John Byron Belville’s Tall Tales Told: Cars

You will notice there is no rhyme nor reason in placement of these tales. They are just remembrances that I have experienced in my life that my one love, Jackie Sue Belville, told me I should write down for posterity. That, of course, would mean you. So here goes. A trip into the exciting life of ol’ Johnny B.

My father’s business was the manufacturing of farming equipment.  His ‘shop’ [as he called it] was a big building on the outskirts of Shelley, Idaho and close to a railroad spur for easy shipping of machinery to other parts of the country.

My father only had a 10^th grade education [sophomore in high school] and yet he was brilliant enough to do complex physics using basic math.  He designed potato harvesting equipment.  He built that equipment from scratch.  He had his own sales force.  He had his own foundry so he could make the materials needed for his machinery [because his machines were new and unusual] the parts had to be created from scratch.  My father designed the machines and the machine parts that went on the machines [sprockets, chains, digger links, digger blades, hydraulics, etc.].  All this designing and building was done by a guy who had no college degree, in fact, he had no high school degree either.  He was just, as I said before, brilliant.  He passed at 51 years old…way, way too young.  I held his hand as he died, how sad.

I’ve had cars, many cars, and I’ve loved ’em all.  Beginning with my 1942 Jeep with its flat-head 4 cylinder engine.  I painted it fire engine red and put Hollywood Glass Pack mufflers on it.  I did this in my dad’s shop.  I fired up that flat-head engine, rapped it up and blew out several of dad’s shop windows with the reverberation of those pipes.  God, it was magnificent.  Dad didn’t think so.  He banned me from working on that Jeep in his shop forever.  That lasted about two weeks, then I was back in the shop making other repairs.  I used to love to take that Jeep to the mountains before the snow had completely dissipated and see if I could get stuck.  Nothing stopped me in all the years I had that damned thing.  Hell, it didn’t even have a windshield, course I got all the protein I needed from the bug I must have swallowed along the way.

I had a 1939 Chevy sedan.  No matter what I did, I could not stop that darned car from running.  I finally sold it to a farmer who turned it into a mechanized hay wagon.  For all I know it may still be running.

I had a 1952 Ford Coupe that I dropped a 1957 Oldsmobile engine into along with 2 four-barrel carberators.  It would really scream, but I wrecked it playing chicken with a buddy of mine.  He had a 52  Chevy coupe.  We both lost that day.

Owned a 1959 Ford Galaxy and took it on the road with Bobby Jones and the Outlaws.  Great car, painted a beautiful purple.  Big engine and I pulled a band trailer behind it.

Had a 1959 Pontiac Bonneville hard top.  The most beautiful car I ever owned save the various Cadillacs I bought and sold along the line.  Painted it a deep red color.  The ladies loved it and I was only 19 years old.

But enough about cars…