Barn Find Road Trip Read online

  The pavement eventually ran out, and we continued on a dusty gravel road. I had just washed and waxed the Woody a few hours earlier, so this dust was making me slightly depressed. After rounding a few corners, and going over a few hills, we arrived at a location that Brian said was “The Place.”

  There was no mistaking it; under a carport on the left side of the road, were two Ford Galaxies, a 1964 and a 1965, in various stages of disassembly and/or restoration. To the right of the road were a few barns with various 1960s Fords scattered about.

  We parked the cars. I walked up to the house adjacent to the carport and knocked on the door. A burley man came to the door and smiled. I was instantly relieved. “I saw your Woody drive up,” he said. “I’d like to take a look at it.” We shook hands. The man introduced himself as Snowball Bishop, and he was instantly our friend.

  Clearly, Snowball Bishop—don’t you just love his name—has been into cars his whole life.

  “Brother, at one time I had 17 1940 Ford coupes,” he said. “I’d make race cars out of them. Right now all I got are these old Fords here, some in the other building and in the field, and I got the old race car in the other shop.”

  I quickly realized that our visit to Snowball’s house was not going to be a short one. I told Snowball, “We saw your field from the interstate.” He told us that sometimes folks see his cars from the highway and just climb over the fence and walk on in, leaving their cars sitting on the interstate!

  “I’m 85-years-old, brother,” he said. “I’ve been collecting cars my whole life.”

  Snowball invited us into one of his garages to see a couple of his favorite cars. He was obviously a Ford man, and, as we would discover, an enthusiast of the 390-cubic-inch FE engine. He lifted up the car cover and revealed a pristine, white 1964 Ford two-door hardtop.

  “This one has a 390 in it with 300 horsepower,” said Snowball. “I’ve had this one since 1968.”

  On the way to Snowball’s in Virginia, we came upon this long-closed general store and grain mill. We wanted to explore it, but decided to respect the No Trespassing sign.

  He led us to another covered car in the garage. As he lifted the cover, it revealed another 1964 Ford, this time a brilliant blue Galaxie. I jokingly asked him, “Is 1964 the year you were born?” He laughed and said he wished that were the case.

  “Now this one here, I tore all the way [apart] about 15 years ago,” he said. “This one here is a 390, four-speed car. I didn’t like the factory metallic blue, so I changed it to this color. I restored this one myself.”

  I asked him about the cars in the field behind his barn. “Are those cars all parts cars?”

  “A lot of them are parts car, but some of them out there can be put back on their feet,” he said. “I brought in another 1963 and a 1964 just the other day. And I bought a 1963 convertible that some other boy started on, but cancer got him, so I bought it.”

  Not now, Brian! We have cars to find!

  Then he pointed to a 1965 Ford his son had recently dragged home.

  “It’s a 1965 Ford that had been put up 18 years ago,” he said. “It’s got a solid body on it, and it’s a 390 car. The frame is good under it. It had no engine in it, so [the owner] started out wanting $2,000 for the car. My son Jimmy offered him $1,500 for the car, and he took it home.”

  Then Snowball showed us some photos of himself as a younger man.

  “Is that you?” Brian asked.

  “Yes, that’s me when I was racing,” he said. “I have a whole house full of them [photos].”

  We parked the Woody in front of Snowball Bishop’s garage for the first barn find of our adventure, just 90 minutes into our trip!

  Modified Racer

  Apparently, Snowball had been quite a driver on the NASCAR Modified circuit back in the day.

  “I’ve got my old ’37 Ford race car in the other garage. Would you like to see it?” I thought Brian was going to burst at the seams with excitement.

  As we walked toward the garage, Snowball got reminiscent. “Now this place here has a lot of history,” he said. “I think Daddy put this building up in the 1950s. At the time, it was all we had. We didn’t have any money back then. It’s a wonder that this old building hasn’t burned up three or four times. We used to heat it with an old pot-belly stove that was in the corner. The only power we had was to run a power cord from our house across the street.”

  Snowball Bishop has an amazing life story. Since his wife passed away a decade ago, car people have become his family.

  As he opened the door, sunlight shone on the race car that had been a part of his life for so many years. “One time when we rebuilt that old car, we put a Chevy frame under it,” he said.

  I asked when he purchased the car. He said it was so long ago he couldn’t remember. “I had so many coupes back then, I don’t know when I bought this one. But if I’m not mistaken, I think I got this car from the Jackson boys. I think the last time I raced it was in 1973 or 1974, I can’t remember.”

  Snowball said that he built the coupe in this very garage.

  “Did it race with a Ford engine?” I asked?

  Snowball uncovers a ’64 Galaxie, this one powered by a 390 and a four-speed. He restored this car about 15 years ago, and decided to change the color to metallic blue. He also owns a ’66 Galaxie two-door hardtop.

  Snowball told us he initially raced with a series of modified flathead engines and usually finished in the top five against the more modern overhead-valve Chevy engines in the 1960s. He talks proudly of a couple of Crossfire flatheads he ran. Crossfire engines fire two sparkplugs at once. After flatheads, he tried a Holman-Moody-built 312 cubic-inch engine, then a 406 cubic-inch Ford, but ultimately decided to switch to Mopar engines. In later years, the car ran with a 413-cubic-inch Chrysler engine with a four-speed gearbox, but that changed when he bought a load of engines and parts from Petty Enterprises.

  I thought Brian was going to burst! Snowball led us into his “race barn” to show us the 1937 Modified racer he drove until the mid-1970s.

  Petty Connection

  “I’m telling you the honest truth,” said Snowball. “I drove up to Richard Petty’s house with my old pickup, and maybe I had $1,000 in my pocket. Old man Lee Petty was sitting there in a chair and said, ‘How are you boys getting along?’

  “‘Mr. Lee,’ I said. ‘I heard you were selling some good 426 stuff, and we’re here to buy it. We’re looking for the good Stage 3 heads and the good intakes. My 413 runs good, but it won’t beat the Chevys anymore.’

  “Lee said, ‘See that pile of stuff there in the corner? There’s three engines there and enough parts to build two more. If I’m not mistaken, there are six Stage 3 heads in there, and all sorts of camshafts, pistons, rods.’

  This is a barn-find scene that dreams are made of! Snowball’s ’37 Ford Modified car is an authentic racer that has had an amazing career on tracks throughout Virginia and North Carolina.

  “Richard had gone to the Hemi engine by then, so he was selling all the 426 Wedge stuff,” said Snowball. “So Lee says, ‘What would you give me for it? Would you give $1,000 for all that stuff in the corner?’ I said, ‘Mr. Lee, you wouldn’t lower that just a little so I have enough money to get home, would you?’ He died laughing and took $900 for everything.

  “Later I ran a 440-cubic-inch Chrysler engine in the car,” he said. “The engine for it is out of it now and is sitting next to it on the floor. I turn it over every week.”

  Before we left the old garage, Snowball told us that, besides working on the old stock car, he also used the garage as a makeshift poker parlor.

  “We’d start playing cards, and about one or two o’clock in the morning, my wife would start cutting out the lights by pulling the power cord out of the socket up at the house. That was the time to go on home. Those were the good old days.”

  Snowball is contemplating whether to restore his old coupe, which is built on a Chevy chassis and has a 440 Mopar engine. He built th
is car in this very garage 50 years ago.

  The Coupe Today

  “I don’t want to put the motor back in it until the car is painted,” he said. “I told Jimmy, ‘Hey, you better get on the ball and get this thing painted. Daddy might not be here too much longer. I’d like to hear that thing run again.’ You wouldn’t believe how many people tried to buy that old car off of me. Ray Evernham wanted to buy it.”

  As we walked to his other garage, Snowball said that when I-77 was built, it cut his farm in two. He said he still owns about 100 acres of land on one side, and about 39 acres on the side where his home and cars sit.

  Snowball’s father had scrimped and saved and bought the farm back in the 1930s during the Depression. He explained that he and his siblings were raised in the family’s old home place at the lower end of the field. There used to be an old schoolhouse on the property that his mother attended.

  Snowball said he acquired an additional 2-acre lot below the family property years ago, which is where he used to keep his cars. “I used to keep that lot plum full of old cars; I had 1937, ’39, ’40 Fords up in there and plum up into the 1950s, coupes, pickups. I just phased them out; people bought them up, and I couldn’t find no more.

  As we walked past my Woody, he stopped to admire it. I told him I bought it in 1969 when I was 15 years old. He wanted to look under the hood, but I told him I didn’t want to ruin his day.

  “You have a Chevy in there, don’t you?” he asked as I reached for the hood latch.

  “Yes I do,” I said. “Even though I’m a Ford guy, I couldn’t say no to this LS1 engine.”

  “Mmmmmm, mmmmm, that sure is sweet,” he said.

  The next garage, like the previous one, was loaded with 1963 and 1964 Ford pieces: grilles, trim, emblems, headlight doors. “I’ve got a field full of 1964 Fords. And that old house over there is filled with parts and junk, Lord have mercy.”

  Huge 1963 and ’64 Ford Stash

  “You wouldn’t believe that they come from everywhere looking for 1963 and 1964 Ford stuff off of me,” said Snowball. “They’ll stop over there on the interstate and walk across the pasture to find me. They’ll say, ‘We didn’t know how to get here.’

  “I sell the boys some things, because you can’t find these old parts anymore. I’ve sold Larry McClure a lot of stuff over the years. He’s the boy who owned the [NASCAR] team that Sterling Marlin and Ernie Irvan drove for. He has some old Fords and was restoring some old Galaxies back. He called me the other day and was looking for a console and a set of bucket seats for an XL.

  Snowball’s son recently dragged home this 1965 Ford Galaxie. He paid $1,500 and hopes to restore the car, which was originally powered by a 390.

  “I sell cars and parts when I can. I try to help the boys out. If I got it, I’ll let you have it. If I don’t have it, they’ll just have to go on down the road to someone else.”

  We walked toward a newer, steel building. Snowball said that he recently had it constructed for some of his nicer cars.

  As we raised the door, our eyes instantly went toward a beautiful 1963 Ford Galaxie convertible.

  “It came from North Wilkesboro,” said Snowball. “I guess I’m the second owner on it. Everybody who sees this sharp old ’63 wants to buy it. It is a factory four-speed car, and it is unrestored.

  “I bought it about five years ago. I bought it from a boy named Jimmy Williams who had a stroke, and because it’s a four-speed car, he couldn’t shift it anymore, so I went over and bought it from him.”

  Then Snowball told us we could walk down into the field and look at his other cars.

  Talk about a big powerplant! Obviously this 1964 Ford has been parked in Snowball’s field for a long, long time.

  — FORDS IN THE FIELD —

  “There’s a landmark out there,” he said. “It’s a 1964 XL that was parked there in 1972 or 1973. It’s a tree car!” There was a mature tree coming out of where the engine used to be! Talk about a power plant…

  Before we said goodbye, I took my notepad and made a count of just how many cars Snowball had in total, in his garages and in the field. I might have missed one or two, but it breaks down this way: there’s his 1937 Ford modified car, a 1957 Ford, 16 1963 Fords, 26 1964 Fords, 3 1965 Fords, 2 1963 or 64 Mercury Montereys, 2 1966-ish Ford Thunderbirds, and a few other non-Fords scattered about.

  That totals about 60 cars. When I told Snowball the number, he said: “I had over 100 at one time.”

  Obviously this ’64 Ford hasn’t been parked for quite as long as the other. A smaller tree seems to be coming out of where the four-barrel carburetor would rest.

  You say you need a hubcap? Snowball has stacks of them for many 1960s and 1970s Fords.

  A Mercury sandwich. This 1963 Mercury Monterrey two-door is surrounded by a pair of 1963 Fords on the left, and a pair of 1964 Fords on the right.

  This 1959 Ford two-door sedan already has had some parts removed from it, including the rear end.

  Brian (right) helps Snowball uncover the 1964 Ford Galaxie two-door hardtop he has owned since 1968. The car has a 390-cubic-inch engine with an automatic.

  — BACK ON THE ROAD —

  After a couple of pleasant hours visiting Snowball, we said goodbye and continued northbound. We couldn’t have been much luckier on the first of our 14-day tour than to discover this many cars just 90 minutes after leaving Bagel Bin! How many other Snowball Bishops would we be lucky enough to meet over the next two weeks?

  We decided that Roanoke, Virginia, would be a good stopping point for the night, so we headed north in that direction. And, since it was Friday, we hoped we could locate an evening cruise-in and get some leads on old cars that could be followed up the next day.

  After leaving Snowball’s, we headed north and located this cruise-in in a Roanoke-area Lowe’s store. The leads we had hoped to gather, though, never materialized.

  We asked around and found out there was a weekly cruise-in at the Lowe’s shopping center. So that’s where we headed. We pulled into the Lowe’s parking lot. Only a couple of dozen cool cars were present, mostly Chevelles and Novas, but also a couple contemporaries of my Woody. The three of us dispersed quickly and began telling people of our mission.

  We began an almost nightly ritual of visiting local pubs. This was our first, the Wasena City Brewing Company, in Roanoke.

  “We’re looking for old cars,” we said. “Do you have any, or know of anybody who has old cars?”

  We about blanked out. Not much response. These guys had cool cars, but they didn’t keep old parts cars around their houses. All they knew about barn finds were what they saw on TV. What was the matter with them?

  I surmised that these were nouveau car guys: recently retired gentlemen who had spare cash and bought cars they had admired earlier in their lives. But they were not organic “greasy finger” car guys; I call them “fluffers and buffers.”

  I was beginning to get depressed until one gentleman said he knew of an old Plymouth Superbird sitting at a house a few exits south off I-81. He gave us a few vague directions. Hmmm, vague directions often become dead ends, I thought. But I filed it in my brain’s hard drive and said thank you.

  We also heard about a place called British Auto Restorations in Roanoke, but they were closed on the weekends, so we promised to search for it next week.

  Tomorrow was another day.

  ALL MAKES, MODELS, AND STORIES CONSIDERED

  What is a cool car? As we drove around for the next couple of weeks, we would be looking for cool cars, but what qualified as a cool car?

  Basically, I was able to play God, because I determined what ultimately went into this book. To put it simply, no K cars! Sorry, but I don’t care for K cars, or any of the K car’s variants, even the rare turbocharged convertibles with fake wood siding.

  And no GM front-wheel-drive cars that were manufactured in the 1980s, cars like the terrible Citation. I’ll never forget when Chevy used the national 55-miles-per-hour speed limit as a
n excuse to install weaker (cheaper) “55-mile-per-hour” brakes in the Citation and other GM cars of the era. I haven’t thought much about those cars since.

  Other than that, every vehicle built before World War II, as well as post–World War II through the 1970s, would be fair game. And, selectively, I would consider cars built after that. But into the 1980s and beyond, my interest falls off pretty rapidly. Of course there were great cars built during that era, but they were not right for this book.

  Other than that, foreign and domestic cars, trucks, motorcycles, sports cars, and four-door sedans, and perhaps even heavy equipment.

  It’s good to be the barn-find God!

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

  DAY 2

  Reflecting back on our first half-day on the road, we certainly couldn’t have hoped for much better. We left my home at noon, just hoping to get out of North Carolina and begin our car search the next day. The fact that we actually discovered old cars just 90 minutes into our trip was certainly a positive step. That the find was Snowball Bishop’s stash of 60-something cars was amazing.

  We were on a high, and couldn’t wait to see what today, a beautiful Saturday morning, would bring.