Wendy's story -
I had something funny happen a few weeks ago, back in the November timeframe, that I haven't shared with you guys yet.
I had some errands to run in support of getting ready to go to Chicago (to the Muscle Car Nationals) so I decided to grab some lunch and take the afternoon off. I almost never go out for lunch and I never EVER stop at the Wendy's closest to my house - but - a bacon cheeseburger sounded pretty good so I stopped in. I pulled into the parking lot and parked way in the back, away from everybody else, as is my custom now that I am driving my restored '87 pickup.
I should mention, as shown, my little truck is a red Chevy regular cab 2wd shortbox. Because of that it was only natural I noticed, as I pulled in, a guy followed me in a newer (GMT800 style) pickup, also a red Chevy regular cab 2wd shortbox. He parked back kind of where I was, next to me but leaving a respectful distance between his truck and mine.
After I finished my burger (...which was excellent, by the way...) I walked back out and I noticed his truck was still sitting there. I didn't see him come or go so I looked around a bit as I was walking and right then he came out of the restaurant. He caught up to me and spoke first, saying "...hey, that's a sweet little truck!" or something like that.
I confided that I had noticed his truck , too, so we spent several minutes talking about (red) Chevy pickups, then onto working for GM and living in the area. I told him (gradually) about restoring the truck through the summer, giving him short snippets of info and then responding in more detail as he asked more follow up questions.
I haven't mentioned this yet but, because I was heading to the Muscle Car Nats that weekend, and because I wanted the author Darwin Holmstrom to sign my book, I had my big GTO book laying in the front seat of the truck.
As the pickup truck conversation died down a bit, he said "....I see you've got the new GTO book. Have you had a chance to look at it much?".
I didn't tell him that I'd had it since May but did indicate that I had flipped through it a time or two.
At that point he said, matter of factly: "My car is in it". Surprised, I said "really, which one!?!".
His car is the red '61 Catalina, shown early in the book on pages 40 - 45. He got pretty good coverage spanning over several pages.
So now the conversation was off and running again, this time talking about Pontiacs, and how he got the car painted a year ago, and how the motor is out now (spun a cam bearing) and going back together. I told him my car was on page 99 and that we did the photo shoot in November of '07 pretty much across the street from where we were currently standing. We marveled at the fact that we lived only a few miles apart and never had met before, and how unusual it was for us to meet under these circumstances.
My car:
I bet we stood in that Wendy's parking lot for almost an hour before we finally decided we'd better get going, parting ways but vowing to stay in touch.
That was one of the most bizarre chance encounters (and one of the most enjoyable) in recent memory....
K