Dog and pony show

Madison and Max are two dogs of very different breeds and backgrounds. Although they’ve never met, the lucky canines have one thing in common: They both attended classic car shows this past weekend.

It’s not uncommon to see dogs walking their humans at these outdoor events. In fact, at one car show over the weekend, I actually heard a spectator say it was “like being at a dog show with some cars on display.” Funny.

And that’s where we were Saturday – at the Fifth Annual Main Street Memories “Wheels on the Waterfront” in beautiful downtown Port Huron, Michigan. Billed as “the fastest-growing car show in the area,” the popular event held along the St. Clair River reportedly drew about 700 vehicles.

Hard to imagine that many cars in one place, isn’t it?

Picture roughly three miles of chrome, rubber and sheet metal cruising down Main Street USA on any given summer weekend. A magnificent sight, if you’re a classic car buff like me.

If you’re not, and happen to live anywhere near the upcoming Woodward Dream Cruise, it’s literally hell on wheels. We have friends who actually leave town that third weekend in August. More on that in another blog.

So, we drove Sal up to Port Huron in Michigan’s “Thumb” region.

(Aside: If you’re not familiar with this reference, remember that Michigan is shaped like a mitten. Hold out your right hand, palm up, and look. See? Mitten. Your thumb is, well, the Thumb.)

The Thumb forms a peninsula that stretches northward into Lake Huron and Saginaw Bay. Port Huron, which is about 60 miles north of Detroit and east of the tri-cities (Saginaw-Midland-Bay City), is home to more than 860,000 residents.

Inventor Thomas Edison lived in Port Huron from 1854 to 1863. And so did Terry McMillan, author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back. I don’t know of anyone else famous who lived there, except for one of my nieces, who now lives in North Carolina.

Anyway, sweet Maddie had a ball showing off our pony: a 1964-½ (OK, ‘65) Ford Mustang convertible painted Rangoon red with a cream-colored ragtop and straight 6-cylinder/170-engine.

Her excitement while barking at another dog nearly cost us the pair of black-and-white fuzzy dice hanging from Mustang Sal’s rear-view mirror.

It’s all fun until your dog bites the dice. Game over.

• 

• 

• 

• 

We had a blast, even though we arrived late and got a less-than-ideal spot way too close to blaring radio speakers. But we walked all around the venue and managed to see plenty of cool cars, including a few from folks in my local car club, the Mustang Owners Club of Southeastern Michigan, a.k.a., “MOCSEM.” It’s nice to put faces to the names on their Facebook page.

One particularly heartfelt feature of the Port Huron show was the “Honk & Shout” over the U.S. border to our Canadian car show friends, who organized a similar event in Sarnia, Ontario, directly across the St. Clair River. They aren’t allowed to cross the border due to COVID-19 restrictions.

At 2:30 p.m., the sound of 700 horns honking and hundreds of attendees shouting filled the air, seamlessly drifting across international lines. It was even live-streamed on Facebook.

Now that’s solidarity. I love Canadians.

I bought Mustang Sal in 2014 from a guy in Hastings, Michigan, near Grand Rapids. He had a pole barn full of classic cars and needed to make room for a new one. Poor guy nearly wept the day we picked her up.

“You sure you want to sell this car?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “You take good care of her.”

I have been. So much so, apparently, that I’ve been accused of caring more about that car than my beloved or, heaven forbid, our fur baby.

That’s impossible.

Now where was I?

Other than expensive repairs and constant maintenance, there’s really no down side to owning a classic car – except, of course, those days when you can’t drive it due to inclement weather. Like rust, the elements are not your steel baby’s friend. Living in Michigan increases the chances of this happening exponentially since our four seasons on the calendar are winter, winter, summer, winter – often all within the same 24 hours.

But these past few days, with blue skies and highs in the 70s, helped me forget those crappy ones when Mustang Sal must sit in the garage resting comfortably under her fleece-lined blanket like the tired, 56-plus pony she is.

Kind of like me in January.

Much closer to home, on Sunday we attended the 13^th Annual Troy Traffic Jam just up the road at Columbia Center. About 300 cars were parked side by side in perfectly lined rows, some later makes next to vintage models of the past.

Classic rock hits played at a reasonable decibel level from giant speakers on either end of the vast parking lot. Spectators, car owners and most of the dogs were outside having a good time.

That included Max, a large, jet black 10-year-old rescue mix, who was camped out in his futon-sized bed next to his mother Denielle (“that’s how I spell it”) Armstrong’s car.

From Waterford, a suburb of Detroit, Denielle Armstrong is the proud owner of a 1962 Chrysler 300 Sport sedan in pristine teal blue with black interior. The front vanity plate says “Anne’s 62,” in honor of her mother, Anne Armstrong, who originally owned the car with her husband, Jack.

I swear, this rare 4,000-pound muscle car was as long as our motorhome. When she fired it up, the 340 horsepower/V-8 engine roared like Simba in “The Lion King” and even lurched forward. The old guy next to us nearly fell out of his chair.

Last week, this stunning car was inducted into the 2021 Drag Race Hall of Fame, in recognition of her parents and their contributions to the early years of drag racing. When Anne and Jack first bought the Bermuda turquoise car new in 1962, they swapped out engines to gain power and named it “Beautiful Brute.”

Both parents drag raced all over Michigan and parts of Canada from 1959-1967, according to a recent Oakland Press article. However, Anne was the main driver and loved hot rods.

“But Mom never burned rubber,” Denielle told us, “because she always said it was a terrible waste of perfectly good rubber.”

After her husband died in 1998, Anne’s repainted car sat in their garage without an engine. She searched for parts, then restored and rebuilt it.

The car was featured in Mopar Collectors Guide magazine and the 2012 Detroit Autorama, known as America’s greatest hot rod show.

And she finally let her daughter drive it.

Anne Armstrong died July 10, 2013, of pancreatic cancer. She was 73.

“I plan on taking it to as many places as she would have wanted to go,” Denielle said Sunday.

Such meaningful memories. Yet another reason to love the classics.

Here’s to late summer weekends of sun, fun and cars.

Or as we like to call it, a dog and pony show.