PB 308 new page 14-18.indd - Plymouth Club

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GLENDA PIKE PHOTO DAVID ESLICK PHOTO by Tonya Jo Pike Dad’s ‘56 Fury A daughter’s point of view Myowner, that, in and of itself, is not strange. But is full of car-related stories. As the daughter and only child of a lifelong Plymouth Mylife there are two stories that have been part of my life longer than all the others, literally since birth or before. The first is somewhat typical of the other birth, marriage, death car stories you hear in nearly every car-crazy family. I’ve been told ever since I can remember that I cost my dad an Avanti. Seems he wanted to buy a new Avanti and my Mom wanted to have a baby. Mom won, and I am the baby that resulted. Thanks Mom! The second story started before I was born. My earliest memories are of hearing about this mythical white car with gold trim and tailfins. A car faster than the wind that my parents owned when they first married, before I was born. But it was an unusual car, quite advanced for its time. As such, it was both hard and costly to work on. Being newlyweds on a budget, my folks eventually had to trade this car off because it Father, Daughter, Fury: Tommy and Tonya Jo Pike with that’s been part of their lives -36- went thru points and condensers faster than they got paychecks to repair it. My dad realized the night they signed papers on a new blue ‘63 Plymouth Fury that he’d made a mistake trading this beautiful white and gold car. He went back the next day to the dealership and tried to buy the white and gold car back. But alas, it had sold shortly after they’d left the dealership the day before. And thus began the legend of the ‘56 Plymouth Fury in the Pike family of Springfield, Missouri; a legend I’ve lived with all my life. My childhood is full of memories of the pursuit of another one of these mythical cars. How many times did my dad catch a glimmer of white and gold in traffic and he’d make a wild uturn and chase that glimmer until he knew it wasn’t what he was looking for? It happened often enough that I knew how to brace myself with my feet in the back seat for the crazy turn he’d make. How many times did we spend a lazy weekend day, driving miles and miles, to check out a report of a ‘56 Fury hiding in a barn or field somewhere only to have Dad come walking back from the hike frowning and shaking his head no? It was often enough that Mom kept a bag packed with books and snacks to keep me entertained while we sat in the car and waited patiently on Dad. Friends of mine are always amazed that I can distinguish ‘50s model Fords, Chevys, Dodges, Plymouths, Chryslers, Buicks and Pontiacs as easily as I do – cars built 15 years or more before I was born. Let me tell you, the third time your dad yells at you because you’ve sent him to look at a ‘58 Ford, you quickly learn to distinguish the right from the wrong! Except then you come to realize you are looking for something that is very rare and you aren’t going to see it in normal traffic… and then you kind of quit looking for it. When I was in junior high, I spotted a man at our local annual regional swap meet wearing a t-shirt with … lo and behold … a ‘56 Fury on it! That man in the shirt turned out to be Loyd Groshong of Troy, Missouri. And thus Dad and Mom would begin a long friendship with Loyd and his late wife Marion – all because of the mythical white and gold car that Loyd owned and Dad didn’t. At least I got to go to Troy and see a real one, and finally know what Dad was really looking for. A few years after Dad met Loyd, he got a true lead on a ‘56 Fury for sale in Illinois. It was owned by a female school administrator named Kitty. She was an accomplished car restorer, having redone a number of rare MGs, several DeSoto Adventurers, and a cou- ple of other ‘56 Furys. She had a special
place in her heart for ‘56 Furys because her grandparents had given her one to drive when she turned 16. She had started a ground-up restoration of the one she was offering to sell Dad. She had been thinking she’d keep it herself when it was done. However, she said a lot of things had changed and she gave us a number of semi-valid reasons for wanting to rid herself of it in mid-restoration. She was too busy with school, she had another MG to do. But Kitty was very concerned, as I remember, to know WHO was willing to buy this project of hers. So, we made a family trip my senior year of high school to Illinois to see this car. I remember going to Kitty’s house but I don’t remember actually going out into the garage to see the car. This was all very different, because we actually took a weekend family trip and stayed two nights in a motel to see this car. We met Kitty and she was eager to know even Mom and me. What we didn’t know at the time was that Kitty was terminally ill. I think it was important to her that this car go to a FAMILY, not a COLLECTION, where it would be finished and loved, yes, LOVED. I know the car meant an awful lot to her, more than all the others she had done. So a deal was struck between Kitty and Dad, and some weeks later Dad and a friend of his, Ronnie Estes, went after the mythical white car. This was before cell phones, and I remember waiting anxiously with Mom for them to call to say that it was loaded and, then again, when they reached a motel partway back home. As I remember, they carried all the parts into the motel room for the night, not wanting to risk someone mistaking the gold anodized parts for gold plating and stealing them. Then the next day, it arrived. But alas … it was NOT the mythical white and gold goddess of my childhood dreams or what I had seen sitting in Loyd’s garage! Oh she was eggshell white alright, but she was in boxes. Boxes and what seemed to be millions of boxes! Parts everywhere! My teenage brain had not contemplated what ground-up restoration meant at all! Since my dad had not taken the car apart, it took him several years to put the car back together… years filled with innumerable phone calls to Loyd and Kitty, until she died, plus hours of looking at parts manuals and car literature. Plus, there were another few thousand phone calls to locate odd pieces like trim clips, trim corners, and wheel cap clips… and more phone calls and panic when there was a major issue getting the upholstery done. We got calls regarding something about this car for what seemed like every night literally for years. I got very good at asking very pointed questions of the callers if Dad was gone. I didn’t want him wasting time Tulsarama, 2007: Three of us drove together, Tommy Pike in his ‘56 Fury, John Mitchum in his ‘55 Belvedere and Loyd Groshong in his ‘56 “Fury” convertible. I drove the late-model Chrysler so we would have a way to get around. -- Glenda Pike -37- on calls that weren’t going to be a help in getting this Fury finished. Now, let me interject this: Southwest Missouri is not a hot bed of Chrysler owners. Ford and Chevys reign supreme around here. I am the black sheep of the family because my dream car was a ‘68 Mercury Cougar which sits in my parent’s driveway to this day – but that’s another story entirely! Dad is pretty much known around here as “that Chrysler (or Plymouth) guy.” That’s why everyone knows him; he owns the odd car out, always. Your buddy winds up with grandma’s ‘60s model New Yorker to sell? Have him call Tommy Pike; he’s your guy to talk to about it. But finally the day arrived and our ‘56 Fury was back in one piece! And Dad drove it to the first car show; then the first cruise-in. And now, more than 20 years later, the story remains the same. You pull in. You park. Talk stops. People stare. Uneducated car people go, “What is that?” Idiotic less-thanknow-it-alls very mistakenly whisper “Christine, a damn Christine!” True car people step back and look on in awe or at least deep appreciation. It’s nice to know those Ford and Chevy guys can appreciate class when they see it! Not long after Dad finished this ‘56 Fury, professional car photographer Michael Mueller came through and photographed our car. It has been featured in countless books and magazines since. There is a very unbelievable sense of pleasure to walk into a bookstore and pick up a book and find our car in it. It’s an even greater pleasure for me to find that new book with the Fury in it, before Dad does, and be able to surprise him with it! My dad is the second owner of both a ‘36 P2 coupe and a ‘37 Plymouth truck, and the third owner of a ‘41 Deluxe sedan. All these vehicles have stories of family legend equal to the ‘56. I have often said they will pry the keys to these cars out of my cold dead hand when I die; that I will never sell them after my Dad is gone. But the hardest one for me to let go will be the ‘56 Fury … such a pretty white and gold car, faster than the wind, tailfins to die for, and so very tied up in my childhood memories of afternoons spent trying to find either the car or parts, and then putting it back together and back into our lives! PB JACK LEWIS, GOLD FIN SOCIETY, PHOTO
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PB 308 new page 14-18.indd - Plymouth Club

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