I was under strict orders not to drive them in the rain, and slightly less strict orders to stay in their rather large neighborhood of estate homes, except to get gas. My goal was to drive the cars at least once a month, which I usually succeeded at. I sometimes came out every couple of weeks, but occasionally it would stretch to over a month. I could come out whenever I wanted to do my thing. I never got the whole story on the cars’ backgrounds, but he had had them all restored by a professional who specialized in T-Birds (who had recently died, unfortunately). Harold had for a number of years owned his lifelong dream cars: a complete set of the first three years of Thunderbirds. He offered a reasonable wage and I thought that sounded like a pretty good deal and a fun job, so how could I say no? I started in the spring of 2010. This would involve coming out regularly and driving the cars, keeping them fueled and ready to drive, oil changes, washing, etc, but not necessarily any actual mechanic work. He said he was looking for someone to maintain his car collection for him. He asked me if I had any experience working on cars, to which I replied definitely not in any professional capacity, just taking care of my own cars and doing some occasional wrenching on them. He said he’d heard I like classic cars and that he had a few. Shortly after that, I got a call from Harold. Judy said, “Oh, he would probably really like Harold’s Thunderbirds”. One day Judy and Wendy were chatting and Wendy mentioned that I liked old cars. ’55 Thunderbird with its ever-present battery charger They didn’t start out that way when they got married, but as Harold built his small company into a successful large company, they both remained pretty down-to-earth people. Judy was married to Harold, who owned and ran an industrial galvanizing company. Wendy would go out a couple days a week or more to Judy’s home, then they would drive Judy’s Lexus LS all over Houston. She used to drive cars with hand controls, but had given that up in retirement as it was harder for her to get around. Judy had been partially paralyzed by Polio as a child. My wife, Wendy, used to work part time for a pleasant retired woman named Judy as a chauffeur/companion, driving her to doctors, shopping, lunch or whatever she needed. Since I recently wrote the CC article on Thunderbirds in the Scottsdale auctions, I figured it would be a good time to tell the story of how, for a time, I had the privilege of being the caretaker to a trio of Thunderbirds a ’55, a ’56 and a ’57.Īll photos are of the actual cars, I apologize some aren’t the best quality. Then one day, in a most unexpected way, I did, and even got paid for the pleasure. I never suspected, though, that I would ever get to live that fantasy. It was a cool car to see at car shows and imagine tooling around in with a pretty girl next to you on the bench seat. I’ve always liked Ford’s original two seat Thunderbird.
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