Author: mustangi

“Clara, you know we can’t pay you that much money. You’ll just have to wait, and we’ll pay you as we go.”

“No, Mayor. You started this and I’ll take my money now!”

My grandmother, Clara Spencer, lost her husband in 1933 in the middle of the Great Depression, leaving her with eight children aged seven months to fifteen years and a 116-acre ranch. Hard times breed hard people, and with the help of her children and a large extended family, she was making a living off that land. Then, the city of Kanab served notice they wanted a strip right through the middle of the ranch for an airport.

Never being one to stand in the way of progress, Clara agreed to sell the required land for $100 an acre, which is what the City paid for several smaller adjoining parcels owned by some of the city fathers. Their reply to her offer was, “No, we’ll pay you $25 an acre, and if you don’t like that we’ll condemn it and pay you even less. Take it or leave it!”     

That was exactly the wrong thing to say to Clara and the three other widows the city council had assumed would be easy prey. Acting as their own attorneys, “The Ladies” prepared to take on the City Fathers.

Clara and her friends weren’t the first women to question the all-male city leaders.

In 1912, Kanab voters elected a female mayor and an all-female city council and was briefly famous as the first equal-opportunity political city in the country. 

https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume73_2005_number4/s/10137115

Clara served for two years as a missionary for the Mormon Church in So. Dakota, Iowa, and Colorado, back when most roads were dirt and missionaries traveled on foot, winter and summer. She then earned a college degree from Brigham Young Academy (now B.Y.U.), married, and moved back to Orderville, where she taught school in a one room schoolhouse. It was often said she displayed “remarkable spunk.”

JUDGMENT of CONDEMNATION

Case Number 435

Kanab City vs Ida Riggs, Elson Riggs, Mrs. Dana Farley & Clara Spencer

The Council hired a big-gun law firm, Cedar City’s Morris and Matheson – Matheson as in Scott, Sr., a lawyer who became governor and whose son became U.S. Attorney for Utah. During the preliminary hearing, the mayor testified the airport was backed by the Lions Club and 80% of Kanab residents.

Local politicians were so confident about the outcome that two months before the trial was scheduled, city workers hired a bulldozer to tear up Clara’s ranch and build a dirt landing strip. A hearing was then held for a “Notice to Occupy” and the sheriff served Clara with papers barring her from most of her ranch. A trial date was set for 10 August, 1947 at 10 A.M.

The battle was on and Clara called in her family. This picture was taken the day before the trial opened and was the first time the family had been together since the start of The War. One of “the twin boys,” Loren, landed on the beach at Iwo Jima, and his twin Cleon (sleeves rolled up) did the same at Normandy. Most of the daughters had married returning G.I.s. As they gathered around the kitchen table the conversation sounded a lot like a battle plan, this time on the home front.

As the trial opened, visiting District Judge John L. Sevy Senior’s first order of business was to sift through the pool of prospective jurors. About noon, the Judge was introduced to one of the defendants, Clara Spencer, and she promptly  invited him over to her home for lunch. As the two old college friends from B.Y.A. left arm in arm, stepping over the chins of the City Fathers, someone asked if this wasn’t a “Conflict of Interest?” 

“Not as far as I’m concerned, said the judge. “The trial will go on.”

If the Council saw some cracks in the wall they built around Clara, those cracks got wider when the jury pool was called. Everybody knew Clara or was related to her. As one of nine children of a polygamous father, whose other wife had twelve children, all of whom were now having children, plus grandchildren, plus all their in-laws, the odds of finding an impartial jury in Kanab were slim indeed. 

Orderville was the only other town of any size in the county, but the same problem remained. Clara had been the teacher in their one room school for years and everyone knew her well.  

Finally, some lumber jacks were found on the Kiabab Plateau who were acceptable to both sides, and the trial commenced on Monday, September third, three weeks after the scheduled start date.

The Council presented their case with what one observer described as “much windy testimony.”  It took four days for the Council to show that the water table at the Spencer ranch was much too high to grow anything. The Council produced a telephone company employee who testified he had dug a hole for a telephone pole that immediately filled with water, proof that nothing could ever grow on the ranch.

Finally, the Spencers took the stand to present their case.  The telephone company employee admitted the hole he dug was in the irrigation ditch bank, while it was flowing water. Since the pole was still there, what could he say. A picture of Loren as a teenager harvesting wheat, and a stand of eight healthy children proved that food could actually be grown and harvested on the ranch. The Spencer defense was swift and effective. The jury retired to make their decision, and in less than an hour they returned with a verdict.

The three women with smaller parcels each received $100 dollars per acre. The jury foreman then caused the blood to drain from the faces of the assembled city fathers when he awarded “special damages” to Clara.  Since the airstrip ran right down the center of the ranch, it was obvious that making an “economic unit” of the remaining land would be difficult. Getting irrigation water across the runway would be impossible, so the City had to buy the entire ranch at $100 per acre, plus damages. The total award amounted to thousands of dollars in today’s money. Several of the town’s leading civic and religious leaders spat on the jurors as they left the jury box.

When Clara refused the “pay as we go” offer, a special bond election was held to pay her off. It passed easily.

Occasionally, I visit the Kanab Airport, and I always try to imagine all those Spencer children making a living off that land using only horse power and will power. There should be a brass plaque to tell the story of how the airport came to be, with a warning at the end:

DON’T MESS WITH GRANDMA

“The era we’re reconstructing first had kitchen sinks fabricated from sheet copper with a hole in the bottom, that frequently drained to the outside.  40 or so years later the fashion was a cast iron sink with flanges that integrated into a tile counter top, and between those styles there was a cast iron sink with rounded edges that set on top of the work surface.  That’s the version we’re looking for … and here it is!”

With that, two workers from the Mormon Church History Museum (CHM) grabbed the sink from the back of my truck, spirited up two floors to the reconstruction of Clara’s kitchen, followed by the director and several curators, and installed it in the counter top.  Didn’t even bother to clean it.  The grand opening was the next day, with a VIP tour that very evening.

This story actually begins in 1895 with the death of Lorenzo Dow Young (1807 – 1895) Brigham’s younger brother and one of the original 1847 Utah pioneers.  One of his granddaughters, Persis Ann Brown (1855 -1919) took her inheritance and bought a pump organ (still in the family somewhere), four bent wood chairs (I still use them), and an all-metal wood/coal burning stove with a 15 gallon copper holding tank. You know the Saturday night bath stories.  That stove was probably the equivalent of the first color TV in town.  Wow ! Oh, and a new-fangled cast iron sink.

When Persis Ann Brown passed away, my grandmother Clara Esplin Spencer (1839 – 1971) inherited her house. Clara was widowed in 1933 and left with 8 children. The oldest was 17 and the youngest 7 months.

When Clara passed, my wife, Suzanne, and I drove from Vail to Kanab to rescue the stove, since no one wanted it, and the house was falling down around it.

A decade or so went by. We retrieved the stove from a friend’s barn and put it in the unfinished basement of our new home in Farmington.  We had given up on our hippie dream of a cabin in the woods.  With the encouragement of Mom (Persis Spencer Carling 1919 – 2011), I started looking for a home for the stove. 

The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers (D.U.P.) wasn’t even remotely interested, but Suzanne was REAL interested in getting it out of our basement.  I couldn’t even think of selling it.  Finally, someone from the CHM expressed a mild interest. After seeing what good condition it was in they wanted it. The transfer was completed, and a small display was put together in the basement of the museum.  The stove was then sent to a warehouse somewhere, and we didn’t hear any more about it for several years.

One day, Mom called and said that the Church was going to do a permanent (year or more) display entitled Women & Work, and it was going to take up most of the second floor of the Church Museum, and they were going to make the stove a center piece, and they wanted to reconstruct Clara’s kitchen, “and a curator/designer is on her way over to talk to me!”

The curator said that when she started to put the Women & Work project together, she was walking through the church warehouse one day and “The stove practically spoke to me.”

We (mostly Persis) pulled out all the stops.  She got her engineer brothers to make dimensioned scale drawings of the kitchen and all of its all contents.  Siblings contributed bits of old linoleum that were used as patterns for the floor.  Pieces of the lace curtains from the kitchen window were found and used as samples for beautiful new curtains. A stool and the aforementioned bent wood chairs were loaned. All was well. The only piece missing was the kitchen sink.

Since the opening was 18 months away, and with all the personnel and financial resources of the Church, everyone was certain the correct sink could be located.

Turns out there are plumbing fixture graveyards, and the curator and I did a couple of field trips turning over mountains of porcelain and cast iron treasures, never even coming close to what we wanted.  There was a happy news flash once that someone had located “The perfect sink” in a closet in Nauvoo.  We waited with the proverbial “bated breath” for the package to arrive, only to find out it was a janitor’s sink you could buy anywhere.

As time was getting short, I volunteered to help build the kitchen set. Just showed up and went to work., all gratis of course.

Well, now it’s two days until opening.  I’m at Mom’s apartment, and she says forcefully “What’s a kitchen without a sink!” 

“Wow, I agree Mom, what can I do?”   

“You go down to the DUP in the morning and tell them that you have to locate that sink.” 

Of course I did, and of course they gave me the “blank look.”  Someone in the office said, “You might try the Utah History Archives.”  Ok, another goose chase, but I’m on a mission from Mom.

Go to the archives, and pretty much the same story, except as I was leaving a lady at a desk in back said that an old two-story house in the Avenues was being remodeled and they put plumbing fixtures for sale out on their lawn sometimes. 

Off to the address she gave me, to a neat old two-story, dusty, rose brick building of the type they built about the turn of the century.  Knock on the door. There’s a hole in the jamb where a bell is supposed to be. No answer.  I go around to the back, and there are stacks of windows, doors, and a rather interesting looking sink.  Square corners where it could fit into a tile counter top.  Could be right? I dunno, but I’m on a mission etc. So I load it into my truck. Pretty sure that’s stealing, but I’m on a mission etc. 

Feeling a little guilty, I go around to the front door and try again to raise the owner.   This time I’m successful.  Explaining my “mission” and that I already took one sink, did he happen to have any more?  Turned out to be a great guy. We went back to “the pile,” where he dug out a cast iron sink with rounded edges that would sit on top of the work surface.  It was complete with the original faucets and drain pipe, so we loaded that in too. Somehow I felt that could be the one. “Bring back any you can’t use.  They’re $15 each.”

The Museum was only a few blocks from there, and just on a hunch I drove up to the “RESTRICTED” parking gate and told the person on the other end that “I have a kitchen sink .”  The gate opened immediately, and four or five guys, some in suits, were waiting for me when I backed up to the dock. The guy who said the little speech at the beginning of this story grabbed that round shouldered sink and was gone in a heartbeat.

By now it was after noon, and I didn’t feel much like putting on my nail belt.  President Leonard, director of the Museum, asked me if I’d like to come to the private V.I.P. opening that night, and would I like to bring my wife?  “Here’s an invitation, just show it at the door.”  Suzanne framed the program, and it still hangs on our wall.

It was pretty special, but not as special as Mom & her siblings standing in the public opening of their mother’s kitchen, put together by the church she and her family worked and sacrificed for. My sister, Barbara, took this picture at the opening, and used it for my mother’s obituary. If you look closely you’ll see the sink and the faucets in the background. After all, what’s a kitchen without a sink!

One of the first things they teach you in Writing Skool is Every Story Is A People Story.

It sounds far-fetched, but it has proven to be true. This month’s blog post is about some of the wonderful people I met during the development of the original 1965 Mustang Independent Rear Suspension (I. R. S.) and how those people relate to the Mustang as we know it today.

I started that quest over 40 years ago when I connected with the German-born engineer, Klaus Arning, who was head of Ford Advanced Suspension Design in 1965.

Klaus and I became good friends. He visited my shop in Utah and we attended several SEMA shows together before he passed in 2000. I lost track of the Arning name, but I knew Klaus had 3 sons, all of whom had worked for Ford at some time.

SEMA sponsored an escorted tour of the Big Three (Ford, GM, and Chrysler) in 2005 . The Ford portion visited the Flat Rock, MI, plant where the Mustang is made, and I couldn’t pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As I checked into the historic Dearborn Inn, originally built as the airport terminal for the new Ford Tri-Motor aircraft, from over the front desk a portrait of old Henry looked down at me. I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I ran into one of Klaus’ sons during this tour.  Yeah sure, of all the thousands of employees at all the Ford plants, the odds ain’t great.

The next morning, as scores of fellow gear heads assembled in the Flat Rock lunchroom, our tour director stood up and said, “Welcome to Flat Rock. My name is Ralph Arning and I’ll be leading your tour this morning.”  Coulda knocked me over with a feather.

After the tour, I introduced myself to Ralph, and he said, “I had a completely irrational feeling that you might be here today.” We met at the Dearborn Inn for dinner that evening, and I swear old Henry was smiling at us. We were in “limited production” of the I.R.S.  I had chucked a hub carrier into my luggage in case someone was interested in buying an I.R.S. and Ralph was thrilled to hold one of his father’s designs in his hands. To this day, when I hear the term serendipity I think of that night.

About this time, Jim Marietta, Ted Sutton, and Peter Brock put together the Original Venice Crew (O.V.C.). We built two Mustangs, one with an I.R.S. at Peter’s shop “The way we would have done it if time and money didn’t get in the way.” Our first test run was at Willow Springs on the 50th anniversary of the first GT 350 win, and Ralph was able to attend and meet the whole crew. Randy Richardson, along with Mike Eisenburg, are pictured pointing out the finer points of Klaus’ creation.

Following that, we did a Back To The Beginnings Tour, and hit all the vintage races and shows we could string together during a 30 day road trip. A stop at Flat Rock, the Henry Ford Museum, and the “Glass House” executive offices occupied several days. The contacts we made were priceless.  Everyone was gracious and made time for us in their schedule. A later visit resulted in some marketing agreements.

The cars and the O.V.C. team have been invited to more shows and races than I can remember. One of my favorites was the lawn at Pebble Beach the year they honored the GT-40. Klaus was instrumental in designing the suspension system that helped beat Ferrari. Ford and Lincoln were the honored marques, and Edsel Ford II and Henry Ford III both came by to say hello.

Perhaps my all-time favorite was at Laguna Seca, now renamed Weather Tech Raceway, when Jim Owens asked us to put the cars that we built in Peter’s shop on the front row for a poster shot of the vintage races.

Jim is Shelby and Mustang Brand Manager at Ford, and one of the people who decide who is allowed to purchase a new MUSTANG GTD (almost 8,000 have applied). You have to be someone special to buy the 800+ H. P., 200+ MPH, carbon fiber/aluminum/titanium monster. Prices start around 300K and go up from there, depending on options. You will want the titanium exhaust option at about 2.5 K. It sounds great and saves almost 2.5 pounds! At least 1,000 GTDs will be made to meet homologation requirements. The GTD’s purpose in life is to beat the Porsche GT2 RS and the GT3 RS around Germany’s Nurnbergring.  Mustang outsells Porsche in Europe, with equal or better performance at half the price.

Ford C.E.O. Jim Farley keeps a MUSTANG GTD along with a vintage 427 Cobra at his garage/shop/apartment condo above pit row at Weather Tech. Jim, if you’re reading this, I’m available to keep your condo clean, your refrigerator stocked, and see that your cars get plenty of exercise.

In 2013-4, National Geographic’s ULTIMATE FACTORY series decided they wanted to do a show about automobile factories. They contacted Ford at Flat Rock, as Flat Rock is one of the few factories in the world that takes all the raw materials and forms them into a driveable car on site. To put the show together, they needed someone who could interface between the Ford production line workers and the Nat. Geo. film crew, knew the technical side inside and out, and could put together a tour that made all of the pieces come together. The only person that fit that description was the now 7-years-retired Ralph Arning, living at his retirement home/shop in St. George, Utah. Welcome back Ralph! Filming took about a month.

Every story really is a people story, isn’t it? In this case, some really remarkable people.

Thanks for listening.

Duane

Hello again friends.

This month’s post is a little film we made about my grandfather, Elmer Carling, who was one of the first Utah Highway Patrolmen. It’s also about the spirit of human kindness.

I wrote the script based on published interviews and family lore, did Elmer’s voice, and with lots of help from Apple, Harley Davidson, and a bunch of relatives and friends, we made it happen. THANKS !

We’ve put it on our web site,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J4mlmvOHkg, and also attached a QR Code to Elmer’s headstone, so that next time you’re at the Fillmore City cemetery you can view the video on your phone or tablet. 

Things we now take for granted, like paved roads, snowplows, rest stops, guard rails, ambulance service, emergency rooms, morgues(!), places to eat and stay, police radios, and 911 service, had to start somewhere. This is the story of how it all began.

Hope you enjoy.

Duane 

My son, Michael, and I recently traveled to the Boulder CO Shelby Museum to see the Last of The King Cobras run. What a thrill!

No Stone Left Unturned: The Last Cobra

Since we didn’t have a schedule or any other passengers, I convinced Mike we should stop by Baggs, WY, which was kinda on the way home, to see where I came within a hair of being killed on an oil rig. A strange request, I know, but somehow that patch of nowhere has stayed in my mind all these years!

In the summer of ’65, my running buddy Ray Smith and I convinced ourselves we should go to Rock Springs, Wyoming, and become oil rig roughnecks (sounds cool), make lottsa money, and have great adventures. Through a mutual friend in Rock Springs, we found a crew that needed 2 new hands, if we were willing to move to Baggs, Wyoming. Baggs had a population of about 25 souls, is 2 ½ hours east and south of Rock Springs, and 1 hour north of Rifle, CO. We’d be working 12 hours a day, noon to midnight or midnight to noon, 7 days a week, with a place to stay. The money was OK, so we took it.

There were 2 crews and Ray went with one and I went with the other. My crew was headed by a guy named Beauford. The house we stayed in was directly across the unpaved street from the Western Hotel, where Butch Cassidy et. al. stayed after one of their train robberies. The scene where Butch (Paul Newman) is with a lady watching from a second story window as the posse rides through town actually took place at the Western.  The Western is the white building third from left.

The main boss was a guy named Calvin Ledges who worked for Exeter Drilling Company out of Denver. He was tough as nails and had seen it all. One night, we arrived and found there was a fishing tool rigged up on the derrick. Somehow the drill bit had gotten jammed on the end of the drill stem and Calvin and the “fisher,” a special guy with specialized tools, were trying to pull it up. The fisher and Calvin had been fighting it all day, and it was not cooperating.

In desperation, they rigged a “hammer,” which is a hydraulic valve you can pull on with the cables of the rig. It will trip at a preset pressure, then catch and hammer the pipe upward. The particular rig we had was designed to handle about 500,000 pounds of that kind of hammer pressure. After several attempts at full rated pressure, Calvin told the fisher to raise the pressure to 750,000 pounds. Man did that make a noise! Every joint and bolt was stressed to the max.  The night was cold and dark and windy, and money was being lost at a furious pace. Even in those days, leasing and operating a rig cost thousands of dollars per hour.   

Finally, they told us to get far away from the rig as they were going to raise the hammer to 1,000,000 pounds. No problem, we’re outta here! From across the sagebrush we could hear the rig screaming in the darkness as its lightbulbs danced and shattered in the wind. I’d never heard metal hitting metal that hard. Somehow nothing critical broke, and whatever was down there yielded and came up with the fishing tool. It turned out the drill bit had “cratered,” which means one or more of the interlocking diamond-studded wheels that grind their way into the earth had come loose and jammed against the side of the hole, stopping the drill cold.  Calvin swore to never use that brand of drill bit again.

A “work over” rig means we set up over an old well that needs revamping. Read the book THE DEEP HOT BIOSPHERE: The Myth of Fossil Fuels  by Thomas Gold. Get the real story on where oil and gas come from, and it ain’t dinosaurs.  Many old oil & gas wells refill with methane, the main component of oil and gas, after a few years, and become paying assets again. Methane is very common in our universe. There are whole planets made of it, and it all sure as hell didn’t come from rotting dinosaurs.

About a week later we arrived for our shift and found out we had hit the strata we were looking for and were coming out of the hole for the last time. Beauford (our leader) decided to re-rig the drill cable so it would run faster, and probably impress Calvin with his initiative.

We carefully laid the blocks, the big metal assembly that all the cables run through, on the drill floor. It’s about the size and weight of a small car. As Beauford backed the cable off the drum, the big metal end unhooked itself and slowly started to rise in the morning light. Every guy on the job started screaming RUN!! as loud as he could. Unfortunately, I was on the drill floor with Beauford. For some reason, I ran across the entire drill floor, with heavy cable falling through the air to a small operator platform where Beauford was standing.

As the cable end with its lead-filled steel hook rose into the sky (135 feet up and 135 feet down), it tore through the sheave wheels and started its way down.  Somehow–GUARDIAN ANGELS, or whatever–I was about 3 inches from Beauford as the 3-inch diameter metal weight passed between us, nicked my new hard hat, and destroyed Beauford’s right ankle.

Suddenly all was quiet. Cable was lying everywhere, and Beauford’s face turned pale. The ankle was starting to swell, so we carefully cut his laces and took his boot off. Someone went to Baggs to get Calvin, and someone else took Beauford to the hospital in Rock Springs. That’s the closest I ever came to getting killed while not driving a car.

Some people say there is a feeling, at times described as a “dark spirit” that inhabits places of tragedy. 9/11 comes to mind. There sure was that feeling when Mike and I stopped by the old drill site.  We didn’t spend more than 15 minutes there, but looking back, it felt like hours.

The “work over” must have been successful sixty years ago.  Maybe it has been refilled and reworked multiple times. The 2 metal tanks in the picture are typical of a producing gas well. When gas comes out from the underground pressure, a light, almost clear, fluid known as “drip gas” condenses and is pumped to one of the metal tanks, where a truck picks it up when it’s full. “Drip” is about 80 octane and you can run your car on it if it’s an older model, like my ’55 Ford. Convenient.

Over 60 years in the making … Thank You, whoever you were (are) for saving my butt.  God really does look out for little children, helpless drunks, and a few oil field workers.

I did the wood cut below when I got back to art school. It depicts the dull misery of oil field work. Cold, wet, exhausted, with ever present danger shown in their faces.  

Thanks for listening.

About 10 years ago, I stopped by my friend Peter Brock’s shop in Henderson, just outside of Las Vegas to show him a large blueprint of Ford’s not for production independent rear suspension (I.R.S.) for early Mustangs.  Modern digital prints are marvelous, but nothing has quite the panache of the old ammonia-based prints.  Warm, fuzzy blue lines (hence the name blueprint) can only be made with one of the old, clunky ammonia machines, and I happen to have found one. Go here to get a print of your own.

Peter was able to see me between appointments and mentioned that some of the old guys (that’s us) were thinking of building a GT-350 clone, incorporating all the good ideas we’d had back in the Shelby days, which weren’t used due to cost, time, or difficulty. The IRS I had resurrected from old prints and a few parts, and was now selling as a bolt in kit, would fit perfectly with that concept.

Well, a bunch of us old guys led by Jim Marietta and Ted Sutton built TWO cars, now known as continuation cars, since they now had Shelby serial numbers in Peter’s shop.

They were a big hit at Willow Springs Raceway, to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the GT-350’s first win at Texas Motor Speedway with Ken Miles driving. FAST and reliable, just like the old days. We realized that what we needed and wished for was a real shop. The old Shelby engine facility in Gardena had been sitting vacant and dark for years. What would it take to bring it back to life? As usual, just time, effort, money, skill, and a boat load of nostalgia.

A greasy engine building facility, with a sheet metal trough for a urinal, no kitchen, minimal lighting, and a back alley entryway didn’t exactly scream race shop/party shop to the untrained eye, but my son Michael and I took on the task. Let’s do this!

We left it to others to bring in some real lighting and refurbish the compressed air system. Our task was cleaning every surface with a high pressure washer, scrubbing the floor (!) and painting everything to look like new again. Installing a kitchen with a real kitchen sink and turn the sheet metal urinal restroom into an attractive facility complete with mop sink, hand sink, shower, urinal, and a potty.

Oh, and a short deadline too: 12,000 square feet of neglected yuck!

As the project took off, more folks came by who wanted to use (rent) the storied facility for their car club, car show, or car related activity. The word was getting out. 

The local Sherwin Williams Pro Industrial paint dealer was a big help on the floor, which was painted “Battleship Grey” at one time. How to fill all the gouges, scrapes and patches where there was just no paint was everyday work to them.  It turned out great, and Mike & I took full credit, of course!

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Jim ordered two lift racks in anticipation of our own and future customer’s cars needing under car repairs. “You guys gonna finish soon so we can install these damn racks?”

And as things often do, “mission creep” became a daily distraction.  Jim wanted to turn one of the old dyno cells into an office and name it TEN FORTY TWO, which was address on Princeton Drive of the Shelby facility in Venice.

Peter himself stopped by to marvel at the progress. Cars were lining up to occupy our new shiny floor and visitors were encouraged to sign the Shelby Signature Wall.

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The day we finished and allowed cars on the whole floor, we were already short of space.

Of course, we had to have a Grand Opening Party. Friends and family were declared Original Venice Crew for a day.  TV and print media covered it and we were all Stars For A Day too!

We were there for 7 YEARS–July, 2017 to June, 2024. Besides all the old and new friends we saw, and their cars, we hosted two weddings, with drive-thru receptions (!), and three Christmas parties.

What a great time ! 

As they say, all good things must come to an end. Having a huge facility like that only used occasionally, sitting in a busy commercial area, just didn’t make business sense. The Shelby people sold it after our restoration, in June of this year, but it was great fun while it lasted.  “Our” space has become part of the building supply store next door. I think all the Shelby facilities and business will move to Nevada, where they already have a large presence. Below are a few shots you may find interesting.

Careful what ya wish fer–these guys can make it happen! Until next time, thanks for listening.

 I spent the summer of 1965 working on oil rigs around Wyoming’s Wind River Valley. It’s tough, unforgiving country, but beautiful and rewarding at the same time. A college friend and I thought being “rough necks” sounded cool, so we signed up for what we thought would be fun summer jobs.  Fun if you think working midnight to noon or noon to midnight (yew takes yer choice !) 7 days a week is fun. I did find that thick black coffee with a little help from Uncle Jack (Daniels) would get ya thru the night. I also found that working on rigs is a very good way to die young, and I often wonder what ever happened to my old crew mates.

It takes 4 guys to run a rig. Other guys came and went, including my college friend, but 3 of us, Blacky, Buzz and “Slim” stayed together for most of the summer. I picked up the “Slim” handle from somewhere and it stayed with me ‘til I went back to school. Few people went by their real names, as it was just plain easier to call someone by a name that they looked like. I suppose it was also handy in case you were running from something or someone.

Blacky was the rig runner and he had a lovely single-wide mobile home–OK, a trailer house–that he kept parked behind the gas station in lovely Jeffery City. “Been runnin’ rigs fer years, and do it better with a few beers in me.”

Buzz was the derrick hand, and he was from Shoshoni. A champion rodeo cowboy, now retired due to age (35) and injuries, he had a two-horse trailer custom painted fire-mist metallic to match his custom painted 1962 Oldsmobile. I don’t think he really lived anywhere, and Buzz told me that he and The Black One went to fist city the first night they met at a bar, but went home that same night as best friends.

I was the floor hand, and whoever we could find to help me work the wrenches made us a foursome. That’s me in the white hard hat (optional). There was intense bar room discussion about whether a real man would be caught dead wearing one … or something like that.

My daughter, Michelle, and I made several trips to the Wind River over the years. It was always fun to revisit those drill sites and tell her, “Daddy used to work on one of those big towers. We drilled holes to get gas to run our trucks.  Neat, huh.”   

 I spent a few days recently with Michelle and her friends on the Wind River near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. How we got there is quite a story.

      

Michelle is a New York-trained actor/screen writer, and as a summer job she worked at the Jackson Hole Playhouse. She worked there for three summers as both an actor and production manager. During a weekend visit there, I asked the owner, Vicki, where she was from, and she said Orem, Utah. I mentioned that at one time I wanted to be an art teacher and I did my student teaching at Orem Junior High. By adding up the dates we found that Vicki was a student of mine in 7^th and 9^th grade Arts & Crafts Class. Wow, what a connection!  Fortunately no student brain cells were harmed in the process of me deciding not to become a teacher.      

Jackson is now officially “One of the most expensive zip codes in the country.”  The billionaires have finally chased out all the millionaires, and Dubois may be the next real estate opportunity.  Don’t bother using the correct French pronunciation, “Dubwaa,” as none of the locals will know what yer talkin’ about.  It’s “Du Boys.” And most of our theatre friends have moved there.

I’ve always loved Wyoming, especially the Wind River Valley. Dubois is the main commercial center where you can pick up your mail and groceries.  The skyline is not as well known as the Grand Tetons but it’s just as beautiful in my opinion. It’s only an hour from the Jackson airport , which has good connections to the rest of the country. As the world gets crazier, and the option of “work from home” becomes more common, the Wind River looks ever more attractive.

I’m a little past my oil rig days, but I could sure supervise the construction of a nice cabin, and the installation of a few Wind Wheels to power the place.

We’ll keep ya posted.

                         

Imagine if you will, the war in Europe is over. Germany is in ruins. There is little activity except for cleaning up the rubble of war. Most of the clean-up crews are women–known as Trummerfrauen, or “women of the rubble”–as there are few men left following the final blizzard of destruction.

In the last years of the war, 1,000-plane raids over Germany were common, and the B-24 bomber made at Ford’s Willow Run was a mainstay of the force. Ford produced one plane per hour, 24 / 7 around the clock. Bomber losses of ten percent per raid were the norm, which meant that the finest aluminum alloys in the world fell daily from the skies over Germany.

Into this unreal world steps an earnest young German who has spent months recuperating from a land mine explosion. Badly wounded, he was evacuated from Leningrad by railroad flat car just before the Russians broke through. His passion is automobiles, and he is determined, against all odds, to build his own car from the rubble around him.

Though he will eventually recieve a degree in Mechanical Engineering, his uncommon intellect and natural feel for the subject will in years to come help produce some of the finest automobiles ever built. The car in his mind now is a two-seater with front mounted engine, rear wheel drive, 4-wheel independent suspension, a “back bone” chassis (years before Lotus claimed it), an alloy body of course, and a two-cylinder motor sourced from a DKW- Lloyd delivery truck. Rear hinged “suicide” doors and styling touches common on 30’s and 40’s cars (rear deck ribbing) complete the picture.

As his wounds healed, the young man named Klaus Arning rested at his parent’s home in Bremen, which was also home to the bombed out Focke-Wulf aircraft factory. Klaus’ father was a Lutheran minister, so the American occupation authorities allowed him sufficient gasoline for travel in Klaus’ car, once it was complete, to visit his congregations. The car had several hidden compartments which were used for smuggling … according to Klaus’ son Ralph.

Klaus spoke good English, was very personable, played a mean accordion and an even meaner piano. He was often recruited to entertain U.S. troops, and in payment received a few cartons of American cigarettes, and/or maybe a bottle of Genuine U.S. Whiskey.  In the right hands, this contraband could be bartered for enough food to feed a congregation for days!

I remember Klaus playing piano in small lounge for a few friends in the Las Vegas Hilton during SEMA week. Linda Vaughn, Miss Hurst Shifter, walked by, spied Klaus, walked over and sat in his lap. He continued playing, with a big grin on his face, while his small audience clapped and cheered! 

American high-octane gasoline was a Godsend (oops … bad choice, sorry) to the German economy.  Shipped by tanker from the U.S., it replaced the low octane, dirty fuel Germany had been making from coal.

The DKW motor needed new pistons, probably as a result of the low-quality fuel, so Klaus simply made new ones. Selecting a suitable alloy from the “gefallene Fruchte” (literally fallen fruit) of wrecked Allied and German aircraft, he cast new pistons by pouring molten aluminum into two holes in the ground.  With a foot powered treadle lathe in his parent’s attic, and a whole lottsa smarts, he soon had new pistons and the motor was purring.

Think about all the factors inherent in designing new pistons. First, are rings available? What are the ring clearances required? What skirt clearances are needed as the pistons heat and travel up and down in the bores? What about compression ratio, combustion chamber shape, wrist pin offset, not to mention piston weight and counterweights?  

All these hurdles and more were overcome. I’m sure the German authorities gave the car a thorough inspection when Klaus announced, “I made it myself.” and asked for a license and registration. Later earning a degree from Bremen Polytechnic seems almost redundant.

During his stay at the University, a thief stole the precious car and wrecked it in the ensuing police chase.                             

Regular readers of this column will recognize the name Klaus Arning as the 1960’s head of Ford Advanced Suspension Design, and the mind behind the Mustang I.R.S., the GT-40, several Foyt and Gurney single seaters, and much more. Check the MEDIA section on mustangirs.com for two very well-done articles in RACECAR ENGINEERING, written by Richard Nisley, to whom we are indebted for the pictures of the car. I got to know Klaus researching the “never-made production” Mustang I.R.S.  These pictures were taken when Klaus paid a visit to my garage about 1990. He’s trying to explain his design to me, as I try to imagine it installed into an inverted Mustang chassis.

Klaus apparently got to take a GT-40 home once in a while. I wonder if there are any hidden compartments.

“I’ll vote for it if you’ll put a plant in Salt Lake City.”

In the early 80’s, the new Rough Field-Short Take Off C–17  transport plane was stuck in the  Senate Appropriations Committee. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was saying it was too expensive and not critical to the defense of the country.  McDonnell Douglas was the winner of the design competition and was anxious to get started on the fat military contract.

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In exchange for a YES vote from Senator Hatch, Douglas constructed a multimillion-dollar building on the mud flats that surround the Salt Lake International Airport.  Without a purpose in mind, it was 160,000 square feet of “assembly area,” 12,000 feet of “office,” and 21,000 feet of “support area” … basically a big square building with nothing in it.

I was working for Honeywell at the time, selling maintenance contracts on heating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Since the building had all Honeywell controls, I approached the Douglas people (all 5 of them) about doing an HVAC maintenance contract. I told my boss what I was doing and he said,“Why don’t you pitch them on maintaining the whole building.”

I said, “You mean on ALL the equipment in the WHOLE building.”

He said, “Sure, for the right money, we’ll maintain anything.”   

For the next week or so, I crawled around the building’s mechanical spaces writing down model and serial numbers on overhead cranes, boilers, compressors, anything that moved or made noise. I was basically writing the maintenance manual for the building.

At the end of my slide show/sales pitch in the empty lunchroom, the plant manager said, if I ever wanted to leave Honeywell to come see him. 

“Let’s talk,” I said. That is how I became the sixth person hired at Douglas Salt Lake.

At about this time, the labor unions representing Douglas workers in Canada were threating to strike. They made the floor panels for Douglas’s biggest seller, the MD-80, and a strike would stop production of that very profitable aircraft. Someone at our Long Beach headquarters said, “Why don’t we move the assembly jigs to Utah, which is a right to work stare (that’s code for no unions) and let them assemble the panels.”

Hooray! We had something to do besides keeping the place clean.   

When the jigs arrived, I looked at the I.D. plate and found they were constructed in 1958! The same floor was used in the DC-8, the Stretch-8, the DC-9, and now the MD-80 and soon the MD-90. The floor had gone from 4 props mounted on the wings to 2 jets mounted on the tail. Working for an aerospace giant, I had expected to see carbon fiber, titanium, and who knows what else. Surprise!

Now that we were “in production,” the plant manager thought it would be wise to have some machinery out on the floor, for looks if nothing else. He sent me to Long Beach to comb through the Douglas “bone yard,” which was several acres of mostly World War II era machinery, sitting outside, that no one had the heart to throw away. Precomputer-age drill presses, Bridgeport milling machines, sheet metal brakes, tube benders, you name it, we got it. When a flatbed semi-trailer chock full of WW II machinery arrived in Salt Lake, I thought, All these old veterans have a soul, and I’m going to give them a second chance!

Company policy said we had to build a chain link fence around our new shop.  I asked Personnel, oops, I mean Human Resources, to keep an eye out for people to staff it. Showing up for an interview with grease under your fingernails was considered a plus.

We also built a fence around what would soon be the parts storage area. Douglas had adopted the then-fashionable “Just In Time” (J.I.T.) management theory. Parts were delivered within hours–or, at most. days–of when they were needed.  They were also touting the “Total Quality Management” theory (T.Q.M. of course), which basically said, Do It Right The First Time.

We’ll see how all that worked out.

Without too many hiccups, we assembled our first floor panel and shipped it by flatbed to Long Beach. Most of the parts were made in Long Beach and shipped to us for assembly.  Ain’t congressional politics great!

People being people, sometimes a part was ruined–or “butched,” in the lingo. “I drilled the hole in the wrong place,” or “I drilled a big hole when I should have drilled a little one.” With hundreds of parts and thousands of hand operations, the laws of chance said you would screw up eventually. By failing to account for the humanness of what we were doing, we set ourselves  up for failure.    

Since there were no backup parts, we were stuck (J. I. T. and all that).  Delays weren’t to be tolerated (T.Q.M. and all that) so what were we to do? In the best of Yankee ingenuity, the crew on second shift arranged for a hole to be cut in the parts cage and a roll away tool box conveniently placed against the hole inside, with a matching tool box placed against the hole outside to mask the new portal. A “scout” would access the cage late on second shift to find a part that, with a little love from our freshly cleaned and refurbished machine shop, could be substituted for the butched part. Little Suzy can keep her job, and vows to do better next time. Of course, when the schedule said it was time to deliver the previously purloined part, nobody knew nuthin’.

If I, as a lowly facilities guy, knew about the underground railway, I’m sure somebody in management was wise to it too.

Apparently, this and similar problems were widespread within the company. By failing to account for us humans, the soul of the company was lost, and problems multiplied. The solution was to create TIGER TEAMS, usually made up of hard living, hard drinking, multi-year or even multi-generational Douglas employees. TIGERS would jump on a Douglas private jet, show up at the offending Douglas plant or supplier, and with a combination of profanity and arm waving solve any problem. 

After three years, I got tired of TIGERS and of playing the game and left.

When Boeing married the nearly bankrupt Douglas in a shotgun wedding overseen by the defense department, the Douglas team took over Boeing. The current Boeing C.E.O. and most of the top management are Douglas alums. Milton Friedman once famously said, “The business of business is to maximize profits.” and Milton’s philosophy fit Douglas perfectly. Apparently, Boeing bought into it too and let the Douglas folks run the show. By focusing purely on profits, they killed the soul of the company.

That could explain the aircraft parts, and whole airplanes falling from the sky. Let’s hope Boeing sees the error of their ways…and soon.

So, what is a bissextile?

Now that I’ve got your attention … it’s a year with an extra day, usually at the end of February.

The evening of the 29th of Feb., I was checking our web site, www.mustangirs.com, and noticed the counter was at 98,999.

Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we reached 99,000 visits before midnight on the 29th?  With just a few minutes before the date rolled over to 1 March, someone, somewhere, logged on and we hit 99,000 visits.  

We should celebrate! How about we give everyone a prize?

The first thing I did after deciding years ago to track down the elusive Mustang Independent Rear Suspension (IRS) was to contact Carroll Shelby. He suggested I try to find German-born Klaus Arning, who had designed the IRS, now retired and possibly living in the Detroit area.

I got lucky on the first try. Klaus turned out to be a great guy, and receptive to the idea. He went to the Henry Ford Museum (HFM) where he knew any surviving prints would be stored.  “I show them my credentials. They give me the microfilms,” he said.

What a find!  Drawn in FULL SCALE, by hand, in ink–no room for error– they are an absolute work of art. Full scale means that the entire assembly, third member, ½ shafts, coil overs, brakes, the whole banana, is brought into the drafting room and put on a huge table where a very large sheet of vellum (you can Google that) drafting paper is taped.  From there a highly skilled draftsman measures each part with a ruler or a tape, maybe even a micrometer, and then draws it full scale in relation to the rest of the assembly. WOW.

From Klaus’s microfilm, I was able to put the images back onto vellum and print them using one of the last ammonia powered blueprint machines in existence. They print in blue, hence the name.

From there, I started–along with a small cohort of fabricators and suppliers–to reconstruct Klaus’s magnum opus into what it is today. Our web site has instructions on how to contact my friend Jim Marietta, former Shelby employee and member of the Original Venice Crew (O.V.C.), who now offers the IRS for sale separately or installed in a 1965 K Code Mustang with a Shelby serial number. The complete car is then dialed in by some of the best vintage race drivers on the planet, usually at Willow Springs.  Its new owner will shine at show, street, or track.

Helpful hint: bring money.

As we all know, the digital revolution is here, and to celebrate 99,000 views you can now have a print of Klaus’ master work FOR FREE by taking or sending these images to a good quality print shop.  At Alpha Graphics, an 11 X 17 on photo-quality paper will cost you about two bucks.  A good size for a wall hanging is 24 X 42, which, of course, will cost more. Happy bissextile day!

The first thing to do with any new print is check the TITLE BLOCK, usually in the lower right corner.  There you’ll find the drawing title, T5-G.T. FALCON. Both Mustang and Cougar were being considered at the time as names for the new car.  Since the Mustang as we know it was still being hammered together using the Falcon platform, T-5 GT Falcon made sense. When the Mustang was exported to Germany, Ford found the name Mustang was already taken. German Mustangs were named T-5 s. I like to think it was a tribute to Klaus. Hey, could be.

The drawing number, LRR-81952, is what you’ll need if the drawing is still available at the HFM. The companion drawing, LRR-21950,shows the modified front suspension which became known as the SHELBY DROP. It was adopted for the ’65 GT 350 and later Shelbys as it only required modifying existing suspension pieces. It turned the Falcon-based platform into a winning race car.   

Next, the date, 12-3-1963, lets you know the April 14, 1964 intro date for the Mustang was looming large.

The owners of the initials in the DRAWN BY, CHECKED BY and APPROVED BY boxes have, unfortunately, been lost to the mists of time.

The IRS car was meant to have KNOCK OFF WHEELS.  I’d love to see someone reproduce those.  The “kidney bean” magnesium wheels (mags) were popular back in the day.  The simple adapters shown convert the five threaded lugs into 5-pin drives. The spinners were designed by Ford Styling and used later as the basis for the Deluxe “spoke type” hub caps. “Huge” 6-70 / 15 TIRES were called out.

Four piston Kelsey Hayes DISC BRAKES are shown front and rear. Vintage racers still use them today and love ‘em.  

After The WAR, American talent scouts roamed Germany looking for outstanding intellects, and discovered Klaus working for Borgward, the German auto manufacturer based in Klaus’s home town of Bremen.  After a trip to America and a tour of Ford’s facilities, he was offered a position. Klaus soon rose to be head of advanced suspension design. He was also head of the team that built John F. Kennedy’s presidential limo.

The last time I saw Klaus we were sitting in the rotating bar at the top of the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas.  Klaus was drinking schnaps and trying, without much success, to explain to me the finer points of roll induced camber change. It was 2 AM after a hard day at SEMA, and I’m afraid I was a poor student. For more about Klaus, go to  https://www.mustangirs.com/pdf_articles/mustang_monthly_1983-09.pdf

Klaus and Shelby were good friends and I was able to spend time with both of them at several SEMA shows.  Ah, the stories they could tell!

You may pick up something I’ve missed on these blueprints. It’s a great way to spend some time reliving the history of FoMoCo. If you’ve seen the movie Ford vs Ferrari, you’ve seen what Klaus and his contemporaries could do if given the chance. The GT-40 conquered the racing world, three years in a row!

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“JUST DON’T SPILL YOUR DAMN COFFEE ON THE DAMN PRINTS!” as my old boss used to say.

All the best.

Duane