Author Archives: mikesmoore

If it’s Spring…

it must be time for the Benicia Band Benefit Car Show, oh.

where even a sharp-pointed [if you can afford a Cybertruk you can probably afford the lawsuits that will come with it] Tesla was represented among the many more interesting creations.

Hundreds of cars….thousands of people

all out enjoying the day.

This guy’s Dart had a 413 V8 backed by the original pushbutton automatic

but it was neither red nor candy apple, always most popular colors…as understated on this ’40

Chev, more radical on this ’39 Studebaker

’57 Chev…

even tiny low Lotus outliers wore red…

as well as the occasional Buick tho

less so the GTOs nor

an immaculately restored 1957 Forest Service NAPCO GMC.

A couple of Ford ragtops lookin’ good under the sun,

an El Camino painted over in Sparks when the owner couldn’t find anyone around here to do it

[probably did better over the hill where lacquers are still legal anyway] and a ’39 Chevy tudor that definitely has way more in it than my ’38 ever did. Nice blue, too.

There were a dozen or so food trucks, not a one in danger of being targeted by an American-supplied Israeli anti-personnel missile…nor was this affluent gathering in danger of some “never again [unless we perpetrate it]” genocidal massacre.  But life goes on…in this world and others.

In this one I wearied of seeing all those hoods popped up like hungry birds

[to be fair cars do get points for what’s under them]

so it was a relief to find a few hoodless ones

on the way out and anyway

once off the premises up First closure was more likely

even among most iterations of Fords from 1940 through the parade of Model A’s from stock

to roadsters

to pickups and,

back in the alley behind Elviarita’s,

not a Ford at all but later

a nearly full moon.