Past Updates

   About this Site      I have wanted to gather information about Pontiacs for quite some time now. As a member of the Pontiac Oakland Club since 1988 and the Early Times Chapter (which deals only with 26-54 Pontiacs) it became more and more apparent as time went by, that owners of older Pontiacs are greatly outnumbered by cars built after 1960. I hope that this site will get some more exposure for the older models. It will also be a great way to network and help with advice about where to find parts and also to motivate each other. My own restoration projects have been stalled since 1995. That also happens to be when I bought my computer. Maybe now that this site is finally online, someone out there will give me the kick in the pants I need to get my 47 Coupe completed ( it has been painted since 1995 but the body is still a shell). After that I will begin work on my 1948 Station Wagon and my wifes' grandfathers' 47 Wagon will probably sit there until I retire. (No time soon as I just turned 40 this February-1998).   I will add a page to tell you about myself and my three Pontiacs soon.
    This website is my first try at this type of thing. If you have encountered any problems or have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact me. If any officer of the Early Times Chapter finds this page I will be glad to help out with a webpage for the club. (I have provided sign-up info on my "Links to Clubs" page).
   To make this site really successful I will need your help in tracking down as many owners of 42-48 Pontiacs as possible. Any help you can be in this matter will be much appreciated. Once all the bugs are worked out on this site I will probably run ads in the POCI and Early Times Chapter newsletters. If you know of an appropriate site for a link let me know. I would like to give a special thanks to Rich at ClassicalPontiac for answering all my questions about starting a website and providing a link to his great Pontiac page.
                                                                            Glad you found this site and hope you like it,
                                                                                                    Don Hinsberger       4-12-98

Special project and a great story! This project began in 6-98. The car has since been completed and now has it's own registry webpage.

A.P.B. (All Pontiyackers Bulletin) I received an E-mail from the San Joaquin County Police Dept. They are looking for a 46-48 2809 (4-door Streamliner) to restore to the condition of their original police cruiser. The first cruiser that the dept. purchased was a 1946. They also had two 47's and two 48's. I suspect that a 46 might be difficult to locate but a 47 or 48 will also fit the bill. They have their own body shop and they can handle a full restoration. They still are in possession of the original siren and lights. Let's put the word out and help in this great cause. Update: A likely candidate has been found! I call that good, fast Police work! A 46-2809 has been tracked down in Virginia. Extradition to San Joaquin is being arranged. It will be great to follow this project from start to finish which should be soon after a quick start like this. I thought it would be almost impossible to find the exact model they were hoping for. Maybe there are more of these great cars left than I had thought. Way to Go!!!!!! Update: The car has been restored and I will be making a webpage just like the others as soon as I get the pictures lined up!
*** Click here for more details and some cool historical pictures they have sent me and more updates! *** Final Update: *** Click here for to see the finished product on it's very own webpage ***

Past Updates A sure cure for insomnia and a great way to catch up on what has happened here since the registry was started.

Thanks to new member Joe Kennedy for helping me get some of the links fixed.
I moved the links to a new page to help this page load faster. I have decided that I will make a page for each person who registers until I run out of space. Be sure to go to the pages I wrote for each owner and see the pictures of their cars.
6-2-98 Thanks to Hendi Fink for the link on the POCI page. And to Hemmings Motor News for a link on their site.
6-4-98Thanks to Jim Kilby for sending the info on 42 wheel and striping colors. I am going to put up a page showing the Weight and Original Cost of our cars. Today is my daughters birthday and I have a house full of screaming 13 year olds. I will send in ads for the POCI and Early Times Chapters to get more signups.
6-8-98 First classified. Rick has decided the "project" was too much. 48 Station Wagon For Sale Click here for details.
6-21-98 Added another member and got my 47 coupe page done. We now have links with Reddin's Relics and the Arrowhead Chapter. Ads in the POCI and Early Times should be out next month. Hope lots of new owners see them.
6-28-98 Thanks to Redden's Relics link to my site, a prospective 46 buyer in New Zealand found our registry and emailed me. He will let us know if he does buy the car. I have also been contacted by an owner who bought a 46 on 6-21-98 in Australia and a new owner of a 42 in Canada. Who would have thought it,... we might be International soon. The owners from Australia and Canada tell me that the I.D. plates are different or that they are stamped differently. Anyone know anything about different codes used for cars that were shipped or manufactured out of the country?
7-17-98 Thanks to Dale Spear and Larry Overbay for the great pictures. Hope we get more from others soon.
*** Just a note: the font that I used on your personal pages at the top is supposed to be "Olde English" however for some reason, it probably is in a plain text on your computer. If anyone can tell me how to make the other font work I would appreciate it. It looks very official at this end. And it even lines up correctly.
   So far I have used up 2.75mgs. of my 10 free megs. of space. When that is gone I will have to look for more...(hint... you could loan me some of yours if you have any free space and are not using it) or I will have to rotate the pictures. That would be a lot of work. Other than that everything is goin' fine and looking great here.
   Hey it just dawned on me, my family is planning to trip to Vancouver Island B.C. in August. Maybe I could set up a visit with Dale and his Pontiac. That would be great.
8-01-98 I will be on vacation until Aug.16th and I don't want my email box to overfill. You can drop me a line but please don't send any pictures or big files until after the 16th. The ad in the POCI magazine came out last week and I have four new contacts already. I will put the pages up as soon as I recover from the camping trip. Some vacation. Now I know why dad was always so grumpy that time of the year. But the kids sure love it!
    This week has been real busy. We drive a 1978 Toyota Chinook mini motor home, and you know what 3000 miles in a 20 year old vehicle can be like! Hope all goes well and I hope to be able to give you a first hand report on Dale Spear's 42. He promised the family "burgers and fries" at the local A&W cruise night in Vancouver B.C.
    I would also like to wish you all a great summer and be sure to take the time to get away from it all. A nice vacation or just a Sunday drive in your Pontiac can do a world of good for all of us. - Happy Motoring
8-15-98 Well, all went O.K. with the vacation. We only got 150 miles before having a blowout near Fresno CA and when I pulled into the Olympia Brewery in Washington for a tour and free sample of beer the clutch slave cylinder went out. So I missed the tour and had us on our way again in half an hour. I got kind of greasy from being under the car but I was glad that my parents were following along in another car. It was easy to find a parts store when you are not on foot or hitchhiking! The tire only took about forty-five minutes to replace also. Too bad, it was brand new but got chewed up pretty fast when it was out of air. I would like to know what it was that made a hole that big!
    We met the Spear family in Langley B.C. Canada and saw their 42 called Edna. A very fine "old lady" indeed. I wish we had more time, but we had to leave the next day. The whole family enjoyed the meeting very much.
    I just wanted to let you know that the old car hobby is alive and well up north! The A&W Root Beer stand was packed on friday night with all kinds of great cars. I met a former POCI member who had a friend with an identical 65 GTO. Both were red w/ white int. and looked like bookends. I also met a new member of the Nat'l Woodie Club with his new '50 Ford Wagon. He had just bought it from California. There was also a very knowledgeable fellow from the POCI club with his very clean original '51 Pontiac. They all love their cars as much as we do and they were having a great time showing them off. I was told that this hamburger stand was the last of the "drive-in" types left in the area. I was happy to know that it is being supported in such a great way. The parking lot was full and they said that once a month they have a really big "cruise-in" and all the lots around fill up also! Way to go!
8-20-98 Three new members pages and more on the way! I redid the Decoding Your Firewall Plate page. It now shows us how much the first four characters tell about your car. I did not realize they were that revealing! I will make a spreadsheet file of the roster and if you sort it by those numbers it will put the cars in chronological order by year with the exception of where it was produced. That should be interesting.
8-23-98 I finally finished the Weights and Prices page. Thanks to Hendi Fink for asking about the weight of his car (back on May 30th). That was the inspiration for that page. It only took an hour to make, but it was the most difficult to type so far. I have added one more page with technical data on the engines and brief descriptions of the bodies and the changes by year. I have called that page General Pontiac Info.
***   8-30-98 So far I have used up 3.1 megs. of my 10 free megs. of space. When that is gone I will have to look for more...(hint... you could loan me some of yours if you have any free space and are not using it) or I will have to rotate the pictures. That would be a lot of work. Other than that everything is going fine and looking great here.
***   9-2-98 I am working on a little project for the kids. My 11 year old daughter Melanie will be writing that page. I have also added a page called Restoration Tips. I have moved the Older Updates to a separate page and also added Kanter Auto Products to the links page and asked them for a return link.
***   9-11-98 I have two new owners to make pages for. I have been working on the signup sheet but when I edited the old version it would not work. Tom Mai has helped me by letting me use a link to his server that supports CGI to make the "point and click" signup form possible. Thanks to Tom Mai and good luck with your 48! Hope we can get it worked out soon. It is much easier to use and it might get more people to sign up. I have been having a tough time getting new contacts to join up. Any suggestions? When I talked to one guy in person he asked, "how much?" I never even thought of charging. I am sure my wife would like to see me make something for all the time I spend on this but I say "no way!" Maybe if I put up blinking banners that said "FREE" it would help.
***   9-14-98 We have two new onwers registered! One in Istanbul Turkey and one somewhere on an island in the Puget Sound Washington! Thanks to both of you! Tom and I are still working on the new signup page. We are having a problem with the other server also.
    I am also thinking about putting up a photo gallery for all the extra pictures you have been sending. I don't want to use more than one on each of your pages to keep them loading as fast as possible. But Linda Pryor and Art Klug (and others) have sent in additional pictures of their projects. I have to learn how to use thumbnails with links to the full size pics. I think an archive would be great. I also could put up some of the original ads that ran in the magazines when our cars were new.
***   9-18-98 Just finished the cut-out paper 46 woodie project page. I hope your little ones have fun with it. I will work on getting your project pictures up. I think I will use the "Members Page" for them. Also my scanner is hooked up again. I hope it keeps working this time so I can get busy on the Pictures Archive page. I am still waiting for the word from Tom that our signup page is finally debugged. If not it was a valiant effort!
***   9-22-98 The sign-up page is up and working! When I came home from work today there was a new 48 owner in Indiana who was the first to use the new form. Thanks to Tom Mai. Way to go! Now it is real easy to join. Yesterday I got an email from another 48 owner. He lives in La Paz, Bolivia! This internet is incredible. I am waiting for him to send in his numbers and it would be nice to see a picture also. He would be our 3rd International owner to be registered.
***   10-6-98 Got another contact from far away. This time it is a 46 in Argentina. I will put up a page as soon as I get Osvaldo's info. Added a page for Lynne Northup and her 48-2519. Have you noticed the last three newcomers were women? I will have to start refering to our cars as "his or her Pontiac", but I don't have the time to reedit what I have typed to date!
Welcome aboard ladies! Many of the cars listed in the registry are owned and enjoyed by couples and many times it requires a team effort from two or more. I wonder how the Boy Scout Troop 457 is doing on their project in Jasonville Indiana. Keep those updates coming in.
***   10-9-98 There is a new versoin of the View the Roster page up now. I put it in a chart form. Hope you like it. I would like to see all of the blank boxes filled someday! There are a few models such as the Business and Sport Coupes that I have yet to see or hear about. So it might be a long time... Today I got a form mailed from Ted Cram, a 48 owner in Michigan. He has    a model 48-2767D, the first Convertible to find the site. Congrats and welcome!
***   10-21-98 Thanks to Ted Cram a new member who sent in the info that I was missing on the 42's.(Production #'s and Place_of_manufacture ) He also sent a list of the cities where the factories were located. I also got a list of accessories and description of trim combinations for 48's. (He also found some errors on the paint code page for 48's, that I have now fixed.)
I have scanned and put up the great pictures of his Convertible that he mailed in also. I can't wait to see the look on my wifes face when I tell her I have added pictures of a "topless model" to my website!
    Ted sent a roster (1993) of a club that at that time he was vice-president of. It is called the Oakland Pontiac Enthusiast Organization Inc. I will put a link up as soon as I get more details. I see from Ted's business card that he is also the Product Information and Historian for Pontiac Motorsports. You have been a great help to our site already. I am honored to have you aboard. I really love the pictures of your convertible.
    Thanks to Ted if you look at the Place_of_Manufacture page you will see that some of the plants such as Atlanta Georgia and Wilmington Delaware in 1947 for example had very small production runs. If you have a Streamliner 6 made in Georgia in 47 it is one of only 80! Wow! Talk about a needle in a haystack. Can we document one of those? Let's start lookin'!
    Once we get a database built up we will be able to see who has the earliest and latest car made at each factory for each year.That should be interesting! I noted that two of our registered cars were only two numbers apart, but then I realized that they were on different production lines! I have made up a spreadsheet of our growing database. Let me know if you are interested in seeing it..
***   10-30-98 If you want to see a picture showing where your I.D. numbers are, go to the Find your numbers page
***   11-11-98 I just sent a mailer out to all members and about 20 owners I wish to sign up about the good news I got yesterday. "Old Cars Weekly" editor John Gunnell has done a write-up on our website! John is a 48 Pontiac owner and he contacted me last week. He also wrote about Reid Williamson's 48. Reid is the '54 tech advisor for POCI. He lived close to me but I think he has moved to Provo Utah. I have found him to be very knowledgable about 42-48's also. But now the phone bills will add up to fast. I hope they both join the registry soon.
    I should have a new page up soon (the picture is in the mail) for an owner of a 48-2567 who joined as a result of the letters that Art Klug sent to ETC members who have 42-48's. Thanks Art!
***   11-15-98 Look for the 11-19 issue of "Old Cars Weekly" for the mention of our site. Also David Luken, president of the Early Times Chapter mentioned our site in the November Issue of ETCetra. I will try to get the ad back in the newsletter.
Charles Bolten and Merle Harris both have sent in their info to register their Convertibles. I also have the info from Argentina for Osvaldo Bonetto's beautiful original 46-2519 Our first 46. And Bill Fitzsimmons has registered his 48 which is the first "custom" to join. So now I have to get busy on 5 new pages!
***   11-18-98 Whew! Five new owners online today! I have been busy. They come in streaks. 8 Torpedos in a row and four of the last seven to join are Convertibles! Two new owners are not online but I think they will be checking us out one way or another. Next I will be working on the Photo Page. That should eat up a chunk of my free webspace! Thanks again to the new owners for the great pictures and the time it took to join. As of now I have used 5.3 of the 10 mgs I get for free.
***   11-22-98 Put up a picture for Charles Bolten's 48 convertible and I got two new contacts from the Old Cars Weekly article on Reid Williamson's 48. John Gunnell gave out my email address at the bottom of the story and on wednesday night I already had two new owners for the registry. The photos are on the way and I should have the pages up soon. Thanks John!
***   12-18-98 Wow! I didn't realize I had not updated for so long! My server forgot I had payed for another year back in May and they just disconnected me on Dec.1st. By the time I figured out what was going on, it was a week later and I had about 40 emails waiting when I got back online. I have also been busy getting ready for Christmas and my wife and I managed to get in one morning of skiing and a not so successful afternoon of trying to figure out how to turn on snowboards. And then yesterday it was 86 degrees and I did not have my shorts to wear on my mail route. Who would have thought to wear them in December! I hardly feel like putting up the lights on the house in this heat, but today it dropped way down to 75 degrees!
I have a whole bunch of new owners that I am waiting for all of their things I need to make their pages. It might be a while until I get some time to complete them so please be patient. I have not forgot about you. (Unless I have, then you need to bug me and not be patient!) I am working on creating form letters to speed up the email reply process. And does anybody know how to answer people who want to know what their cars are worth? Pretty hard to do, sight unseen. Merry Christmas to all! I hope Santa remembers your Pontiac has been good this year. ***   1-7-99 Wow another year here already! Have been very busy. Sorry to take so long between updates. I put up a page for another 48 wagon today and got two more new contacts. One is from a 48 that is on it's way to it's new home in Sweden The other is a 46 Sports Coupe. I hope the 46 owner can send a photo. I have never seen a Sport Coupe model of any year!
I am getting the photos for the Photo Page lined up. It should be open soon. I still have a few owners waiting to get their pages online. Sorry for the backlog!
***   1-11-99 Added the page for Ron Bruce's 48 Canadian finally! And today I got another signup form from Canada! That will be four from up north when I get all of the info and pictures together. I will have to get busy on making the page for the Canadian model info that Ron sent to me. I may have to change the signup form to accomodate the different ID plates.
***   1-31-99 Well, I reworked the top of this page and finally got the Photo Album page online. (Only a few new pictures as of now.) I still have many more to add and will do that as I go along. I have three new owners photos ready to go and am working on their pages today. I might get them done when the Super Bowl is finished or during if it is a boring game!
If you have sent in a signup form I am waiting until a get a photo to make the pages. Hope to hear from you soon.
***   2-2-99 Added two more owners today. Including one from Sweden. I have to get my scanner ready for a few more. I got a form from England for a 47 owned by John Weller but the email address was incorrect and I cannot reply. So John, if you read this get back to me and we will try again! .
***   2-3-99 Added a fine looking 47. This is the second owner that has responded to the letters that Art Klug mailed to the ETC members who had 42-48's. Thanks again to Art. This show winning car is in Maryland and belongs to Irvin Turner.
      Also, If you get a chance drop by your local Kragen, Checker or Schucks Auto Supply and ask if they have any 1999 Calendars left. My father in law brought me a copy and there is a beautiful picture of a 1948 that belongs to Roger Bruer. It looks to me to be a 48-2809 Model. The picture was taken in front of a B-52 at McClellan Avaition Museum in Sacramento CA. The calendars sell for a buck and they should brighten up the month of April for all of us. I am using a scan of the image for my wallpaper now. Let me know if you would like me to send the image to you. Maybe we can track Roger down. If he does a search for his name on the internet, now he will find this page!
***   3-4-99 I updated Greg Worthing's page with his email address. He has been busy finding time for his project but is making progress. I have not found much time lately for my project (which is now this website-instead of my Pontiac!) but did make some headway in getting some new webpages ready.
I have used up 6.32 mgs of my free webspace so I only have 3.68 left. I will have to find someone to help out soon if we want to keep the registry growing. Most of you get 10 mgs for free with your server so if you can volunteer (it won't cost you anything and I will do all of the posting) contact me please! There are still lots of Pontiac pictures and images of parts manuals etc. that have been sent to me and I would like to post them but I am trying to leave the space for the owners pages.
***   3-18-99 Finally added a page for Alex Mackay and his 48-2607D. Alex is selling his fine car and I have more pictures that I can send to anyone who is interested. You can also contact him for more details. (See the link to his page below)
***   3-21-99 Today I put up a page for a 46 that belongs to John Hohman. Welcome aboard.
    I decided to start counting the Canadian models seperately. I had been treating them as if they were Torpedos. I am also going to start a page for them using some info that was sent to me by 48-Canadian owner Jack Paul. Thanks for that Paul.
    I also got a signup form from Bobby Ricchiuti who did not give me an e-mail address to reply to. He may not be online and sent no picture. I am not sure if I should make pages without photos of the cars. There would not be too much to them. It would be helpful for meeting new owners of similar cars. Let me know what you think about that. And also for Bobby, if you see this update you know that I got your form and your car has been added to the database. I hope you can send a photo soon, and let me know if you are online. Thanks again to you and everyone for sending in your Pontiac I.D. numbers!
    Also waiting to hear back from John Weller   I got your second form but your address is still not working! Send me a direct e-mail and I will contact you from there.     I also added some ads to the classified ads page. I may have forgotten to include yours, so please resend any requests you have. I will have to work harder on this as there were quite a few that I had neglected to post. We are all caught up on the backlog now. Also, send your ads in to Rich's Classical Pontiac. He has a nice automated classified service. ***   4-8-99 Well we had a great time skiing on monday and tuesday. There was finally a big storm that brought lots of fresh snow just when the resorts thought the season was over. It was the most snow to fall in southen California all year as it has been particularly dry. That is the good news. The bad news is that late on tuesday afternoon (there was time for one more run)
I took a bad fall on the snowboard ( I should have stayed on skis, but monday was my first full day on a snowboard and I had a blast) and I now have a cast on my left arm from thumb to elbow! I will get rexrayed in ten days to know for sure if there are any broken bones in my wrist. That doesn't really matter as I will be in the cast for atleast 4 weeks either way.
    I have not told my boss yet as I am on vacation until monday. I am not sure what kind of light duty I will be on until I get back to normal. I will miss my 2 or 3 nights a week of volleyball the most. Too bad, I was getting to look like I almost knew what I was doing on the court. So for the rest of the week I will be putting the ski gear back in the rafters in the garage and trying to get caught up on a lot of work around the house. Lots to do, but only one hand and all of that fresh snow will melt without me having fun on it. I wish I had this kind of time when I was 100%!
***   5-1-99 Wow! It has been almost a month since I last updated the site! A lot has happened since my snowboarding accident. I went back after 10 days and got my wrist re-xrayed and found there was no break. (WooHoo!) It was just a bad sprain and monday I go back again and expect to be released to go back to full duty at work. (Not so good news! My feet will be real tired as I get out of walking shape real fast.) I may even try a litle bit of volleyball in the park tomorrow at my wife's teams practice.
    As far as you not hearing from me for so long, I hope you did not think I gave up! Don't worry about that. I am in this for the long haul and hope to be around for many years. I am not the fastest worker but I am persistent and just keep on pluggin' away till the job is done.
    And on that note I think I have fixed a long term problem that was about to arise. Our site takes up 7.5 mgs. of my 10 mgs. of free webspace. I have been miserly, trying to save as much space as I can but now I think I have gained access to a friends 10 mgs. He is on the same server as me and is payed up for a year. He had a small webpage for his music business with AOL through his brother, but was going to lose it soon. I offered to put his page up on his space that he was not using and he agreed to let me use the rest of his space! I will keep you posted and when I get it online I will start to put up all of the pictures you have sent me and many more that I have collected over the years.
    And now more good news. I have just posted 3 new members pages. A 47-2507 like mine in Kentucky, a 48 Convertible in New York and a 46-2609-8 which is all the way in Argentina! That is our third 46 and two of them are from Argentina. To make it more of a coincidence, both of their owners are named Osvaldo! What a small planet. Aren't there any more 46's left in the States?
    Well a big welcome to all three of you and a special thanks to Mark Casper who coaxed his friend Michael Feldman, into joining the registry and is working on a registry for his particular type of favorite boat. He told me my registry inspired him to start his and he has done a fine job.Click here to check it out: http://198.202.6.116/
    He has relayed that he also has a bit of trouble getting people to take the time to join up. So I hope all of you out there who have been putting it off will send in your info and pictures. We would love to have you join us as we wait and see how far this "thing" will take us. I am feeling pretty much like we should as spring approaches- well rested and looking forward to the car season that is fast approaching! -Time to get busy!
    Oops! I almost forgot to say happy anniversary to our site. One year old and 45 members already! Not too bad with no payed advertising! I am looking forward to many more years and many more exciting, interesting Pontiac stories to come!
***   5-5-99 Just a quick note before I tear things apart. My computer is getting as cluttered as my garage so it is time to do some upgrading here. I am going to install Windows 98 and put in my new 10.2 Gig harddrive. So if you don't see any updates for a while it may be trouble! Keep your fingers crossed, mine are!
***   7-28-99 Well everyone....things went OK with the computer update but now I have plans for a new computer and this one will go downstairs for my daughters to use. I hope to have it ready for them before they get back to school. Sorry for the long delay in the updates. There are quite a few of you out there who are waiting for your webpages to be online. I have been busier than heck here, spending some time with the family now that summer is in full swing. We have a 2 week vacation planned for the middle of August. I will try to get some of the new pages online before then. Take care and I hope you are all enjoying the good cruisin' weather! Get those cars out on the road and have some fun!
***   8-06-99 Well I got one webpage done, and it is for a 47 that is for sale. Give it a look and let's try to help Ron sell it.
When I get back from vacation I will ask you all to drop me a note if there was anything I promised to do for you but did not get around to. When you get away from a project like this you tend to forget where everything is and where it is supposed to be. I makes me shudder to think what it will be like when I get back to work on my Pontiac! I may need lots of help trying to figure where all of those little jars of screws and clips and what-have-you are supposed to go. I remember how hard it was to get my uncles 57 Corvette back together. I had the worst time with the doors! Of course my Pontiacs doors are in a million pieces and I do not look forward that part of the job at all! More to come soon! ***   8-09-99 Two more pages added today! Both pictures are stunning in their beauty. All of the photographs coming to me lately are quite good. Thanks for that. I will be leaving for vacation at the end of this week so this will probably be my last update until I return in September. When I get back please send letters to me if I have forgotten to update or add anything. And to all of you have have contacted me about making your webpages, either send in your missing photos and information or send me a reminder if I have forgotten you! ***   9-08-99 Well all is gettin' back to normal around the house and the kids get back to school tomorrow.(Woo Hoo!)
The vacation was great! Lots of time on the water, kneeboarding and riding Jetskis. The girls really enjoyed it. This year we only set up (and took down) camp twice. The last 2 years it was an everyday ordeal. (Yuck!) The solution to that was easy, stay with friends, stay in only two campsites and stay in hotels after those long days on the road.(We only did that 3 nights.)
    I need to give a big thanks to our good friends Darrel and Stephanie who opened up their house, (read: air conditioning) pool and boat for us in Lake Havasu. We were there during the "monsoon" season so the weather was quite mild for that area. It barely got above 115F. And it cooled way down into the 90's at night. Strangely it was not bad, (as long as you ran from the house to the pool!) Just kidding it was a great time!
    The trip to Lake Powell was fun also. While camping there and watching the nightly rain and thunder show, I stepped out of the tent when the rain stopped and was walking around the camp to straighten up a few things and suddenly the hair on my arms stood straight up and a small bush next to me started crackling like a powerline in a thick fog! Before I could even move, a crack and flash went off right overhead! The people in the car said it was over the campsite, and the people in the tent said it was just behind the campfire. I was standing right where their line of sights crossed. Yikes! I can only guess that the lightning did not touch the ground and stayed above us in the clouds. We looked around but did not find any marks on the ground. I guess it was fortunate that I was wearing only a bathing suit and a t-shirt. I had no metal on my body, no watch not even a zipper or Levi rivet! It was kind of exciting at the time but now I realize how close I was to danger.
    Well, after that all was pretty tame! I did almost drive off the road (Rte.666) in Colorado about 3 miles out of Cortez, when I passed a junk yard and noticed a Pontiac in the front row. We were on our way to Mesa Verde campground and did not have time to stop as it was getting late. I knew we would be passing through town again after spending 2 nights there and exploring the Indian cave dwellings (circa 1270) for a day. Mesa Verde is a beautiful campground with lots of artifacts to see and learn about. It is pretty intriguing to image what it was like to live back then on the sides of those beautiful cliffs.
    Anyway, I returned with hopes of getting the ID plate info and making a webpage for the Pontiac, but alas, there was nobody there to talk to. I walked out to the Pontiac which turned out to be a 47-25 or 2707 just like mine. At 70 miles per hour I first thought it to be a 46! It has the grill ornament missing, so I guess I was pretty close with my first quick glance!
    I stuck my hand through the broken windwing tried to get the hood open but the release cable was rusted badly. With the front grill ornament missing I could see the release mechanism and probably could have persuaded it to open with some type of pry bar or screwdriver, but I was tresspassing and I was a bit leary of junkyard dogs or worse yet, unfriendly owners with shotguns! So I went nextdoor to a John Deere parts store and learned that an old man lived there but not much else. I tried again next door at the Caterpiller garage and talked to a mechanic who had a bit more info. It turned out to be a sad story.
He said the owner who was an older man and in not too good health who is only there for a few months at a time was away at the moment. He also told me that the IRS had placed a lein on his property and he was not allowed to run his business anymore. He said that if you caught him there he would sell you a few parts "under the table". I did get a phone number that was painted on the office building, but it looked more than a few years old and one can only guess if it is still good.
    The real sad part is that a few years back a crusher came by and the old man marked some of the newer cars and some of the ones that were totaled or in real bad shape to be crushed. (I suspect this was an effort to raise some tax money) It seems that when the old man was away the crusher operator went crazy and went on a real spree. I guess he more or less stole the cars for their metal value and crushed more than he was supposed to! The mechanic who was telling the story said it used to look like a drive-in movie over there, and you now can look over the chainlink fence and see all of the empty rows and spaces. He said there were some real old ones that got crushed, and they were worth a lot of money too!
    Without getting too sappy I would guess you could say that he crushed a part of all of us too! There may have been more old Pontiacs there but I could not see all the way to the back row and I would guess there is still probably 1000 cars left there. I wish the old man were there so I could have checked the whole yard for more Pontiacs and gotten the hood open on that 47 I saw in the front row. I suppose it is not too late for the 47. The hard part would be to find the owner and hide from the revenuers! It would take some doing, I'll admit.
    I will put the 2 photos I took on the Photo Album page along with directions to the yard. Maybe someone in the area (I don't think we have any registered owners in Colorado yet!) can stop by and try to get the numbers from the car so at least we will have a record of where it came from and hopefully send it on it's way again to a new home.        Here are the links to the photos of the 47 in Colorado: Photo 1   Photo 2(rear) ***   9-09-99 Added owners pages # 49 and 50 today. We are on a roll. I have a few more that will be up as soon as get the photos. Mike Padilla has Emailed me images of the finished police cruiser from San Joaquin CA, but I don't have a program to open CPT files. I think I may need to get Corel Paint. I tried my old trusty Adobe Photoshop but it did not like them at all!
***   10-15-99 Phew! It has been busy around here. I just bought a new computer and swapped Harddrives and CD writers from the old one that is now downstairs for my daughters to use. I think that all of the "old" parts are now working in my new computer. The scanner was the most trouble. It was quite a chore.
    Just a suggestion to those of you who work on two or more computers: Check out the new removable Hard drive pull out racks. I bought 2 of them for $14 each. I got the kind that have two fans on them. There were some others for only $10. They are great to have installed. You just unlock the rackmount with a key and pull out your HD. You can then slide it right into the other that you have in your second computer. You just reboot and there you go! You can use any 3.5 in. HD. I think they are up to about 20 GIG's by now. As long as your computer is set to auto detect it will find the HD and you can run your applications from it or just use it as I do for transferring files between the two computers. Goodbye to Zip discs forever!
And with the price of HD's dropping it makes sense to use this approach. I payed only $113 for a 13.2 gig Quantum drive. And 10 zip discs used to sell for around $100. That only comes out to 1 gig. You can even buy the trays seperately for $6 so you can have more than one HD ready to plug in! Now I have lots of room for your Pontiac pictures!
    I also have been in contact with an Early Times Chapter member has is getting started on a website for the club. Stay tuned for news on that project. Our registry may soon be linked with sites that cover the other early Pontiacs. (26-41 and 49-54)
     I guess my upgrade came at a bad time for those of you who are waiting for webpages and updates. A couple of owners have decided to sell their Pontiacs, and I will try to get them on the classified page (if my apps are working on this computer). I have not got around to installing everything yet, but will try updating in a few minutes.
    And just a note: If you do sell your cars be sure to tell the new owners about the site. I am sure they will be happy to know about it and I don't want to lose track of any of the cars that have been recorded in the registry.     I guess another reason to update more often is that I won't have so much to say! :-)) ***   10-15-99 Just added the webpage for the Police Cruiser that we have been following since the hunt for it began! It turned out real nice and it was a fine community project. Both of the pages for this car are linked together. It was also the 50th page I have made for the cars that are registered.
    I added 6 more cars to the database, although some of the info was incomplete. That brings the total in my spreadsheet up to 78! There are many more owners (or friends of owners) who have emailed me but have either not sent all of the info or have not sent any photos yet. I will not bother them again until I get caught up with what I have to do here. There are 6 pages that are ready to go and Iam trying to find the time for them. I also will be adding a "Picture of the Week" to the homepage. When the picture is updated it's link will be moved to the Photo Album page. Here is the link: Picture of the week
    A bit off the topic here but I added a "hit counter" to this page. I thought you might be interested to hear some of what I learned in doing so. There are 2 types of counters. The one I chose only counts the number of "hits" and records that info so you can tell how many and what days they were on. It should not slow down the loading of the page too much.
    The second type is known as a "tracker" and is a bit more involved. You may not know it is there as it looks like an advertisement, usually called a banner. The banner takes longer to load and is much more involved. Here is where it gets interesting. The info that these banner images gather was surprising to me! Just by having your browser load the image it can tell when and how often (with pie charts and graphs) breaking it down by hits per week, day, month etc. It also can tell you what Operating system the visitor is using and even their screen resolution! Some of the details it gathers include what was typed into which search engine to find your page and the server you are using! It is a bit scary when you realize the amount of personal info that you tell others just by clicking on a link! It is way more than I wanted to know, so I just went with the simple counter and began with 1000 just as the Pontiac assembly line did when they made our cars!
***   11-01-99 Last saturday (Halloween Eve, if you can call it that) while I was busy at work delivering the mail, I had a few minutes to swing by a car show that was at a school just down the street from some apartment buildings that I deliver to. I only had a couple of minutes to spare so I thought I would just cruise on by and check it out. I was real pleased to see so many old cars and there was a lot of activity and booths set up with quite a crowd also. When I drove around the corner and got around the back of the playground that was full of people and old cars, I immediately recognized the Blue and Silver 48 that belongs to Albert Aviles. I had not yet met Albert although I had seen the car at other shows. Once when it was at Johnnies Broiler (a favorite old time cruise-in diner just around the corner from my house) I went home to get my camera so I could get a photo of it, only to find it gone when I returned. Well this time I had him trapped! I pulled my Post Office vehicle up to the curb and got out and walked up to the chain link fence and asked "Is there an Albert Aviles here?" One of the men sitting in lawn chairs in the shade behind the cars said "yeah right here". I told him my name and I guess he was disappointed because he must have thought I was bringing him a Publishers Clearing House prize notification!
    Well I shook his hand through the chain link fence, (I never thought that was possible) and it was nice to finally meet him. He had a framed print out of his webpage and he proudly got it out of his car and showed it to a 47-2519 owner who was parked near by. I was pretty proud of that also! They were just about the only Pontiac cars at the show. I wish I could have stayed longer as it looked like a fun time. I talked only briefly to the 47 owner as well, and as I drove off I realized that I never did get his name. Albert did give me a business card that I scribbled my website address on and he said he would like to join. I hope to hear from him soon! We can always use more 47 owners and his looked real nice. Too bad I could only see it from the back.
I hope to see a real nice front view of it on it's webpage. Well it was pretty coincidental to see two old Pontiacs when I really did not expect to see any. And strangely enough they were just around the corner from a 48-2519 that belongs to John Gonzales who moved onto a route that I delivered on. About a year after John moved there Gene moved in across the street and said "Yeah I have a 48 Pontiac too". It turns out that Gene's Pontiac had belonged to his father and he bought it back from a barkeeper for $1.00 many years later after he ran into it again. That makes 4 of them within a 1/4 mile of each other. I have the tag info from John's but I need to work on the other two. That is three more potential members right there.
***   11-02-99 Today I added a page for our first Metropolitan model. It is a 42 that belongs to Gary Frenkel and it is also for sale. I learned that Ron Frennier sold his 47-2507-8 for $1500 according to E-bay. I have contacted the new owner and I hope he wants to join the registry also.
***   11-24-99 Well I have added 6 new owners since the last update. I will try to get their links up on the "Photo Album" and "View the Registry" pages soon. I will probably not be adding any more owners pages for a while. It is a bit easier to do them in groups and I think there is only one more that I have just got the info and pictures for. I will be working on getting some more webspace to use and if that works I will be uploading plenty of new Pontiac pictures. They will be added to the Photo page. Right now I have only 1 mg. open out of the 10 that I started with so this is about as much as I can do until I find more space. :-((
    And just to let you know my wife and another couple went last sunday to the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. They are featuring the "Great American Woodie" and we finally got down there before they change exhibits at the end of the year. We really had a great time and were inpressed with how nice everything was done there. There are 3 floors to the museum. The first and 3rd floors are permanent exhibits with the 1st floor featuring cars in street scenes that are very authentic. One of my favroite scenes is a recreation of a 1939 Lincoln Zephyr auto showroom. You can walk down the sidewalk and peer in through the big windows at the four seemingly "new" Zephyr's inside and the salesmen working the floor. Very inpressive. The 3rd floor features interactive exhibits that the kids really love. I liked the "perpetual motion" machine that had billiard balls rolling, dropping and spinning things all over the place. It was about 10x8x10ft. and I would love to have it in my den!
    The 2nd floor has exhibits that are changed every once in a while. The woodies have been there most of this year, but there are other collections that are changed more often. The next big exhibit will be "Lowriders". There are also many vintage "customs" including a few by Ed Roth and some oldtime Bonneville Salt Flats veterens.
    A small collection that was just put in was of some "Spin Dizzies" that I had never heard of before. They are small gas powered race cars much like the remote controlled cars of today. Back in the 40's and 50's they were run attached to wires held in place with a sturdy spike or there were also some that had a set of horizontal wheels that kept them on a rail that went around banked tracks. There was some video from way back when, and some of these tiny cars were clocked at 200 mph! There was one that had a 6 cyl. radial engine that powered a propeller. The exhibit was owned by one man and he has just published a book and was there the previous day signing copies of it and answering questions about his hobby. I read that there is a renewed interest in these scale models and there are even some rocket powered ones out there now!
    Oh yeah, back to the woodies. There was ony one Pontiac there, a 39 that belongs to a man that I have met but that was the first time I got to see his car. A real nice blue wagon. There was a 1946 NOS right rear door on loan from a local woodie shop that I would love to have. (Could save many hours of work with that.) We found a cookie jar that was supposed to be a 47 (no fender stripes like a 48 but 5 stripes on the hood like a 42-47) Pontiac Woodie and I will be opening that for Christmas. (If my girls don't read this, I'll act surprised!)
    It is a great place to spend an afternoon (all day if you read all of the displays) and I would recommend it to all "car people".
***   12-20-99 Today I got rid of the "hit counter". It had quit working weeks ago and I was tired of looking at the broken link. Right now I have six owners waiting for their webpages to be online. Have patience, this is the busiest time of the year.
    I also recieved a letter telling us that Ron Frennier's 47 is being shipped to California from Valley Forge Pennsylvania for restoration. The second new owner has sent in a signup form and all I have to do for this one is change the names and email address. I hope to see a new updated photo before to long! It will be about an hours drive away from me so I may get to see it in person soon. In case I don't get back to this I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Millenium!

***   1-13-00 Well everyone, we survived Y2K hysteria and we are all still here. ( Just as I had previously promised) Sorry for the long delay in updating the site. Much has gone on here over the holidays and I have a bit on my mind but I am not sure I should talk about it here. But the alternative is to just keep it all inside, or make a "up on my soapbox / mid-life crisis" page. That sounds like to much work, so at the risk of chasing some of you away, here goes, I guess if neither of those topics interest you then just scroll on down the page a bit.......
                                                                        Up on my Soapbox
    I just feel the need to express a big disappointment in this years New Years Celebration. It should have been the party to end all parties but from here in my house with about 15 "brave souls" who actually dared to step outside of their houses, sadly it seemed like the whole planet was afraid of their own shadows.
    Sure, I guess there was the potential for some Y2K trouble, even I had a bit of extra cash on hand, and with a 10,000 gallon swimming pool in the backyard I did not think I needed to stock up on drinking water.
    I guess I am really upset with the media that seemed a bit sad they did not have any disasters to report. In the past the Times Square celebration in New York was rebroadcast three hours later here so it would appear to be live for us at midnight. Not this year. This year it seemed to be non-stop coverage that started in the Pacific and traveled around the globe. Everyone was just waiting for the trouble that had been predicted by so many for so long. It never happened.
    As Paul Harvey said, "It wasn't all a waste. Many people made plenty of money from Y2K." Sure they did, selling everything from generators and survival kits to computer fixes that you could have downloaded yourself for free. I guess as a "white-Christian-male" I have special license to criticize my own. Of course I have the right and I feel also the duty to do so. Remember that an important measure of a person is how they hold their group to the same standards they would for other groups. The worst offenders in the "panic-hysteria-profiteering" arena were the talk show hosts. Especially the "religious" ones. Some people, including some very close to me, spend much of their time listening to and believing the predictions of the end of the world and too many conspiracy theories to recount here or even remember for that matter. It all seems pretty sad to me.
    Around mid December when it seemed pretty clear to me that nothing would happen at the end of the year, I was told,"well the real trouble will start in October when Clinton declares marshall law and refuses to leave office." Very clever, that will keep all of the followers listening and filling coffers for another ten months. And it will distract them into forgetting the last prediction that did not happen because it was also a bunch of lies. Anyone want to make a bet about next October?
    I have an elderly lady (83 or 84) who has been a good neighbor to me for the last 20 years. She seems to be in a bad mood much of the time now. I sat with her in the living room in front of the TV a while back and learned that she watches the news on TV at 4:00. And then again at 5:00 and again at 6:00. Any idea my she has a "less than rosy" outlook on the world? After 3 hours of "mud, blood and disaster" what else could you expect. One of my favorite talk-radio hosts very descriptively calls TV news, "a proctologists view of America." Very graphic and I believe very accurate. They never tell you anything you need to know to effect change or make things better but they sure can tell us all about the worst in ourselves and our world. I am not sure if it is like that around the world, but it sure seems that way to me here in Los Angeles.

    As to the above mentioned "mid-life crisis" I am joking,...I hope. I am not sure if I am having one because I have never had one before. It is just a bit difficult at 41 years of age to carry on sometimes as I sit here on what the Insurance actuarial tables tell us is close to the 50 yard line. I'm hoping and praying that the long side of the field is still ahead, but the hardest part for me right now is the wishing I was still back around the 25 yard line where I still had fresh enough legs to run and play all day.
    Having been a letter carrier for the last 14 years, the many miles are taking their toll. I am not sure that I will be able to play volleyball or ski as much as I would like to and still be able to do my job. With the lack of any natural snowfall so far this year the skis have not even left the garage yet and after a break for the holidays we were back in the gym last night and I am really sore today. I am not sure which hurt the most the knees or the feet. Obviously it is neither. It is a much more important part known as the heart. I think the volleyball nights will be the hardest to say goodbye to.
    All of that came to a head last week when I took myself off of the overtime list at work. It was hard to admit that the job was getting too tough and it makes it harder to get along with the supervisor when he has to find help for you everyday when you are running a bit late. On the plus side I get along fine with my boss, sure why not, he is one of the volleyball gang. I think I will come to enjoy going home at 4:00 every day also. Off My Soapbox    If I have offended anyone, Thank you. And if I have bored anyone, I am sorry. And I apoligize to all for using this space.     With that all said and done, I am now ready to press ahead and get on with the job of getting and keeping these great cars on the road. On to the Updates     Now that I have the TV off and am working less hours things should pick up around here. I also have some real good news as I just learned that my server has doubled my free webspace to a whooping 20 mgs! That will last a while and I will now be able to put up some of the great Pontiac pictures that I have been holding back on. I am sorry that I told many of you that your pages would be up soon and yet they are not. I have to update the classified section as one of the cars was sold. I also found a bad email link and I am sure I have forgotten many other little details. I will fix them first and then pick up where I left off and try to have some new pages up soon.
    With things turning over new leaves here, who knows I may even get started where I left off on my coupe. My neighbor said she would like a ride in it someday so I better get busy. I don't want her mad at me!     One other thing while I am at it. You all are a pretty quiet group. I had expected a bit more communication from you all. It seems like I may go into a "monthly publication mode" here as the updates get farther and farther apart. Anyone interested in a monthly online newsletter? ***   1-16-00 Put up a new photo of the week and also our first Vintage photo on the photo album page. I also updated Rich Bellefeuille's page to let you all know that his 48 wagon has been sold and will be restored. Also the Feldman's 48 2567 was on the cover of the Early Times Newsletter this month. I am going to spend the rest of the night working on the huge backlog of owners pages. I hope to get a few done soon. I got 2 new owners registered today. I also recieved two photos of a Holden Pontiac that was made in Australia. The owner wrote to say that someone had given him my address. I guess I will be writting back to get more info on our first car of this type. Wait till you see the photos. It is not like any Pontiac I have ever seen.
     I added a 46-2607 to the For Sale page. The car is in New York. I have just finished adding 6 more sets of data plate numbers to the database. The total is now up to 94. There are nine owners who have sent photos. When I get those pages done there will be 67 cars with their own webpages. Given the growing number without photos (27) I am considering making a webpage for the owners who don't have photos. It could at least show their email addresses and allow them to get acquainted with each other. Most of them have expressed the fact that they like the registry and they seem to want to participate but for various reasons there are no pictures available.
    There are 30 or more who have contacted me but have not as yet sent in their cars info. I am not sure what to do with those in this catagory. If you count all of the cars that have found the site it would be pretty close to 150! Not bad for less than 2 years. Who knows how many we will have in the future. Let's hope for the best.
***   1-17-00 Oops! I just realized that I had fnished the page for Larry Woodwards Sport Coupe back on 12/27, but failed to put any links up for it! Well better late than never, so have a look at out first 2527 to get a photo in. I hope to get a better side view to compare this body style to. Larry is looking for 42 grille parts to replace the 46 that was put in after a "fender bender". This is Larry's first car that he drove from 1964-66. It has been in the family ever since and now Larry has some time to fix it up. Any body else have their first car that also happens to be a 42-48 Pontiac?
***   1-20-00 Well I have tried using a different format for the ID plates. The tag jpg's used just about as much memory as the car pictures. The text will use much less webspace. Since the program I was using to add the text to the blanked out ID plate quit on me and since I don't want to take the time to figure out Adobe Photoshop (major program with way too many features) I came up with the new idea. It is also much faster to type in the numbers than to alter a jpg and there is one less file to upload. Let me know what you think of it.
    Now that making webpages is much easier I have finished two more and will get to work on the rest of the backlog. Glenn Evans wrote to me way back in August and said no need for a webpage. I had planned on making one anyway but I stuck his info and pictures in a folder and sometime after that I sorted the database by alphabetical order, which moved him up the list and away from the bottom where I have all of the new owners that still need pages made. I went through and could not find any others that I missed but who knows. It is getting a bit complicated now that I have added the owners without pages into the database. That total is now at 92 and that does not count the 30 or so who have folders in my email program but have not sent enough info to make it into the registry database.
***   1-21-00    I have been making progress finally. I put up two more webpages tonight. And there are only four more to go and then the backlog will be gone. We now have three 2527's online. One Business Coupe and two Sport Coupes. It seemed for a while that there were none of these left, but they all showed up together. Well gotta' get busy on those last four pages!
***   1-25-00 Thanks to Peter Wingeron for sending this e-bay ad for a 47-2507 that will be for sale for 4 more days. It looks pretty clean and the bidding starts at $3250.00.   Here's the link: 47-2507 auction on e-bay
***   2-7-00 Well today we have 3 more owners pages. That marks the last of the bunch that turned in their info and photos in 1999. We also added another country/continent to our roster with the addition of Steve Slater's 48 Holden-Pontiac from "down under" in Australia. The list of those waiting for pages is shrinking slowly. I will take some time now and add the links for the last 8 pages to the "View the Registry" and "Photo Album" pages. I will also find a new picture for the Photo of the week. There are many to choose from. The hard part is deciding which ones to leave out.
***   2-8-00 Just finished adding the links to the Photo and View the Registry pages for the last eight new owners pages. Since I started on that batch 13 more have contacted me. I am not sure how many of them have sent enough info and photos to make their pages, but I will get started on the ones that did. Keep 'em comin' in!

    On a personal note, I must sadly say that I will be attending a funeral on this friday for a family friend who passed away last Saturday. He has been a part of the family ever since my parents high-school days. I am the Godfather of his grandson and our two families, along with a few more families from "the old crowd" vacationed in Lake Tahoe almost every summer and got together for all of the Holidays. The Super Bowl and Rose Bowl parties just won't be the same without Frank organizing the betting pool. Everyone had a chance to put in their $1, and he always yelled the loudest at those last minute field goals that cost him $5. Or he would say, "if they go for 2 who's got the 4 and the 8?" He was a favorite of all and will be missed very much.
Frank was a good man who served his family and country well.
    When I started this registry I was looking for a name for the 42-48's. Calling them the "War Years Pontiacs" would be accurate but I figured, why bring up memories that might not be pleasant for everyone. The war was long over before I was born. My uncles and people I have come to admire like Frank were part of one of the greatest efforts of all time. They have been called the "Greatest generation in American history" by many. Last November our congressman wrote an editorial in our local paper talking about the WW11 memorial that is long overdue. I planned on using it on the site but Veterans day passed and I can't remember right now which stack of magazines and papers it is under. I don't have the figures he used but I seem to recall that out of the total number of those that served in WW11 a high percentage are still around but by the time the memorial is completed in 2005 most of them will be gone. I think the rate he quoted for their loses was 2000 a month. A pretty staggering loss I would have to say. These are the men and women who made this country great and their lives were often linked with the cars that are the reason this site exsists. As time goes on the cars still will be around (thanks to all of your efforts), but the stories of what life was like when they were plentiful on the roads and highways will not. How many stories of how our cars were built and what it was like to see the roads full of them will remain untold? I can now think of many questions that I would like to ask my wifes' grandfather about what it was like to own a 1947 Pontiac Station Wagon back in the 50's. I wish I had thought to ask him those questions while he was still alive.
    I guess the bottom line is that it is all about the people, the friends and family and the neighbors in our lives. So, if your car is driveable, why not offer a ride to an elderly family member or neighbor. Who knows what stories you may hear, and if you hear a good one, why not share it with us?
***   2-14-00 Just a follow up to the very sad day I had last friday. At the graveside services at Riverside National Veterens Cemetary the chaplain mentioned that there are usually 50 funerals a day for veterans and their spouses. Last week there was one day that 62 veterans were buried. Those large numbers make Riverside Memorial the busiest cemetary in the U.S.     God blessed their families and country with the honor of knowing them. *******

***   2-15-00 Another page added today and three more to come soon. Jim Kilby's father Merle has sent in the info on the 42 prices and weights that were missing. I will add them to the weights and prices page when I get a chance. I have been getting 2 or 3 new contacts a week now. Busy as usual but getting busier!
***   2-22-00 Just added two more webpages. And updated the "photo of the week". I realize that it has been a while so maybe I will start calling it the photo of the month! I have been giving some thought to updating on a monthly basis making the site a bit like a monthly newsletter. We'll see what happens. Also I just noticed that the database passed 100. I'll bet we get close to 200 by the end of the year!
    48 Convertible owner Ron Moore did an engine conversion on his car and he has offered any advice he can give to anyone with questions about an engine swap. I have had a few inquiries from you about that subject but I have no experience so, give Ron a try. I still have a few owners waiting for pages so back to work.
***   2-23-00 I just added the links for 4 owners on the View the Registry and Photo Album pages. I also put up an old photo that shows my 47 woodie when it was used to haul the materials to build a homestead back in the early 50's. Wish I had some more like that. I do have one that shows the woodie pulling a trailer the grandpa built that had matching tires and wheels with beauty rings. Nice rig! I'll have to fire up the scanner for that one.
    I have three more pages finished and I will link them up when I get approval from the new owners. That will bring the total of pages up to 73 and I will be adding some more owners who have not sent photos to the database as soon as I update the Weights and Prices page to include the missing info sent in by Merle Kilby.
***   2-24-00 Three new pages today including one that just showed up in my mailbox! The info and picture were emailed at nine in the morning and only 12 yours later the page was online. I have finally gotten caught up after falling way behind and now would be a good time for all of you out there who have not sent in your info or pictures yet. I sure would like to clean up the folders I have made for the "need pictures" and "need more info" people who have written me in the last year and a half.
    There is a chance that I may have overlooked or misplaced your email or picture so if there is anyone out there who has sent completed forms and pictures and you have been skipped, accept my apologies and please let me know so I can get busy on your webpage. I don't how long I will be able to stay caught up, so hurry!
    I noticed when I started making wegbpages that they tended to come in little groups of either Torpedos and then Streamliners and I remember that our first convertible was followed quickly be a few more. The latest trend seems to be that the cars have just recently been purchased. The last 4 were all bought in the first 2 months of this year. The newest one was just purchased last weekend. One of the cars was rescued from a wrecking yard and we all should be happy to hear that! I hope that many more Pontiacs are lucky enough to find good homes in the future. Let's give a helping hand to these new owners. They all need quite a bit of work, but I am sure that someday soon we will have updated photos that look much better.

***   3-26-00 Man o' live. Has it really been a month since I updated? Where does the time go? Things have been hectic here. The Celica needed a clutch so it could get up to speed on the treadmill device they use for the smog checks out here. It has been slipping for a long time and I have been babying it along. Not too bad when you get 16 years out of a clutch. The funny thing is that the throw-out arm mechanism was dry and rubbing pretty badly and when I put it all back together (properly lubed) the pedal moved so easily that I was sure the hydraulic system had trapped some air and needed to be bled. No way! It works fine now. It was amazing how hard the pedal had gotten but I never noticed as it happened gradually over a long period of time.
    And then last week the pump on the swimming pool froze up. It was only a seal but I had to take it all apart and the seal I got from a pool-person who happens to be a family friend was not the right part. I hope to get the new one this week. In the meantime the frogs should be moving in soon. The water is just the way they like it, nice and green! We needed to have the pool replastered and rather than try to clean up the mess it has become we are going to drain it when I get the pump working again. Who knows how much we will end up spending on the back-yard by the time that is done. It could cost as little as $2-3000 to get the pool looking nice again if we only replaster and do some small repairs. But you know how it goes! Might as well add a jacuzzi and a few seats along the inside of the pool. A waterfall with a natural rock slide would be nice. How about a Gazebo or that built-in BBQ I always wanted. What the hell, might as well get it all done at once right? Yeah sure, it would be a great time to put in that last 125 ft. of blockwall on the west side of the yard too. It would be easy to spend $30,000! Sure I payed the house off last year but I have not managed to amass that kind of money yet! Dare I take out a new loan on the house?
    And speaking of money, my father has just finished helping me with the annual ritual of mugging myself. That's how I think of filing tax returns. I won't get up on my soapbox again, so let's just say the check will be in the mail soon and let's move on.
My wife will be busy for a while watching the Oscars so let's see how much I can get done now.
    Not a whole lot has happened since I finished off the last flurry of new owners. I appears that everyone was following up on "new years resolutions" and sent in their signup forms at the same time. I have only recieved a few letters from new owners since that time. No complete info or new photos yet. I have talked on the phone with 2 owners and should have something to show for that soon.
    One phone conversation I had should turn out to be quite interesting for all of us. I got an email some time ago from James Zurek who lives 2 hours south of me in San Diego. He has 2 46-2607's on the way to his house right now. James has promised to register them when they arrive. He told me that he checks the site everyday! Yikes! I don't not think anyone was that interested. So I have to apologize for the long delay between updates and the broken promises to put up more pictures. It stands to reason that there are people out there who want to be more active than I am (or am able to be) with their Pontiac activities. James came up with a great idea that I had originally wanted to pursue when I started the site and added the Members Page. I had thought that I could put up emails of questions and answers and for sale items. I ended up making a seperate classifieds page and only put one photo on the members page and have not updated it since.
    Well, James' idea was to have a "message board" to go along with the site. You all would be welcome to post messages and you could do that as often as you would like. James has set it up and given me the password to get into the board. It is a web-based board that is pretty easy to use. Just type in your message and click send. I have set it to show the messages but if it gets too "crowded" I can change it to show only the date and name of the person who sent the message. You can then click on the name to read the message that was written.
    The board can be accessed by anyone who finds it. It can also be moderated, which means someone will have to screen the messages and decide whether or not to post them. Right now it is unmoderated so be warned that there are plenty of "weirdos" out there who have nothing better to do than annoy other people. We'll see if we get too much interference and can take actions then if necessary.
    Geez, Look at the time! Might not get too much work done tonight after typing this manuscript! I will get back to you in a few days and I may be sending an email to all of you to tell you about the message board after I make sure all of the wrinkles are ironed out.

***   4-11-00 Well I finished another page. This was an unusual one as it is for 6 cars! They are all on a junkyard in Ohio. Thanks to Jim Oyster for doing the footwork and tracking down the numbers and sending some interesting photos. I included them in the totals for each year and model at the bottom of the homepage. Not sure if that was the right thing to do and still don't know if I will add them to the "View the Registry" (Totals will not match if I don't) and the "Photo Album" pages. It is a little awkward because there are no owners and they are not really what you would call "presentable".
    I wanted to get this page done tonight as I will be away on our last ski trip this season. There is still enough snow in the local mountains although it has been plenty warm here for a month or two! We will be leaving after I get home from work tomorrow (tuesday) and getting back home thursday night.
    Hope you are all enjoying the message board. Take care and see ya soon.

***   5-13-00 Well, another month has come and gone. Today I got my POCI June issue which includes the annual membership roster. I always look forward to seeng how many 42-48's I can use the highlight marker on. It's quite a bit harder to read the print than when I first scrolled though that issue many years ago! I don't know why but I am being stubborn and refuse to go get my eyes checked. I'm probably hoping to hold out until that new lasec surgery gets cheaper!
    Well, I have 3 more cars that are ready for webpages but I have been very busy here with getting the building permits for the blockwall and swimming pool and preparing for the work that will be starting on monday. We hope to be able to get seriously wet by the 4th of July. Can you say big ol' party?
    One of the upcoming webpages will require me to fire up my scanner which has not been used for quite a while. The other two belong to the same person. One is a parts car and the other one is another first for our registry. It is a 47 Hearse with a Superior Co. body. I only know of one other like it. I was contacted by that owner about a year ago but have not heard back from him since that time. Maybe we will have two registered soon.
    I also updated the Photo of the Week (probably should change that to photo of the month!). This one is a "custom" of a different kind. Thanks to Gary Frenkel for sendng the photo to me. I touched it up a bit with Adobe Photoshop but the major customizing was Gary's idea and he did the majority of the work!

***   6-15-00 Well wouldn't you know it, the one night I set aside to get busy on my website and I didn't get home from work until after 7:00!
      Here's a quick message: I got an e-mail from Old Cars Weekly editor John Gunnell saying that he will be mentioning (for the second time!) our website in the June 22nd edition. He will be doing a story on Reid Williamson's 48. I recieved a photo and signup info from Reid in the mail quite some time ago, but since he is not online I did not make a webpage for him. The photo has been scanned and I'll get busy on that now and I see there are a total of six new owners (with 7 new cars) and one car that has changed hands. I have also been in phone contact with a few more new owners who I hope to get online soon.
    I got pictures and info from John and Maryanne Phillips who are the proud owners of 3 (Yes 3!) Pontiac wagons. I never expected to meet anyone with more than two, which I have. So I have been out done by one! I will get to work on a page for the first one and hope the other two will be able to join them soon. I hope to meet John and Maryanne in person as they live only about 80 miles from here. We have a 3 day beach camping trip planned for the following week at Doheny Beach State Park. They live at the next beach south of there and I'll see if we can get together then.
    Sorry for the delay to those of you who have been waiting. To let you know how busy I have been I'll tell you that I bought a new 27 gig harddrive and 128 mgs of RAM last sunday, and I have yet to find the time to put them in the computer! I love putting new goodies in the computer but have not been able to get the cover open all week. I promise to wait to do that until I get the newest batch of webpages done. I had planned on getting them done for the end of May but it looks like now they will be the "Class of June, 2000".   "Well, here's to them and to the job at hand!"

*** 6-16-00 Well here's one of the new batch online at long last. Just in time to let you all know about the upcoming mention and story about Reid Williamson's 48 in "Old Cars Weekly". More new owners webpages to follow soon!
Hey, that's number 81 online and I just passed the10mg of webspace mark. Good thing my provider is now offering 20mgs!
I hope the next 81 are as interesting. And I also hope to be able to expand beyond 160! I'm sure we can figure out a way to do that before the next 10mgs are used up.

*** 6-17-00 Got two more webpages online just now and earlier I discovered that one I had thought was ready to go is not because I don't have a photo yet. So now I have only 3 left in the backlog. Good, because I really want to put that new RAM and Harddrive in ny computer! I'll try to get them done tomorrow, but I'm starting to get those looks from the wife. Ouch! Thanks for your patience.

*** 6-18-00 Happy Fathers Day to all and another new webpage to look at. It's for a 47 Wagon. John and Maryanne have another 47 wagon in the shop (getting new wood) and another 48 Woodie outback to boot! Looks like two more pages to go and I'll be opening my computer case! Just finished another that is for sale. One more to go and I'll be caught up at last!

*** 6-19-00 Well it's 3 minutes past midnight so I'll use a new entry here. I just finished the last page that I was behind on. I only have one more and the owner has asked that I wait until he has the 48 safely home. Oddly enough it's another 48-2607-8 with the tag error. They did that a lot in 1948.
Lots of new projects getting started lately. Good luck to all of you. I guess I'll upload the new pages and this update and get some sleep. When I get home from work tomorrow I can start playing with the upgrades to my computer. Thanks for your patience and if I missed anyone just send a note and I'll put you in the next batch. But it may not be until next month! Here's to the upcoming class of July '00!

***   6-23-00 Tonight I snuck one more in for the month of June. I won't be making any more pages this month as I am finally caught up. Let me know if you have sent pictures and info and your page is not made. As far as I know I have finished them all. I'll see how many show up in the next few weeks and see if there are enough for another batch around the end of July.
    Can anyone send a photo to use for the "photo of the week/month"? I haven't had the time to fire up the scanner in a while.
And Mike Corum (42-2511-8) sent the trim codes for the interiors to me. Thanks Mike! I'll add them to one of the info pages when I get a chance. Let me know if you need them right away and I'll email it to you.
    The family will be going down to Doheny State Beach which is only 70 miles from here. We'll be camping out for 2 nights and 3 days. This was the first year that we were able to get beachfront sites. We made the reservations 7 months ago! We are looking forward to it. I get to roll out of the tent and onto the sand volleyball court two days in a row! I also plan on putting in some hours flying my "stunt Kites". These are the two-line type kites that you can control and do loops, dives, figure 8's and all sort of tricks with. They usually draw quite a crowd. I get a kick out of teaching people about them and how to fly them. Lots of fun.
    If I can leave the beach for a while I might be able to get over to the Phillips place and check out 2 of their 3 Pontiac Station Wagons. That would be a special treat as they only live a few miles from the campground! It's always fun to meet a new Pontiac owner face to face instead of just typing to each other. The internet sure has changed the way some things are done.

***   7-10-00   I'm going to try to get a few things updated on the homepage tonight. I have some new pictures for Rick Shoestocks 48 to use. I'll ask him how he got such nice photos. It's too bad that I have to reduce them in size to save space on the site. I am using the close-up of his hood ornament for my wall paper right now. Maybe I can start putting big pictures up on the photo of the week page and give everyone a chance to get the fullsized version and then put the reduced pics in the photo archive.
       I got a call from a new 47-2567 owner in Northern California tonight. He bought the car from a POCI member in NY and he has some rare accessories for sale. He has been collecting these for years. He said he would get to the website as soon as he unpacks his computer.
     Also a big thank you to John Gunnell who put my web address in the "Pontiac Resources" box at the end of the article about Reid Williamson's 48. How do you like that. Right there next to POCI! Well actually after POCI, but what the heck they are a bit bigger than this site so we'll let them go first - for now!
     Just to follow up to the last update, we had a great time at the beach. It was a bit warm for volleyball as the fog burned off early. We did get to play in the afternoon when the sand cooled down a bit. I mentioned my stunt kites and I had a blast with them. Flew 'em for hours. Let me remind you that these kite have two lines and require your full attention. I don't think I could ever go back to flying a single line kite. They get pretty boring very quickly. If I had one I would put it up in the air and just tie it to something and go get my other kites out immediately!
    At cocktail hour I put on quite a show for our gathering of freinds and family. I really surprised them when I swooped in and touched down one of the wingtips on the picnic table and then took off again accelerating across the beach at about 30 miles an hour! Had to be careful though. Didn't want to spill any of their drinks.
    I also got to talk on the phone with John Phillips and it turns out that he is trying to put a Hydramatc in a wagon that was originally a manual trans. I am planning on the same thing and have had a few surprises about what it will require. He did not know about what I told him and now I'll learn from his experience when he gets it done. John was working that day so we weren't able to get together. I'm still looking forward to seeing his wagons soon.We own some rental property in Dana Point near John (1.5 miles from the beach) and I'll be in the neighborhood often for a while as our renters have moved out after 11 years. I was there yesterday and spent hours with a rented steamer removing wallpaper. I'll be there this weekend too, painting I hope! It needs quite a bit of attention like everythig else. Oh yeah, the pool was supposed to be done for the 4th of July but here it is the 10th already and they just started putting in the tile today. They do fine when they show up. Too bad they aren't here everyday. I'll bet it could have been completed in two weeks time!
     There is one 48 wagon in my "make a webpage for" folder and I have about 3 more signup forms I have not answered yet. Not sure if or when I'll get photos for them. I'll probably spend the rest of my free time tonight answering the emails I have been neglecting.

***   8-20-00 Well it looks like I missed another end of the month update. I just finished two webpages and one of them is without a picture until I can get my scanner up and running. It's a real beauty, take my word for it! It is in England which brings our list of countries outside the U.S. up to eight! We do get around don't we? There are more new pages on the way including another from a junkyard which you can preview by checking the photo of the week page.
    On the homefront the pool/jacuzzi is finally finished and I am on vacation for the next two weeks. The girls have cheerleader practice so I am not sure if we can get away to Lake Havasu for some boating and kneeboarding as we had planned. There is plenty to do in the backyard now that the pool looks brand new and the rest of the yard looks like.....well.....hell!
    We had a rental property come up vacant back in July and we have been driving the 50 miles to Dana Point to tear out carpet and repaint. I actually went down there the first time with a chain saw and some clippers with the silly idea that I could clean up the yard myself. We ended up hiring someone to cut down 5 huge trees and trim several more. They sure grew fast in the 15 years since the house was built.
    Dana Point is a beautiful city on the coast. Our house is about 1.5 miles from the ocean. My parents own a house around the corner from the one we own together and they plan on moving into their house in a month or two. It will need the same treatment. They both came up empty within a month of each other. Looks like I'll be spending the rest of the summer there only I would rather be using our house as a weekend vacation spot not another project! I've got enough of them around here. We plan on moving down there some day soon, maybe in a few years after the girls have grown up and we have gotten our fair share of use from our new swimming pool.
    On the bright side I may get a chance to visit John Phillips and check out his wagons as he lives nearby. There is also the "Wavecrest" show put on by the Nat'l Woodie Club. I don't want to miss that event this year. The last saturday in September is very special if you love wooden cars and can make it down south to Encinitas, CA.
    Looks to me like I have about 4 more webpages that are waiting to go. Look for them soon if we stay in town next week.

***   9-14-00 Got another page on line tonight and there will be more to follow. When I get them all done it will put us over the 100 mark! I had no idea I would ever be making that many webpages. The idea of charging $5.00 a piece would have amounted to more than a few Pontiac parts by now!
    Micheal has his own webpage and I put a link to it which I think is really nice and I hope more of you can do that in the future. It would allow us to have more pictures available and I wouldn't have to use up my servers webspace. I've used 10.9 of my 20 free megs so far.
    I checked that other day and I have 122 mgs in my Pontiac images folder. No way to ever get all of them online. Most IP's offer some free webspace and it really is not that hard to upload files and create websites with all of the new software that is available. Hell, if I can do it........just let me know if you want to give it a try. You'll be able to show off as many pictures and stories of your car as you would like.
***   10-11-00 Almost another month gone by! I thought my daily driver ('84 Toyota Celica) had given up the fight when I got home from work and it was making a terrible racket. After further investigation it was only a broken timing chain guide which allowed the chain to run up against the engine block. Sounded worse than that! I guess I was lucky as I don't feel like shelling out any cash for a new car right now. It'll cost around $100 and a day or two under the hood but after 16 years of trouble free service I can't really complain.
    I was feeling a bit sad about junking the car when I thought the engine was gone. It didn't seem right to do that to the car that I brought both of my daughters home from the hospital in. We had to sell my wifes 280Z when she first got pregnant. Those little Z-cars didn't have any back seats way back then. The funny thing is that I found a really nice '78 240Z for sale on one of the mail routes I walked last week. I might just pursue that one anyway and let my daughter drive the Celica from now on. Why not, with a clutch that I just replaced 3 months ago and a new timing chain it should go another 150,000 miles no problem!
***   11-10-00 Well, here's an update. The owner of the 280z must have let his wife talk him in to keeping the car as the for sale sign disappeared. Shucks! I put the timing chain on the Celica and yesterday a new oil pan gasket and I think it'll be OK. I'm going to adjust the valves tomorrow (first time in 145k miles!) and look around for what sounds like an exhaust leak and then put it back in regular service.
    We sold the Chinook (Toyota mini-motorhome) and it will soon be on it's way to a happy home somewhere in Mexico. I woke up for work on thursday and my wife showed me the parking ticket that was on my fathers car that we had borrowed for a while. Yep, that's right! Blocking the sidewalk. See if I ever park in my own driveway again!
    The new tenants have started moving in so there won't be any more long drives down there to get the house in shape and I promise to never paint a house again!
    As far as the website goes all seems to be back in order. It was a bit scary when I started getting emails from a few of you asking where the registry went. It was just my server finally changing the name of their homepages. They mentioned it a year ago but just now got around to doing it. No need to put the link here but if you see it linked with another site be sure to give them the new address. The "www" was substituted with "home". That is the only change that occurred.
    There's a new photo of the week and it should make nice desktop wallpaper and I have one page ready for the owners approval and one that is being made by the owner. I can't wait to see that one!
    I think I may start adding the owners names for the pages that are next in line to the homepage. I'm trying to figure out a way to make things move along smoother. Well, just having the time to work on it at all is hard enough.
    As soon as we know for sure who is going to be our next president I've got a photo lined up that will surprise all of you. Well, all but one of you that is!
***   11-19-00 Today we reached our 100th webpage and there is still a few more to come including cars in three different junkyards. It's been interesting so far and I hope that the website continues to grow in the future. I'm sure it will as long as the emails keep coming in. So lets hope the second hundred are as much fun as the first.
     On the homefront here things have gotten back in order as far as the vehicles go. I got the timing chain in the Toyota finally and it should last a few more miles. It's good to be back in my familiar ride to work.
     We are looking forward around here to setting up our Christmas Village again. I haven't mentioned this before but several years ago my parents bought a few Department 56 ceramic lighted minature houses. Then they bought a few for our family and last year I got the bug and now the layout has expanded from the pooltable to most of my den. Last year we had trains running all over the place and this year it'll be about twice as big.
    If I ever get a digital camera I'll snap a few photos and put them up for you all to see. It's lots of work but it brings us all together. My parents are planning on moving to Dana Point but that won't happen until after the holidays so this may be the last year to display both collections side by side. Thanksgiving Day will be the official kick off for the village set up. It'll take most of our spare time to get it all ready for Christmas. It's hard to believe but the holidays are upon us once again. So the best to you and yours and we'll keep in touch.

*** 11-27-00 Just when I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, I got swamped with new signup forms and photos and there are ten waiting webpages again! I had it down to three but you must have all put the extra time off for Thanksgiving to good use.
I added a very neat photo of Bruce Darga's '42 that was taken at the kick-off of George Bushes campaign. The candidates were standing on a platform with an old time railroad car in the background and a very fine looking 42-2507 in the forground.
It's one of the nicest photos I've been sent yet. I wish there were more ways to get our cars out in the publie eye. Good work Bruce.

***   11-28-00 Well, I guess that Dave Pyatt couldn't wait to get into the registry so he followed the format I have been using and created a webpage for his wife Louise's 48. He did a great job and now the page is online. Thanks for the help.
    Due to the fact that one of you has gotten started making some reproduction parts for our cars I think I will go ahead and make a new page to see if we can team up and get some parts made that we need very much. Anyone need new hood springs? How about some new dash knobs? What else would you like to see reproduced? There is strength in numbers. I'll put out the ideas and see how many are interested and if the projects are going to be "do-able" we could all benefit. The more that are made the lower the price per piece.
***   01-28-01 Well, what can I say, it's been two months since the last update. I apologize to those of you who are waiting for yur webpages to get online. I just finished one and there are many more to come. Things are really busy around here now. I'm not sure what happened but I just can't seem to find the time anymore.
    We finally got in a day of skiing but decided to cancal one other upcoming trip we had hoped to make to Mammoth Mountain which is about a five hour drive to the north. I have a week's vacation scheduled in February and maybe then I'll be able to make some progress on the site. Thanks for your patience. Every journey begins with a single step. This one just restarted after a much needed rest.
***   02-04-01    Finished up a page for Steve Webb who has been waiting patiently. I have three more photos edited and ready to go. The funny thing about this next trio is that they are all 09 models. 46,47 and 48 one of each year. But they are
examples of the various states that our cars can find themselves in. One is pretty rough and unrestored, just saved from the crusher, one is a pretty nice original and the third has gone through the works has been reinvented as a street rod.
    Where our cars turn up is of geographical interest but in this case it is more interesting to see the condition they turned up in. I guess I'm talking about two different meanings for the word "state". Or perhaps it's just late and like the streed rod my mind has reached an "altered state." Better get to bed soon. It's very late.
    The more I learn about people and cars the more I learn about life and myself.
***   03-07-01 Added our fourth in a row 09 model and it is a 46 which was the last year to get into double digits.
    I got an email from the Widetrackers Chapter of POCI asking to exchange links. I'll do that soon and I've got some plans for this home page which has grown to a pretty large page at that. I think I'll move the first 100 owners page links to a seperate page to shorten this one up a bit. Now that I think about it perhaps I should move all of them except the latest new ones. But then I'll have to decide how long to keep them on this page. Maybe after one month I'll move them with the others. We'll see.
    On another note it looks like we are going to be moving the message board as the one we were using is going out of business. Humphrey Lee's has set up a site with Yahoo and I'll put that link up when the other site goes offline. Hope you can join us there. And by the way Humphrey did you ever get those numbers so I can get your second 48 page finished?
***   03-10-01   I was going to make another webpage tonight but I decided to follow through with the links on our now defunct message board. I looks like a new company has stepped in and offered much the same service as the previous one. I added a familiar background and an image also. I couldn't figure out how to get our old message header on there but I might get that up too. I'm not sure how good the board will be, but I put the link up in my links section at the top of this page. Give it a click and let us know what you think of it. I know that Humphrey and others have also been working on a message board. His allows the posting of pictures and also the ability to start online chat groups. Interesting options for sure. Let's talk about where we want to go with the whole thing and I suppose there is room for the two of them or even more for that matter. Join the discussion please.
    I got an email today with a link to a photo for a 47 that is for sale. As soon as I get a signup form I'll put the page online.
    I read this months Early Times Chapter newsletter and had a few pleasant surprises. The first one was seeing Charles Bolten's '51 Catalina on the cover. It looks as nice as his 48 Convertible.
    The second bit of good news was learning that the ETC tech advisor for 33's, Berry Monberger has started an online registry for 33 and 34 Pontiacs. I visitied the website and although it is pretty small now there are some cool photos of some of the older "big brothers" of our cars. I have been hoping for quite some time now that others would join in to help our Pontiac family grow. I really hated to tell the people who contacted me that their cars were not the right years and I couldn't help them much. Let's help that registry grow as ours did and also lets continue to hope that someone picks up on the idea and we find a home for the 26-32, 35-41 and 49-54 owners.
    I'm feeling pretty postive about things around here now so I may finally get some long overdue housekeeping done. Stand back! The dust may start flying at last!
***   05-08-01 Well sorry to say that the only dust that has been flying has been out in my backyard. With the new pool looking sooooooo nice I've been doing some major landscaping and trying to figure out where to put the new patio, aviary and fish pond. Don't know if it'll all be done this summer. I think I need a bigger lot. Maybe an acre would be enough room for all of that! I should have 3 more new owners pages before too long. Got one done tonight.
***   05-09-01 Didn't get a new page done tonight but I updated an old one with a picture that shows the fruits of one of our groups hard labor. Here's the link: Osvaldo Rinaldi's      46-2609-8   I also added a larger version of the new picture as the "Photo of the Week". Nice work Osvaldo. I think you would have to agree, nice work indeed. Congratulations.
***   09-20-01   Can't believe it's been over four months since the last update. It seems as if I've taken to posting notes to the message board instead of here. I'm not really sure how to get going again in light of two events this summer. I posted a message the night that the terrorists attacked us by hijacking and crashing planes in this country. Perhaps I'll just paste it in here now so all can read it. I know this isn't really a good forum for these serious matters but how can you ignore something that important.

                                                                The World Changed Today
                                                originally posted to our message board on 9-11-01 at 8:01 pm
        What can I say about the events of today? It was just one of those curveballs that comes your way once in a while or in this case hopefully, once in a lifetime. My personal family is doing fine. I just heard from my cousin who lives in NY that he is OK. He was on the subway heading toward Manhattan at the time of the "attack". I hope all of your acquiantences faired as well but we know for sure that many who left for work this morning will never return to their loved ones.

   Our prayers are with them and their families.

Every generation has it's own evil.We fought Facism and Communism in the last century and won. Today one of the great evils in the history of the planet was committed against innocent lives. Let us keep in mind that while the Nazi's were a terrible evil, all German people were not evil. So too we must remember that while there is a sect of a religion that calls our country the great Satan, all Muslims are not believers of that mentality. The great majority of them are like you and I, peaceful people intent on doing what is right for their families and theirselves. Do not confuse them with, nor blame them for the evil that was done
today.

Somewhere in the back of our minds we had to know that 30 years of people, many of them small children, in the streets of far off countries chanting "death to the great Satan, kill America", had to have terrible consequences for this country. The hatred was so intense it was inevitable. We should have seen it coming.

These people are who we should look at to attach the blame for this unspeakable evil committed against this country.

Today the world changed. Sadly you know and I know that it was not for the better.

It sort of makes all other problems seem insignificant.Who knows what the outcome will be. Let's hope that things
work out for the best. One thing for sure is that I flew my American flag as soon as I got home from work this evening. I'll
fly it for as long as it takes.

Be well and say a prayer or two.

     Having said that, I mentioned two events that happened this summer. The other one was not anywhere as important but it hit much closer to home and right at the heart of my personal Pontiac "hobby". In mid August I got a letter from the city of Downey citing me for having "inoperable" vehicles in my driveway. It has turned into an ongoing saga that is not over yet. I should have seen this one coming , but wasn't at all ready for the changes that have gone on here since that time.
     The rule of thumb used to be that if the cars weren't visible to the public then you were OK. When I was cited I was told, "I don't know where you heard that. You can't park any "inoperable" cars where they will block access to a garage." I found out that in fact that was a new law passed recently and also that the city had hired three more people which doubled the previous staff size. Keep in mind that I'll probably never park another car in that garage mainly because it's full of Pontiac parts and I have all the access I need. Open the door and walk right in. Very accessable.
      I promptly got my old '67 Econoline Van in running condition. It needed a battery and a water pump and current tags. No problem so far. I got my '47 Coupe to where I could start it and drive it. I needed a little bit of flexible gasline and another battery which I was able to borrow. Although the body is basically a shell with only the front end and rear fenders attached, it had a seat and everything needed for it to roll under it's own power. No windows nor doors. No chrome, no bumpers. But if it could be started and driven it could be considered "operable", right?
      Keep in mind that my wifes grandfathers 47 wagon, which is the car that got me started in this whole, shall we say endeavor, is in the garage and has remained hidden so far. There also was the 48 woodie sitting in the driveway next to the Coupe. I don't really think the officer saw it either but I can't say for sure. I'm not sure how much she saw on her first visit. Regardless, we rolled it to a neighbor's house who offered to let me park it in his backyard for a month. I've got about a week left on that offer. When I move it next time and every time after that I'll have to pay $65 to rent a flatbed trailer.
      Well on the first inspection the Van passed with flying colors. I did detect a few glances of disgust which made me think how happy it would make me to be able to park it in front of the officers house every night. However when it came to the Coupe I was told, "Oh no, this will never do. It must be 100% ready to drive on the street." Can anyone explain to me why it is important that a car in my backyard, covered with a car cover has to have doors and windows?
      It all goes back to the rule about not blocking access to a garage. If the car isn't currently registered and streetable it can't be moved out of the driveway and if I did move it I might get stopped by some young overzealous police officer who would then cite me for having no horn or headlights or some other terrible crime. I felt much better knowing that these nice people were looking out for my well being.
      They also seemed to be impressed with my thoughtfulness when I asked, "What about a boat, could I park that here?"
I was told that I could park one there as long as I left it connected to a tow vehicle. As soon as I unhitched it, it would be blocking access to the garage. Seems like a good reason to keep the van around. Anyone have a trailer hitch for a '67 Ford van lying around?
       I've got a place for the 48 wagon but it won't be anywhere long term like I need. I'm not going to say where cause you never know who will be reading this. It doesn't look like I'll be able to restore it at this house, if at all. I can park the Coupe at the neighbors for the day of the inspection but it will have to come right back here or possibly to a shop where the "reassembly" can be done. I may be able to get the windshield, doors and enough electrical parts in order for it to be considered "operable".
       All of this happened at a time when I least needed the extra work. My wife and I had to cancel a little get-away we had planned for our anniversery and I was right in the middle of redoing the backyard and building patios and an aviary. These are all things that for some reason are more "fun" right now than putting old rusty bumpers on a freshly painted car or changing water pumps. Some how during all the hours and months that I was working on the Coupe, I just didn't imagine it coming back together this way. I always envisioned how much fun it would be putting on the shiny new chrome pieces and it just isn't right to have to do it this way especially knowing that I'll have to redo it all sooner or later.
       Take my word for it, it's no fun living under a microscope and being given deadlines or facing the possibility of having your cars towed away. I think I've heard this analogy from the code lady about three times now, "You have to look at it like toys. When you have a lot of toys you need a big toy box. You have too many toys." Well not really, not in my opinion. And my toybox was fine thank you until you told me I can't use half of it.
        Excuse my anger if it's coming through. I don't think I'm sounding real angry but I'm trying hard to bite my tongue and not to be too sarcastic.
       So I'm going to be ready on Oct. 5th for my next inspection by having only the van in my driveway. I don't know what will happen after that when I try to bring the Coupe back to where I can work on it some more. And like I said earlier I don't think I will be able to restore either of the woodies here.         I emailed Dave Luken (president of the Early Times Chapter) offering to write a letter designed to help others avoid the pitfalls that are out there when it comes to keeping your cars safe and away from people who seem to want nothing better than to have them crushed into little cubes. And what really makes me angry is that every year what kind of car does that mayor sit in during the annual parade? You guessed it, the same kind he spends the rest of the year trying to get out of his city. *** 11-05-01 I've got this month's ETC newsletter here and I see a '47 Convertible on the cover. It looks real nice and it belongs to Bill Edsall who isn't in the registry yet. There's still work to be done. Bill lives in Port Sydney Ontario and I hope he contacts us soon. I could use another fine old Pontiac to get me inspired again.
    I got the link for Humphrey Lees' second Pontiac online finally. More webpages to come soon.
    It's hard to believe that summer has come and gone already. It was a good one or at least it started out that way. My schedule was drastically changed when the code enforcers came a knocking. The last time they showed up the two Pontiacs were out of the driveway and the 47 wagon was hidden in the garage. That closed the case so now the 47 Coupe is back in the driveway and the 48 wagon is safe at my parents house for the time being. I don't know where I'll put it if it's discovered there as it's also in code violation in it's new parking spot. I'm putting up some corrugated fiberglass panels over the wrought iron tomorrow to keep the Coupe out of sight from the street.
    I also found a deal too good to pass up on a '87 Nissan 300ZX. I saw it on one of my daily routes and when I asked the owner when he had it repainted I almost couldn't believe it when he said it was the original paint! The car is too clean to believe it's 14 years old. It was always garaged and I wrote the check before I even h