Welcome to the garage! I'm Lou, retired from the railroad in 1993 after 34 years, and Marie is retired from the county clerk's office. We have three grown kids, six grandkids, a paid-off house, and one 1972 Corvette Stingray coupe that we call the Banana (the grandkids' name; it stuck). This page is our diary of driving her, showing her, and keeping her in one piece. Marie types, I dictate, and she fixes what I say. Her comments are in italics.

Marie here. He does not dictate. He stands behind me and says "no, no, tell them about the carburetor."

I wanted a Corvette when I was 22 and couldn't afford one. I wanted a Corvette when I was 40 and had three kids and couldn't afford one. When I retired in '93, Marie said, "Well, are you going to get your Corvette or are you going to talk about it for another thirty years?"

It took about a year of looking. The classified ads, the club newsletter, a couple of car shows where I mostly stood around and asked people what they'd paid. We looked at a '68 that had more filler in it than fiberglass, and a '76 that was clean but I wanted the chrome bumpers. Then in May of 1994 a fellow in the club mentioned a widow over in Tulsa whose husband had bought a '72 new and kept it in the garage under a blanket since about 1985. It had 41,000 miles on it, a folder of every receipt going back to the dealer, and four tires that were flat-spotted and dry-rotted from sitting.

We drove over on a Saturday. She pulled the blanket off and there was all that yellow. I didn't say anything for a while. Marie did the talking, which is generally best. We paid what she was asking, which was fair, and I didn't dicker, because you don't dicker with a lady over her husband's car. We put four new tires on it in her driveway (I brought them along, which tells you I'd already made up my mind) and I drove it home to Missouri with Marie following in the Buick in case something fell off. Nothing did.

Marie: He talked the whole hour and a half home. I know because he had the T-tops off and I could hear him from the car behind.

A "cruise-in" if you've never been to one is just a bunch of people parking their old cars in a lot, putting the hoods up, and sitting in lawn chairs behind them talking to whoever walks by. There's usually a root beer stand involved. Some of them give out trophies. Here's where the Banana went this year:

Date	Show	How it went
May 15	Dairy Barn Cruise Night, Carthage	First one of the year, always. About 40 cars. Rained at 7 and everybody put the hoods down and left. We got a malt out of it.
June 5	Lions Club Show & Shine, Webb City	Nice turnout, 90-some cars. A '63 split-window showed up and nobody looked at anything else, including us. Fair enough.
June 26	Ozark Corvette Club Picnic	Our club's own thing at the lake. 22 Corvettes in a row, every generation. Somebody's '58 had a picnic basket in it. Marie won the pie contest. (Rhubarb.)
July 10	Riverfront Classics, Grand Lake, Oklahoma	Hot. 97 degrees. The fiberglass was too hot to touch by noon. Third in class (1968-1982 Corvette), behind two cars that had never seen rain. Happy with that.
July 31	Main Street Cruise, Neosho	Not a judged show, just a cruise up and down Main and a DJ playing oldies. The grandkids rode along with the T-tops off, two at a time, and waved like they were in a parade. Best night of the summer.
Aug. 14	Four-State Summer Classic, Joplin	BEST IN CLASS! First place, 1968-1982 Corvettes, out of eleven cars. Our first best-in-class in five years of showing. I'm told I said "well, I'll be" about fourteen times. The trophy is on the TV. Marie says it's staying there through Christmas and then we'll talk.
Sept. 11	Dairy Barn Cruise Night, Carthage	Last Dairy Barn of the year. Cool evening, first time all summer we didn't sweat. Wore the club jackets. 55 cars.
Oct. 2	Fall Colors Cruise, club run to Eureka Springs, Arkansas	Coming up. Last big drive of the season. Curvy roads and a lunch stop. Report to follow.

Marie: For the record, the best-in-class was for the car, but the judges did say the engine bay was the cleanest in the row, and who do you suppose spent two evenings in there with cotton swabs? It wasn't Lou.

If it's Sunday and it's not raining, we go for a drive after church. No destination required. Here's the recent ones.

• Sept. 19 - Old Route 66 west out of Joplin into Kansas and over to Baxter Springs. 13 miles of Kansas and we drove every one. Stopped at a filling station that's a museum now. Back roads home. 84 miles.
• Sept. 12 - Down to the Elk River and along the water. Leaves just starting to turn. Coffee at a bait shop. 60 miles.
• Sept. 5 - Labor Day weekend so we stayed off the main roads. Gravel for a stretch, which I don't like doing (rock chips), but Marie wanted to see the covered bridge. 45 miles. Washed her after.
• Aug. 29 - Up to Carthage and around the old courthouse square. Ran into two other club cars doing the same thing. Impromptu three-car cruise. 52 miles.
• Aug. 22 - Too hot. Drove to the ice cream stand and back. 9 miles. It counts.
• Aug. 15 - Day after the trophy. Drove it to the kids' houses, all three, to show them. They'd all already heard. 70 miles.

I'm not a mechanic. I'm a fellow who reads the club newsletter and asks a lot of questions. But five years with this car have taught me a few things.

The fiberglass. A Corvette body doesn't rust, which is the good news. The bad news is the paint sits on a surface that flexes, chips easily, and can craze (little spiderweb cracks in the finish) if it's neglected. So:

• Wash by hand with a car-wash soap, never dish soap, which strips the wax. A soft mitt, two buckets, top to bottom. Never a car wash with brushes.
• Wax it. Keep it waxed. A good carnauba paste wax, twice a season at least. The wax is what stands between the sun and the paint, and the sun is what turns yellow paint chalky. I do it in the shade in the morning before it gets hot. Takes me about three hours with the radio on and I don't mind a minute of it.
• No rubbing compound unless you know what you're doing. Old paint is thin. You can go through it.
• Fix rock chips right away with touch-up paint. Water gets under a chip and lifts the paint around it.

Tires. An old car that sits gets flat spots and dry rot even if the tread is fine. Look at the sidewalls for little cracks. Tires more than about six or seven years old ought to go regardless of how they look; the rubber gets hard and they don't grip. Keep them at the pressure on the door sticker, check it monthly, and don't let a car sit on one spot all winter (see below).

Everything else. Change the oil every spring whether it needs it or not. Keep the battery terminals clean. Run it at least once a week in the summer so the seals stay wet and the gas doesn't go stale. Keep a folder with every receipt, because the next owner will want it, and so will you. And drive it. A Corvette that sits is just a yellow sculpture.

Around here the salt goes on the roads by Thanksgiving, and salt and an old car do not mix, chrome bumpers especially. So the Banana goes to bed on November 1 and wakes up around the first of April. Here's the checklist, which is taped inside the garage door:

1. One last good wash and a fresh coat of wax. Vacuum the inside. Don't leave anything in the car that a mouse would like.
2. Change the oil and filter. Used oil has acids in it and you don't want that sitting in the engine for five months.
3. Fill the gas tank all the way (a full tank doesn't sweat and rust inside) and add a fuel stabilizer, then drive it a few miles so the stabilizer gets through the carburetor.
4. Pump the tires up about 10 pounds over normal to fight flat spots. Some fellows put the car up on jack stands. I don't, but I do move it a foot forward every few weeks.
5. Disconnect the battery or put it on a trickle charger. I take it out and set it on a board in the basement.
6. Do not set the parking brake. It can stick. Chock the wheels instead.
7. Stuff a rag in the tailpipe, and put a few mothballs and dryer sheets around the garage floor and one in the trunk area. Mice will eat wiring. Ask anyone in the club.
8. Put a soft, breathable car cover on. Not a plastic tarp: plastic holds moisture against the paint.
9. Go in the garage once a week anyway, just to look at it. This is not on the official list but everybody does it.

Marie: The battery on a board in the basement is next to my canning shelves. Every year I ask if it has to be there. Every year it does.

• Project '67 Mustang - Dave up in Flint is bringing a '67 Mustang back from the dead, and he's on our WebRing. We're Chevy people and he's a Ford man, but a fellow who spends his weekends under an old car is a friend of ours. Go tell him to keep at it.
• Hank & Peggy's Great American Road Trip - They run the Backroads ring. They did all of Route 66 in a van this summer. In a van!
• Neon Nights - Glenn photographs the old motel signs on 66. We've parked under a couple of them.
• Gearhead Garage - An honest repair shop's page, which is a rarer thing than a '63 split-window.
• The Route66 neighborhood here on GeoCities.us.