This is who I am...: July 2009

Last weekend Alene and Bailey went camping. I couldn't join them because I had to be at a football equipment check out Saturday morning, so toward the end of my work day, my brother Russ called me to invite me with him to a classic car show put on by Bo Huff.

I had learned about this guy a few months before. Russ is currently restoring, from the ground up, a 1951 Chevy 2-door hard top. He is pulling it apart piece by piece and fixing it up. It's very impressive to watch him as he progresses through it. Anyway, Russ told me about Bo Huff, who is one of those guys famous for re-storing cars, or for "chopping" cars. He is originally from East Carbon, UT (a small town outside of Price, which is a pretty small town itself). He has been restoring cars since his teens, moving to SLC, then LA, where his work really took off. He eventually moved back to Utah, where he continues to restore cars for people all over America.

So, with that said, I high-tailed it from work in order to head down to East Carbon, UT to check it out. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that I used to LOVE going to classic car shows with my dad when I was younger and I've recently taken a liking to getting out and doing it more now. Someday I hope to be able to restore a car and cruise it to my death bed.

We arrived around 6:30pm and when we got there, we immediately felt out of place. I'd say about 90% of the people there were extremely hard-core. They truly lived the life of car choppers. Most had tatoos all over the place, most were drunk off their rears, and most looked like they would slit your throat if you looked at them wrong. I felt like I had jumped back to the 50's among a group of greasers. Now, I wasn't intimidated, because we found as we talked to everyone, they were all pretty nice. We saw Bo walking around talking to everyone. Russ had first met him while working security at the airport and talked to him for a bit. He saw Russ and said, "Whats up daddy?". Dude was cool as a cucumber, long white haired beard, white hair slicked back, sunglasses. People around there just absolutely worshiped him.

The town itself doesn't have a hotel (that I know of), so people were just camping out on the side of the streets or in their campers. A lot of the cars were very interesting and I wished I had brought my camera (these pictures are from Russ'). We were actually there a day before the official show, so we didn't see every car. That night they had a concert with two "rockabilly" bands playing. I was impressed with each band because they had their own niche.

The first band was Joey Fender and the 55's. This dude was very interesting and had a great way of playing a slide guitar while also helping out on drums (see video below). He also had a rock-star moment when he jumped off the stage and started playing his guitar in the crowd.

The second band was cool because it consisted of 3 brothers and some older guy on standup bass. The guitarist couldn't have been older than 17, the drummer had to be about 12-13, and the lead singer was about 9 years old. You couldn't really understand what he was singing (mostly original songs, with a cover of "walk this way"), but the kid MOVED like a frontman (with a guitar) and he had feeling in his voice as he sang. I felt like I was looking at a group of kids from the 50's. It was surreal.

Since the bands didn't start playing until 10pm, we didn't get home until about 1am. It was still a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to going back next year.

Russ outside of Bo Huff's shop

Some pictures of the various kinds of cars that were there. While some may not look finished, that is what was so cool about them is they are left like that on purpose. Kind of an "F-U" to the world that this is what they're doing with their car and it will smoke yours any day in a race-attitude.

This guy was from Montana. Funny as hell.