A Day at Southern Automotive

[Tony Radford]

Despite the threat of impending thunderboomers, I packed up the little red car yesterday (Friday) morning and headed down to McDonough to turn her in for a prescheduled maintenance. I was so psyched about the ride down the rural, north Georgia countryside roads that connect the sprawling metropolis of Dacula with McDonough that I put on my Gortex rain breaker and rumbled into the gray, misty morning unconcerned with the possible need for a snorkle and fins. The rain gods were kind and the trip was awesome. One quick "coffee evacuation and where the hell am I?" stop and I was there all too soon.

A day at the SA shop is always an adventure. I do my best to stay out of their way as they always seem to have an endless amount of work to do. Dual whining grinders porting heads and intakes, thundering motors getting tweaked up on the run stand, shiny side oilers being lowered into shipping crates bound for all corners of the known universe. John has his pet project going over in the skunk-works department destined to make life easier for all the Factory Five owner/builders. Bill took me on one of his always welcome "blast from the past" adventures currently being lived through his snazzy little black 60s vintage Falcon, presently being transformed from a garage-kept granny mobile into a nuclear-powered Saturday night sleeper. "Truly SWEET" as Jim would say. She's borderline streetable and will be displayed at an upcoming event for many to admire. I found myself chowing on a catered barbeque lunch with John and Susan, surrounded by side oilers, aluminum Windsors, Cobras, a vintage Mach I and yes, even TC's street rod Hemi.

As all good things must eventually come to an end, I left the shop in Lewis's pickup headed north to Snellville and finally home to anxiously await the return of my "baby"!