My Cars Continued

So when we sold the GMC truck I wrote about last night, we made a small profit on it, which meant our individual profit was very small, once it was split up between us. Either way, I was on the lookout for another vehicle, so we could try our hand at it again. This time, we found a ’53 Chevrolet at the Highway 127 yard sale, which happens to run through Pikeville, Tennessee. The car was all original, down to the inline six cylinder engine and three-speed on the column. Again, I wasn’t going to drive it anyway, so the drive train didn’t really matter to me. My dad has an incredible ability to wheel and deal…aka make people lower the price to his liking. He used his skills to buy the ’53 two-door post, and we did another half-and-half deal.

1953 Chevrolet two-door post...my second vehcile...looooong gone.

An Ongoing Series–My Cars…

Alright, so I’m a car guy. You should know that by now. My dad’s car guy lifestyle made it impossible for me to do anything else. I mean, when your dad is staying out in the shop until midnight building a chassis for a Pro Street ’57 Chevy Bel Air convertible, you have no choice but love every minute of it. So, as I became more interested in owning a car (or truck) of my own, my dad helped motivate me by telling me he’d go in partners with me on a vehicle if I could find one. So I saved Christmas money, birthday money and whatever else I could scrape up. The hunt for my first vehicle began at the age of 12.

Yeah it was rough, but you have to start somewhere! Who would've known '67-72 C-10's would be so popular? I had no idea...

My seventh grade teacher’s husband passed away, and the fellow had been working on an old GMC pickup in his spare time. After he passed away, she didn’t have space for it, so this was a good opportunity for my first vehicle. It was rough, and it didn’t run all that good, but it didn’t really matter because I was 12 years old…what would I have done with it even if it ran great? Either way , the price was right, so my dad and I went in partners on it. From there, he tried to get it running right, but it never really straightened up…suspected it was a burned valve. We also swapped wheels on it and fixed a few spots on the body. This is before my days of bodywork so dad handled all that stuff. Dad taught me at an early age that buying and selling vehilces can actually make a profit, and reselling this truck for a couple hundred dollars more than we had in it gave me the bug. I would never see cars the same–I wanted to make enough profit to buy another car, then do it all over again. So I did just that, and this GMC short-bed fleetside started it all.

Life of a Car Guy

I’m a car guy that has a thing for photography and writing. And when I say that I’m a car guy, I don’t simply mean that “I like cars”, I’m saying that cars are my life. Aside from activities to keep my wife from killing me, everything I do revolves around cars, whether it’s going to the drag strip, attending a local car show or wrenching on one of my many seemingly endless projects. My name is Tommy Lee Byrd, and I do photography and writing for a living. Obviously, not all of my experiences make it to print….this is where those stories will live, creating a diary of a car guy’s life. I stay  busy with working a regular job and doing all of my freelance work on the side, so this blog will be filled with my experiences around my hometown of Dayton, Tennessee, as well as stuff on the road. Since this is my first blog, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite photographs I’ve taken…not the best picture I’ve taken, but one of my favorites.

Marcus Wooden's 1964 Chevy II, which competes locally in the Bounty Race heads up drag racing series. The car runs 5.50's in the eighth mile thanks to a nitrous-fed small block Chevy.

 

Tommy Lee