Denison Fall Festival.....& Car Show

  Saturday (October 3rd) the City of Denison held it's annual 'Fall Festival' on Main Street in the downtown area. Main and cross streets were marked off by police and thousands poured out to visit the various booths on display. Any kind of food you can think of was there for your enjoyment, as well as many different organizations wanting your support for their efforts...

           You could walk the entire five block area and not see any space between the vendors. What you are looking at is the many different tents erected in the middle of the street. There were also vendors set up on the curbs on each side of the street.
          My main reason for attending the festival each year is the car show they always have. As you can probably figure out from previous postings, I have a distinct fondness for cars.... especially older cars.

             This is a 1933 Plymouth 5-window coupe.. Ford and Chevy usually dominate the Hot Rod field, so it was nice to see a Plymouth. Really a nice looking coupe and I especially liked those custom made headers.

           Dot brings her 1939 Ford Coupe to the show every year and I always take time to view it. I love the fact she keeps it as original as possible. That 85-horsepower flathead engine was a stroke of genius by Henry Ford. Plenty of power and sounded great through a set of glass-pak mufflers. Ford made this engine from 1932 through 1953.

             I remember this car from one of the car shows at Texoma Harley-Davidson in years past. It is a 1937 Chevrolet Coupe and is so clean you could eat off of it. It came from the factory with a 216 cubic inch 6-cylinder engine, but now sports a 350 cubic inch V8...and small details are really finished off nicely in this car.

         Proving that you are never too old to learn something is this pick-up on display Saturday...It is a 1927 Ford Model T.. See the owner sitting inside?  I struck up a conversation with him and he became the instructor. I figured the truck would have the same transmission as the cars of that period.....WRONG!

              Take note there is no gear shifter on the floor!... and that lever to the far left is not an emergency brake. Observe the three pedals on the floor. The pedal on the left is first gear (or low).. once the truck gets moving, the lever is pushed all the way forward to shift into high gear. The middle pedal is used for reverse and the pedal on the right is for braking. A lever under the steering wheel was used for throttle control.

            And this is the original 4-cylinder engine that came in the Model T Pick-Up..  Very basic, but if you stop to think about it, it was at the top of technology charts for its day.

             A 1923 Ford T-Bucket Roadster...and a really impressive one at that. A lot of these old car are fiberglass kit cars, but I think this one was all metal.

             1932 Ford 5-Window Coupe... The owner drove it up from Arlington this morning to be in the show. I talked with him for a few minutes about this fine looking ride. He has owned it since he was fourteen years old and sold the original 'roadster' body and kept the chassis. About ten years ago he decided to build a coupe and remembered he still had this frame and front end sitting in the grass behind his shop. BAZINGA!!.. Now he has this fine ride.

         1939 Cadillac LaSalle...and powered by a 409 cubic inch Chevrolet engine putting out 400 horsepower with an automatic transmission. The interior is sort of a horsehide material almost identical to the stuff that came from the factory. This car is also owned by a woman and she drives it daily.

          I have admired this car for a long time... It is a 1950 Chevrolet Deluxe 2-door sedan...and looks like it just rolled off the assembly line. Everything about it looks like brand new and it is authentic right down to the heater,..which was an option in 1950. I owned a 1950 Chevy business coupe my senior year in high school and it was the talk of the school..

           Another extremely clean representative... This is a 1947 Chevrolet Fleetmaster.. top of the line for the day. A Chevy 350 V8 powers this ride down the road with ease. I especially like the way he has 'frenched' the headlights, and kept the stock grille that was so prevalent on the 1946, 47, and 48 Chevys.. The interior was just as clean as the outside of this beauty.
        There was also plenty of Mustangs and Chevy Nova's as well as newer cars in the show, BUT I am an old school guy and these were the cars that I really enjoy seeing brought back to life. The weather was super and nothing like two years ago when it was a cold and damp day. Thank You Lord !