The Chase - Ralph's essay Jan 2019

The Chase

Oh the mystery! Oh the treasure! Oh the cobwebs and mouse poo!

What is hiding in that barn down a long winding lane? Perhaps instead it is a small garage in a back lane or even just a shed with a twisted ramshackle door about to fall off.  All you can see so far is that the building has not been opened for a long time. The grass and weeds are tall. Small alders crowd the driveway, elbowing each other for space.  Or maybe it is winter, and the fresh snow lies pristine. What could be behind these long-forgotten doors?  Stories have been whispered for days, weeks, maybe months or even years. A tidbit here and a morsel there. ­­­ Maybe they could be true. There is, after all, a touch of credibility to the tales.

You crave this moment when the truth is so close, just the swing of a garage door away.  You expect to be disappointed, of course, but maybe this time - maybe this time, just maybe, this will be the time.

A deal has been struck. Access has been arranged. Trees have been cut down, the old plywood patch on the building removed, the rusty hardware pried off and many shovel loads of dirt are hastily freed from the ground in front of the door.  Now is the time of truth. What will you find?  Is this the time?

The pearls that you pursue are now almost in view and your waiting is over. Years of neglect and abandonment are slowly and carefully lifted away to reveal the treasure. The room is dimly lit and the dust is thick in the air but none of that matters. All at once years of junk are cast off, the kiddie pool, a bag of rags, and another full of pop cans are lifted away.  Old car parts and pieces of wood and cardboard are cast aside to reveal a threadbare old blanket.  The shape it hides is evocative, but it is what you expect to see. With a pull it slides off to the floor and there it is.  Finally, there it is.

And you are not disappointed.  In reality you are rarely disappointed. To explore and be the first to discover something that was lost or unseen is a thrill, something that will never grow old.

(Be sure to continue to read the rest of this essay by clicking on "Read more" below!)

My explorations and discoveries have all been just as exciting as this.  I relived them as I put this short essay to paper. I have been very fortunate to chase down a couple of rare old treasures and be involved in some way with their renaissance.  To say I love the hunt for the obscure would be an understatement.  I am currently working on a 1974 Jensen Healey found hiding in a Texas barn for 35 years.  It will see the road this summer thanks to a second parts car I found slumbering for 25 years
under an apple tree in Maine.

But my first chase ended with buying our first little British car, the 1961 MGA I still own.  I found it sitting all alone in a garage in Dieppe NB.  The owner was living in Beijing and the car had been in storage for six years.  I was told where to find the key and to let myself in.  I entered to find it sitting all alone on four flat tires in the middle of an otherwise empty double garage - a tiny and
very sad sight. When I peeled off the oversized cover I was shocked at the colour as I had not expected to find a gem in a fresh coat of pale Iris blue.  In the thrill of the hunt I had not given much thought to the colour and don’t know what I was expecting.  Red, sure.  Old English white, yes please.  Or even black. I had seen several in black.

The next chase took me to Port Hilford in South East Nova Scotia for a 1961 Austin Cambridge that was offered to me for the cost of going to get it.  It was a deal I could not turn down, so off I went with a box of tools, a jug of gas, and sheer blind optimism.  It was in the barn I described earlier and had been parked for thirteen years.  It took longer to access it then it than the forty-five minutes it took to get it running on its own. I drove it up on the trailer and off I went.

Other hunts have been more protracted like the 1948 Austin Atlantic pursuit (#13 of 300 made) That lasting seven years before I was able to drag it home.  It was one of six cars stuffed into a double garage on a tidy residential street in full view of a busy arterial road.  I was negotiating with the owner for three years until he passed and then with his widow and son who were paralyzed with fear of doing the wrong thing so did nothing for four more years.  But the chase was interesting as I would drop in and chat every few months and inevitably the conversation would end with “Well, yes, you’re right. We should do something. I will get my son on that later today.” And then another year passed.

Then there are the ones that got away, the ones I did not follow up on.  How does a Jaguar XK 120S Alloy Roadster sound?  Not every day you see one of those and even less often you find one in a private garage in an upmarket townhouse complex.  It was three miles from my house and even closer to the Austin Atlantic I have already mentioned.  I was passing one day and spotted the smallest corner of the front wing in an open single garage. It stopped me there and then.  I backed up and went in past the no trespassing signs to confirm that, yes, indeed it was a Jaguar, an unrestored XK 120 roadster sitting on blocks under a very substantial custom-made plywood shelter piled high with household “stuff”.  I rang the bell only to find a couple of fellows installing a new kitchen and the owner was not home. They then realized they had left the garage door open against the expressed directions of the owner and instantly closed it down.  I immediately called up an old friend who surely would know the story. Sure enough, he remembered the car but had lost track of it twenty years earlier.  He also told me to forget it. He said “The fellow’s a recluse. He’s as likely as not to draw a gun on you at the door if you mention the car.”

Fast forward two months. I was visiting a fellow MGA owner in town and there it was in his garage.  I was dumbfounded. How did he get hold of that car?   “I asked him if he wanted to sell” was the answer. I should not have asked the next question but did.  “What are your plans for it?”

“Already sold to a fellow in Montreal for four times my purchase price. Shipping it out later this week.”  Alloy XK 120’s are rare indeed.

My current local chase (that seems to be going no place) is for a 1974 Bond Equipe convertible and a spare parts car. These two cars make up ten per cent of the production run of only twenty left-drive convertibles made.  It is as rare as you can get.  Built by the Bond car company on a Triumph Vitesse chassis, it has a fiberglass body shell and two-litre Triumph six-cylinder power plant that will make this baby fly.  It was driven inside a basement garage and parked nineteen years ago, quite near the furnace that has kept it dry and warm. The owner had back surgery that same winter and never got around to getting the car out again.  Completely invisible when we arrived to view it, this is the one buried under recycling bottles and the kids’ wading pool.  When we cleared some of the junk off I started getting excited. Then the owner started getting excited and by now does not want to sell.  This chase is in year five now and the owner is holding out for four times the real value despite my offer of double the going rate.  And to make it even more exciting, renovation work around the house and neighbor’s yard fifteen years ago resulted in the driveway being removed. The car will now need to be lifted fifteen feet by heavy crane to get it to street level.  I do like a challenge.  Happy Hunting and if you hear any good rumors let me know.

Wm. Ralph Holyoke Jan. 2019

Saint John, New brunswick