Re: My "Before It's Too Late" Trip

Posted by Dave Brownell On 2015/10/5 11:18:29

Thanks to Roger, Steve and Leon for stoking the fire that smoulders within me. I looked at my calendar to see where I could be on October 18th and it showed me obligations that will keep me home, including our semiannual Peachstate Packard barbeque at the Cofer Collection where some beautiful 1915-1939 Packards live under constant care. That will be shortly followed, that same day, by an annual Oktoberfest celebration that's been a must for fifteen years

If I were a younger, carefree (and stupid) guy, I might not think twice about leaving the Oktoberfest and driving straight from there, up I-75 to the PPG event. I must have made a dozen Cannonball-like trips between ATL and DET in the thirty years we've lived here. But sanity comes with age, and the best I could do would be to arrive the day after the event with an offer to help the clean-up and hope to hear stories about who/what showed up on Sunday. And, of course, to see what's going on with PPG after Ford left. As I explained to my youngest son in our room at the Dearborn Inn, Ford really got a true proving ground when Packard left and they moved from the walled test facility in Dearborn. The re-engineered River Rouge and Dearborn facilities of Ford make me heartsick for the lack of appreciation and dis-use of all those Albert Kahn designed plants.

I'll have to carve out a week or so in October to do a portion of Bucket List sites near I-75 once I arrange the dog sitting. Like the Appliachian trail walkers, doing it all at once might be too grand an undertaking for a guy like me. And no sane relative would want to go with me to my dream places in Car Disneyland of Detroit Yore. All things in good time, or before the sand runs out. Tod (Martin Milner) may have left the stage, but my blue Corvette seems itching to go and see what's left.