Ok folks, the saga continues!
The Sunday Recap continues...
We finished the outside tour of Flat Top Bob's Salvage Yard (still has us all awe inspired days later) and he graciously invited us to come over to his personal residence to check out some of the Hot Rods he is building. Mind you, he made a big fuss about his residence being built in a simple metal commercial type building, nothing fancy, which we now know was a setup... please humor me as I walk you through the chronological chain of events (with pictures) that prove my point.
We follow FTB to an unmarked, plain vanilla, steel commercial building... the only thing that looked out of place are a couple of vintage gas pumps out front. Here's a picture of our vehicles outside
FTB then walks us into the open bay door (shown above) into an area where he proceeds to show us some of his current projects. To set this up properly, imagine that there is a wall just to the left of the open bay door with a CLOSED plain roll-up door that we assumed entered into his personal residence.
Here are some of the things we saw in that section of the building, which is essentially his "roll up your sleeves and work" area:
Fiat Topoline Altered Gasser style drag car that will be auctioned on the Jaopy Journal (HAMB)
Early 60's Buick that FTB's wife bought him for his birthday
An assortment of Car Club plaques that FTB has collected
At this point, we are thinking "nice setup... decent working area, a couple of nice project vehicles, cool." Little did we know that beyond the door to the left of the work area lied an incredible secret; a personal Hot Rod showroom that housed his personal collection of cars, motorcycles, scooters and memorabilia.
These are some of the pictures from inside this incredible 2 and a half story high area
The view inside when FTB opened the roll up door
And finally, a shot of our crew next to FTB's '51 Merc
NOTE: We have a LOT more pictures from our visit with Flat Top Bob, but it would take forever to post them... maybe a few will get sprinkled into the blog later... heck, we have more than 2500 pictures of the journey already!
After spending a good hour looking at all of FTB's Hot Rod related "goodies" he invited us into the residence part of the building, which was just beyons the red framed doors to the right of us in the picture above.
We were blown away to learn that he had a 3500 square foot living area, finished very tastefully, inside the same building. Talk about having your cake and eating it, too!
Our time with FTB was fantastic and brought us many surprises. We all thanked him for his hospitality and for opening up his home to us on a Sunday with no advanced warning... Like all the other Hot Rodders we've met along the way, Flat Top Bob further reinforced the sense of brotherhood that exists amongst our breed.
Our next destination was West Amarillo, TX. On our way there Ray's '32 Roadster turned hit a milestone mileage mark (1932 miles). I will have to post a picture in the next blog... I think I hit the maximum allowable space for images!
More to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment