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beautiful North Dakota women.  Just

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Gary and Friends,

       The mention of '57 Fords gave me the bug to tell another story 
of my '57 Ford Fairlane.  When I got it,  it only had 52,000 actual 
miles on it and still had the thick bumpy clear plastic covers on the 
seats.  It was the first thing I changed.  It was like sitting on 
glass--both too cold and too hot whatever the temperature was.  The car 
was 10 years old and probably only had the oil changed a couple times in 
it's life.  I went to change it and the sludge in the pan would hardly 
come out of the drain plug.  Dad told me to fill the engine with #2 
diesel and let it run for a couple minutes out in the yard and then 
drain it.  The diesel cleaned a little bit of the sludge out of the 
engine but it was too late--the damage had been done.  I had lots of 
problems with the oiling system because of the neglect.  One day a bunch 
of us were over at Campbell's shooting pool and decided it was time to 
go home.  We headed out and jumped into our respective cars and headed 
out toward Dales for the usual 'run to the radar sign' on Highway 5.  
The old clicking 292 y-block engine would always top out at 95-97 MPH 
but this day it went past that and kept climbing and climbing and I said 
to my friend,  "What the heck got into this old crate?"  When we hit 
about 120,  we were getting close to our usual turn around point of the 
gravel pit turnoff so I let off the pedal and the engine grenaded on 
me.  I think at that speed and backing off that quickly,  the pistons 
decided to change holes.  Anyway,  it banged,  popped,  shuttered, 
smoked and rattled all in about 2 seconds.  It didn't quit running but 
was barely hitting on 2-3 cylinders.  I kept it going and made it back 
into town and shut it off in our yard.  There was even antifreeze 
running out the tail pipe.  I bought a '56 Ford for $10 and rebuilt that 
engine for my car.  When I pulled off the valve covers on my old blown 
engine to put on the rebuilt engine,  there were broken pushrods and 
valves missing with springs laying in the valve covers!  There was NO 
salvage of that one except for the 'Thunderbird' valve covers.  
Everything below them was toast! Thanks Gary!

Dick

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Gary,

Apparently either Alice or I hit the reply by mistake.  Sorry about the confusion.However, since I am responding to you anyway, thought I might share a few photos taken this past weekend when our daughter Angela and son-in-law George and their family were down here.

This first one is of our oldest and youngest grandchildren before we went out on the boat (you can see the lake out the window in the background — Tyler is a Junior this year and will be 17 in November, and Ella (named after my mother) will be two on the 14th of Sept.

Life jacket on and ready to go!

Life jacket on and ready to go!

Austin waiting for Tyler to get on the tube with him (Austin is five and in Kindergarten this year).  Austin loves the tube and rode it with Tyler, his mom, his dad and with me.

Tyler on the tube behind our pontoon boat.  It took him some time to finally get to where he could stand up and Angela got a good photo of it.

I couldn’t let them show the old man up so I too, finally got to where I could stand up.  Riding water skis is easy compared to this.  I know it’s pretty dumb of me since I’ll be turning 65 in just a couple of days, but I still enjoy the challenge.

Needless to say, we had a wonderful day on the water and all came home tired and a bit sun burned.Keep up the good work, Gary and all the best and good health to both you and Bernadette.