have driven again. It
was a night I'll always remember. No
discussion of Bill is ever complete without talking about tractors. I remember the time Uncle Robert got stuck in
the southwest field, Bill was part of the operation to pull out the Case, he
drove Dad's John Deere to pull it out.
Years later, when I made the move to purchase a John Deere 70 diesel,
Bill stopped by one day to look at it. I
fired it up and invited him to take it for a spin. He drove it around the yard, then with that
classic Bill Burt roar of a laugh, yelled out, "Give me a plow!" I think he liked it. He owned a wide front SC Case for a time,
never saw him drive it, I think it had a broken front axle mount that his lack
of northern time precluded him from repairing, would have been a neat
tractor. His
visits to our home are always delightful.
The time he and Greg stopped by to hunt on the last weekend of deer
hunting a couple of years ago was great.
The hunting was not so good, the woods had been worked over pretty good
by that time, but the memories and laughter were indescribable. Bill's roaring laugh was frequent as was the
laughter of the rest of us. I missed
Bill's visit of a couple of months ago, Dawn enjoyed his visit immensely and
Valeri still mentions "that funny guy," I guess he teased her a little,
hard to imagine. There
are lots of other memories, most good, anyway I’m proud of my Uncle Bill, he
has provided a role model for me in many ways. |
The Modified
You can see uncle Robert's Greenbriar in the background in font of his house. |
A Bodied Modified
Bill and Joe welded a Model A body on the modified and ran a few races. Here are some pictures of the car in this configuration. Joe told the story of being in MacGregor and Bill rolled it and the body flew off. They'd only tacked it on in a couple of spots. He said that the crowd started boo-ing because they saw the modofied race car once the A-body flew off. Joe said, "after I found out Bill was OK, I had a good laugh about that one!" Joe always did like a good joke. It looks like they changed the number on the car to 1. That was the number Uncle Al had on his car, also. It looks like Bill leaning against the car. Scotsman was the type of ice making machine Uncle Al sold, so he must have had some money in this car, too. The car loaded up in front of Grandma's house. The truck was uncle Al's. Later thay put a long bed on the truck and it was mostly used as a parade vehicle. |