The Tree Car Story .... Jerry Mlady Renner, SD
I have been looking for a Deuce Cabriolet for several years with no luck, at least in an affordable way. In the beginning of July of 2005, I had asked my friend Mike Devriendt, owner of Pikes Peak Motors (formerly So-Cal Colorado) if he knew of any Deuce Cabriolets for sale and he called me back later saying he knew of one with an interesting story, but he didn't know if it was for sale. I sat on the information for a while because I had just bought a used So-Cal Deuce highboy frame for my Brookville roadster project from Mike. I had just received it on July 6th, which happened to be on my 32nd wedding anniversary (what else would you buy on your wife on your 32nd anniversary?). I didn't think my wife Janet would want another "present" like that this soon, so I waited as long as as I could stand it - a whole week !!!
I called the owner and he asked how I knew it was for sale. I said I didn't, but that I hoped he would consider selling it to me. He said it was funny that I called that day because he was laying awake last night in bed wondering how he would ever finish all of his projects. He decided he couldn't so he decided to sell his cabriolet project then. For some reason I was lucky enough to call the next day! He described the body and it's condition, named his price and I bought it sight unseen.
The car had been an old Hot Rod and it had an incredible story that started in the early 1950's on a farm in Cherry Hills, which is now suburb of Denver, Colorado. The previous owner had bought the car after returning from the armed services and had driven it on the street, raced (and crashed) it in jalopy races locally with a hot flathead for power. After several years he wanted more power, so he pulled the flathead out and planned to put in the new small block chevy motor. That was as far as it got. The car got parked outside beside a grain bin on the farm and didn't move again for over 40 years.
A few years later some kids from the area were riding dirt bikes by the car and told their dad, Don about it. He and his friend Ted went to look at the car and tried to buy it. The owner said no and they told him that he should cut down a small sapling that was growing up though the center of the car before it became a bigger problem. He again said no, because he said "it would keep the car from getting stolen."
They approached the owner several times a year for over thirty-five years trying to buy it. Every time they did it was interesting and somewhat scary because sometimes the owner was very friendly and cordial. Other times his wife would tell them "to get the hell out of there!!" because he was coming out with his shotgun to run them off! They could see him putting shells in his gun through the window so they would run for their truck and gun it out of the yard as fast as they could. It seems the poor man suffered from some form mental illness (Deuce disease??!!) and eventually was hospitalized many years later in late 2004. Ted happened to make one of his regular visits to check on the car and the mans wife agreed to sell it with the condition that it had to be removed by the next day
But their was a problem, a big problem. That little sapling had done it's job, the car was never stolen, but now it was a huge tree that almost filled up the entire car! After calling the local tree service for an estimate to remove it, they said they could cut it down for $700, but could not promise what would happen to the car after that. So as a last resort, the next day Ted the drug the grain bin over enough so a torch and a hacksaw were used to cut the car in half through the rocker panels. Ted hauled the two halves of the old Deuce up to his shop into the hills of Colorado outside Denver until I stumbled onto the deal.
The body was solid with good metal, even after sitting outside all those years. It needed to be repaired with patch panels, a new floor installed and then the front and back welded back together again. The car had been channeled, so the wheel wells and subrails had been butchered in back, but the worst part was the windshield posts and frame had been cut off at the top of the cowl to make it a Roadster. It seems nobody liked an old "ugly" Deuce Cabriolet in those days because the Roadster was the most desirable car to have. This was well beyond my metal working capabilities, so I arranged to pick the body up from Ted in Colorado on a
Saturday night and then take it to the old V-8 Ford metal wizard Tom Bay of R & J Enterprises in Arkansas City, Kansas by Monday morning. I was afraid I might lose out on the deal, so the following weekend Janet and I made the whole trip to Denver, Arkansas City, and home again of almost 2000 miles in three days. Tom is the manufacturer of the best quality V-8 Ford patch panels and a number of other quality V-8 sheetmetal parts, in addition to his own '33-'34 Ford stamped frame rails. Tom had completely fabricated several Cabriolet windshield posts and frames from scratch before and agreed to do it one more time for me, only this time with the posts laid back about 15 degrees and chopped 2 3/4", in addition to repairing its other problems
