Reinventing the Wheel

© 2006 Bill Ott

Well, Mack the Finger said to Louie the King

"I got forty red, white, and blue shoestrings

And a thousand telephones that won’t ring

Do you know where I can get rid of these things?"**

Joe was sitting on the couch along the right wall of Sy’s spacious motor home. I was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor. He had been keeping me entertained for the past half hour or so with tales of adventures and misadventures from his long and storied racing career. Now... he’d finally stopped. Time for a collective catching of breath.

But there’s been a question I’d been wanting to ask him since we sat down together... I knew it would get him all wound up again... so I asked anyway. Damn if it didn’t. But not in any direction that I would have expected it to take.

The question in question for Mr. Jacono was....

"Joe... the first dragster I remember seeing you run was a Lynwood Eliminator II . How come you ran that particular chassis and did you know the owner/fabricator at Lynwood Welding, Pat Bilbow? He’s a hard man to find out any history about."

The answer...

Well... the deal with Pat was… when I started building a car, the first few I built, all we ran were those solid steel wheels. Now me... I had to have spoke wheels up front. There were some hot dog guys in California that had those spoke wheels on their cars. Man, I had to have them too.

One day I went to Captain Joe’s Army-Navy Store on Market St. in Philadelphia and went to the guy and said, “You got any spoke wheels?"

"Yeah," he said, "I got some over here."

And he had four wheels, and they looked like the wheels on the dragsters!

“How much for these wheels?’” I said.

"Three bucks apiece."

"Tell you what… you got any more of these?"

"Yeah," he said, "I got a cellar full."

"Well… I’m gonna buy these four, then maybe I’ll come back for the rest... but we gotta talk about money. I’ll give you what you want for these, but when I do come back, if I want any more, we’re gonna have to talk about it."

He said "C’mon back… and we’ll talk about it."

So, I take the wheels. The hubs in the center were straight. Now everyone was running those Anglia spindles and they were big in the back, then stepped down to a little bearing in the front. That’s the way all cars were made back then, running those spindles. I could buy a bearing to fit on the spindle that would work on that back shoulder. But up front, it was a different size... maybe a half inch smaller. So I go to this machine shop guy, and tell him, “I need something that will shimmy down here so I can use a regular bearing on here (I had the spindle in my hand). I need a shim or something so I can run the same bearing on both ends.”

"Go ahead and leave it here," he said.

So he cut me these things out of aluminum, and you pressed it in there, and put a regular bearing on each end. Because he shrunk it down and it fit.

Now… I got three bucks in the wheel, the guy charged me two dollars to make the thing. I can buy a new set of bearings for like five bucks… and now I got a wheel!

"What?"

"I said I ain’t got no money, but tell me, what kind of front wheel do you use?"

He said, "Well I got those California type wheels… they’re $295.00."

Hell, they were as much as the car!

So I said to him, "How about if I send you up a couple of the wheels I make. You take a look at them, see what you think... if you can use them let me know.”

He said he’d look at them. So I boxed them up and sent them to Wilkes-Barre on a freight truck.

Now he calls ME up…

"How much you want for these wheels?"

“I don’t want no money… but I’ll trade you four sets of wheels for a car."

"Deal!!"

"He didn’t know who I was… and I didn’t know who he was."

First car from Bilbow… here it comes! And it’s got everything but the front wheels. I put that car together, and it was a nice car. Let me tell you something… it was a piece man, not like that crap that I was building. So I put the car together but I didn’t know what I was gonna put in it. I told him, “Never mind the mounts; I’ll take care of that when I get it.”

He said, “I got to put in some kind of mount, ‘cause I don’t want you welding on this after you get it.”

So I told him I’m gonna put a Buick in it, but he put in the firewall and Buick mounts. That was the first car. He had standard stuff, standard things that would bolt a couple of different motors in these cars.

He calls me again and says to me, ‘How many of these wheels you got?"

"A couple," I said, "How about you build me another car, and I’ll send you another batch of wheels?"

So I went back to the Army Navy Store and said, "Hey Captain Joe, I need some wheels and I got this truck with me. Show me how many wheels you got, OK?"

He takes me to the cellar… down underneath the store... and there’s all these wheels. That’s all you could see... was these wheels! I told him, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take all of ‘em. I’ll give you a dollar apiece."

"I can’t sell them to you for a dollar apiece!"

"See ya pal!’ And up the steps I went, and out the door. He came out and he said, “Wait a minute. Give me a buck and a half each for the wheels and we got a deal"

"I’ll take ‘em right now… but I don’t have no money."

"You want to buy these damn wheels… but you don’t have any money?"

That was my favorite saying… "I don’t have no money."

"You got somebody with you? You’re gonna have to load them, ‘cause I ain’t gonna give you no help. You load your truck , and give me the count."

He didn’t know how many he had!

“I got a truck outside that will hold maybe a hundred,” I told him.

"Take a hundred then."

"And a hundred fit in there, but there was still more room, and I said, “Look man, I can put about twenty more in there.“ So I took them, too. Then I told him… I’ll give you a check for the wheels, but I want you to hold the check for me ‘til Friday."

"Til' when?"

"Friday!" I had the money. I wouldn’t have wrote the check if it weren’t no good. I said, "Will you do that for me?"

"Yeah, OK."

"But in the meantime… I’m coming back, and I’m gonna get the rest of them.”

I made at least three trips. And now I got all of these wheels down in my garage. No way to stack them, they were just from end to end in the garage. And you can’t stack them! So I got some wood and made another tier. I didn’t know what else to do, 'cause they wouldn’t stack! Man, I had one hell of a time with them!

So then, I call up Bilbow and say, “Make me another car.” Then I go down to the machine shop guy and say, ‘”Give me two hundred of them plugs for the wheels.”

He says, “Man, I ain’t got time to make two hundred of them!” Now, he originally charged me two dollars for a wheel, but I told him, “I’m only gonna give you seventy-five cents apiece.”

"Man, I ain’t making them things for seventy five cents each... how many do you want anyway?"

"I don’t know -- 150, 200, hell, maybe 300. How much you want to make them?"

"I’ll make them for a dollar apiece... if you buy 300 of them. I‘ll have to go into production, probably hire some kid at night to make them for me."

So there I was... Now I had a standing order for three hundred sets. Then I called the bearing place and ordered the new bearings… all new stuff.

I got seven cars from Bilbow that way.

More old B.S. later.

Badco

Forward advise, rebuttals, and death threats to badco@elp.rr.com

** © 1965 Warner bros. Music / 1993 Special Rider Music

"Highway 61" Words and music by Bob Dylan

From the Columbia Records Release - ‘Highway 61 Revisited’

We’re going back a long way for this one - Released in September of 1965 and an incredibly successful album ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ (named after the legendary ‘Blues Highway’ in Dylan’s home state of Minnesota and now a part of Interstate 35) reached #3 on Billboard’s Top 40 Albums List, while it’s one single "Like A Rolling Stone" reached #2 on the Top 40 Singles List. This album marked the first of many ‘changes’ Dylan’s musical direction would take during his long career. His Folk Music followers considered this album of electric rock music a total sellout, but over the years, listeners learned never to know what to expect from his next release, and he didn’t disappoint.

And of course, word of thanks goes out to all of the usual suspects including Joe, Vickie, Bob, Maria and the rest of the ‘Rollin’ Stoned” crew, Jim Amole, Sy, Bob Monitzor, The Boopster, and Fred the Wonder Puppy.

THANKS BUD