83 Dennis!

Thursday Dec 12, 2013

A test of Faith

      While packing the camper to leave I seen some movement in the channel that came up beside the drive way.  I kept my eye on it and took some pictures,  Looked like otters to me.  When I talked with Dale on the phone she said she had been told there were otter there, she asked what time I had seen them?  Six thirty I replied, guess we will never see them, not an early riser I guess.   Our ride today would take us to Charlotte NC.  A chilly clear morning, we made sure the home was locked and Wolfie was safe and we were on our way.      We had been on the road for a short time when we seen a group of people walking along the roadside, it seemed to be a mixed group of people and at the front they were carrying a sign or poster in the air.  We were rubbernecking as we passed trying to figure out what was going on.  It got the best of us and a mile down the road we did a U-turn to get the story.   I'm sure they wondered why we turned and were coming back.  One of the young people spoke better English than the adult we approached.  We gathered it was a religious pilgrimage that would take nine hours to complete.   Later at our destination Patti gave us the full story.  Today Dec 12 is one of the most important dates on the Mexican calendar. 
The faithful make a pilgrimage to honor "Our Lady of Guadalupe" the spiritual mother of all Mexicans.  They travel for miles often finishing on their knees to show their faith.  You learn some interesting things on the road if your curious enough.      
     A few years ago one of my sisters had brought a catalog to one of our breakfast get together's in Lake City Minnesota.   The catalog seemed to focus on restoration parts for Ford tractor and Cushman scooter's.  She said it was Dennis Carpenter's business.  I was impressed, I had heard he had built some kind of business down South.    A few weeks later we were riding by Albert lea Minnesota and we got behind one of his transport vehicles.  If I hadn't seen the catalog, would I have recognized the logo?  Just how big was his company anyway?  Coincidence?   I was getting curious.  I would find out today!   A couple of miles down the road we arrived at Carpenter Industry's. 
     Dennis, is at the employee Christmas party at the moment.  While we wait I will try and explain our connection.   His parents Clarence and Maxine farmed in the same

Thanks for the wonderful tour!

community with my parents, threshing crew, 4-H, we all went to the same Country Church " Elmira" As a young man Dennis liked to tip my mothers hat forward as he went past her in the Church pew.  It became such a ritual that she thought something was wrong if he didn't.  His sister Sylvia and I went to a one room (not counting the coat and supply) country school.   One of my predominant recollections of Dennis, he was in the upper level of a granary on his fathers farm.  

Got carburetors?

Showing me a one cylinder model airplane engine he was working on.  Approximately eight years my senior he was starting on a life path that is hard to comprehend.   How did he get from that farm to the nine building 300,000square foot production and retail facility that we just pulled into?  Was it his University of Minnesota college education shortened to 3 days when called home to run the farm for his injured father?  Was it a move to North Carolina?  Was it his hobby of restoring old automobiles?  Or was it Henry Ford himself?  Who knows if it would have even happened except for Henry Ford and his fascination with soybeans and their uses, Dennis said that Ford had soybeans growing around the automotive plants.  In 1935 they had over  five million acres dedicated to growing soybeans and used them to produce the plastic parts for their cars, from distributor caps to dash knobs.   And there in lies the problem, with age the knobs deteriorated and Dennis wanted his 1940 Ford restore to be perfect.  In 1970 he started producing his own.   By hand first and then a plastic injection machine and now
     It was good to see Dennis and as a bonus we found that Sylvia was also here.   Hard to bridge the gap of fifty some years in a few moments.  We had not seen each other since their fathers funeral a few years ago.   A plant tour had been arranged for us.  Wayne was our guide and he had an interesting association with Dennis also.  It seems he was doing some carpentry work nearby and Dennis stopped by to visit with him.  For the next twenty years he constructed buildings for him.  It worked out great as they were not in production this time of the day so we could take our time without the noise of the machines.  I thought we had stepped into a Ford production plant.  Thru the years it has grown from producing plastic auto parts to metal stamping machines and rubber extrusion production.  Another plus with the timing of our tour, we had a chance to meet and visit with some of the employees as we passed thru their area.  It was obvious they liked working with the Carpenter's. 

  Amazing, even carburetors, Ruthie will tell you there are over a 110 parts in a carburetor and they test each and everyone on an engine before it is shipped.  She was enjoying this as much as I was.  I think the other thing that intrigued her was the progressive stamping machines that took a flat piece of metal and with each stamp formed it a little more to the desired product like a hubcap.  I'm beginning to appreciate the cost of finished parts.  Some of these machines are two story's tall.  She also loves to tell the story of how Dennis got into the rubber extrusion business and the 62 foot long machine that produces it. But enough already.  Obviously we were impressed.   Are we done?  Not even close.  From here our tour took us to "The Museum"

a large building housing Dennis's collection.  Cars: 30-40 I would guess, from the 1940 Ford convertible that started it all, to model "T"s, a Mario Andretti race car, his Aunts antique car with only a front seat so she didn't have to take the neighbors to church.   Ford Tractors,  Hundreds of Cushman scooters, (I could have spent hours here, I think our patient guide thought we did.)  and then collections of every kind including the Avon collection his mother had.  I spent hours at their home (Maxine was trying to teach me guitar, bless her heart.)  and didn't even know she had one.  The couch where his father proposed to his mother. 

At the conclusion, (we had to let this poor man get home) our guide called Dennis.  Dennis had one more thing to show us before we left the museum,   There was a framed newspaper clipping of his father Clarence presenting my father with a conservation award.   And just below it was another article of the Elmira school building being moved to his fathers farm and turned into a hog farrowing building.  That's right, the building that Sylvia, I, and countless others went to school was now a pig barn.  

     Introducing us to Patti, I think she has many jobs here, her husband assembles the  carburetors and at the moment she is 




A 1978 Gold Wing!

sorting, identifying and cataloging miscellaneous automotive parts.  One of Dennis's warehouses is what they call "new old parts" old stock found in warehouses that had never been sold.  Patti made sure we were settled in "Mom and Dads" house and to call her if there was anything we needed.  Giving us the keys to a Bronco (ford of course) and a "we will do lunch tomorrow" he was on his

1976 Gold Wing still in the box!

way.  Patti was our source for our information on the Pilgrimage we had seen this morning.  She made sure we were comfortable in the home located on the property.   Our living quarters was another experience for us.   In their later years Clarence and Maxine lived here in the winter until Maxine passed away, Clarence returned every winter keeping busy with odd jobs around the plant and clearing wood from the factory grounds.  (made room for more buildings) He would cord up the wood and sell it locally delivering it in the pickup that still sits under the carport.  Dennis said if someone looked strapped for cash his dad would just give them the wood.   I have fond memories of them and
remember Clarence loved to sing at our little church with Maxine playing the piano.  Good memories.   The strange thing is hearing Dennis's memories of my parents.  Is it possible that we are to hard on those we love the most and they don't know it?  Sorry, you will think I'm sensitive or something.  That's not the way my father raised me!  

     It was like Clarence and Maxine stepped out of the house this morning and we entered tonight.

The car that started it all, 1940 Ford Deluxe Convertible

 It was just the way they left it, Maxine's apron and a shadow box I remember from the farm, Clarence's cap still hanging on the hall tree.  We would
 be comfortable here.  It took my thoughts back to the farm neighborhood, coupled with Dennis's mention of his fathers horrible farm accident that had cut his education short.  Evidently I was young enough that I wasn't aware of it and his recovery was such that it was never brought to my attention.  It got me thinking deaths suffered by farmers my fathers age as they transitioned from horse and hand labor to mechanized farming.  We had lost our closest neighbor to a tractor accident, another was run over by his tractor my father had broke both his arms falling off a silo.     I was in a coma for sometime (all I know is when I came out of it my Mother said I gave her the nicest smile.) when I fell off a work horse, startled when our neighbor

Walter started his John Deere tractor.  In the beginning the machines had almost no safety provisions.  On our first tractor a John Deere model "B" usable power was transferred to another machine either by means of a pulley coming out I believe the right side of the tractor via a 8-10 inch wide belt.   We used it often on our farm, to grind feed, power the threshing machine and since our home was heated with a pot belly wood stove in the
living room we used it to cut wood.  Here is how it worked, the belt went from the pulley to the front of the tractor and another large pulley, the shaft from the pulley went across the front of the tractor, on that side was a 24 inch round saw blade (maybe it was smaller, remember I was very little) was mounted.  Working together my parents lifted a log on to a wooden frame by the blade, the log could be quite long if it was
a smaller branch or six to eight feet if it was larger 8 to 12 inches.   Sliding it past the blade to a length that would fit in our stove they started the cut, if they didn't move the entire log smoothly parallel to the blade it would bind the saw blade.  (resulting in many dangerous and unpleasant moments) My job was to stand between the saw blade and the belt/pulley and push/throw the wood chunks away as they exited the blade.  The other power source was a PTO (had to think for a moment, Power take off.  Makes sense).  In the beginning they were just connected to the machine via a shaft with a u-joint on both ends, we climbed on and off the tractor, straddled and stepped over them all the while it was spinning.   It caught and entwined many a farm member with its unforgiving force.  It is sad to think of the lives lost and suffering dealt to farm families as they worked to provide for their loved ones.  Sorry, a tangent I know, but who knows maybe my great grandchild will read this some day with no clue of the way farming was back then.

      Wayne mentioned we should visit Hendrix motorsports and their contribution to the racing industry, he said you could see them build race cars there.   When you are told something you (at least I do) form a mental image of what you are going to see.  How far off could I be?  My picture was a rather large garage where you could stand behind a pipe rail and watch a couple of mechanics work on a car.   Wayne had suggested it, we were close, we had time before  lunch and we had the trusty Bronco, good thing as there was a hard frost to scrape off the window.  What we actually seen.  A very large complex devoted to designing and building cars for the track.  They had one building devoted to engines, that one had extra security involved.  I had no idea how big this sport was.   We toured the museum and store that housed over twenty special race cars.  We cut our tour short when Dennis called to meet us for lunch.    Dennis didn't say where we were meeting, just gave us
some directions.  After a few misguided turns we figured out we were actually going inside the Charlotte speedway.  We met Dennis in the parking lot, he was accompanied by Patti and her son Daniel.  Lunch was in the "Speedway club" a restaurant on the top floor that overlooked the speedway. 

We thought it looked big as we drove by, I'm sure the restaurant staff wondered where

                    Similar to what it says in your rearview mirror,

                   objects  maybe closer than they appear   In this

                      case the lens made it  appear that Dennis was

                                     taller than us.

these two small town visitors lived as we stood at the windows and took pictures of the track below.  

More like it, we all look the same size, Patti and Daniel.

     Every time we had went by the speedway we had seen the advertisement to join them for a "Speedway Christmas" with over three million (just an estimate I'm sure) lights.  We asked some of the people we met if it was worth seeing and know one seemed to know.  Why not?  We will never be this close, we figure a half hour most driving thru some pretty lights and back to Clarence and Maxine's home. 

  Saturday morning there was rain forecast for the entire day.  We packed and stopped by the Speedway for a tour that had been sold out yesterday. It was hard to believe the feeling when the van was sitting on the 24 degree incline on the speed way corners.   It was fun to see the four lane drag strip they had built across the street from the speedway.  Anxious to get on the road since the rain had not started it didn't take us long to mount up and leave.   A little over 200 pictures taken in three days, it must have been a special stop for us! 

  A special memory, thank you Dennis and friends!