2021 Woodward Dream Cruise - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

2021 Woodward Dream Cruise

Enjoyed our 27th straight Woodward Dream Cruise last week, which started in 1994 when Ferndale, MI Mayor, Pamela McCullough told resident Nelson House that their city did not have money for a soccer field, but encouraged him to start a fund raiser for a new field. So House and a handful of volunteers conceived the idea to relive and recreate the nostalgic heydays of the 50s and 60s, when youth, music and Motor City steel roamed Woodward Avenue, America’s first paved 4 lane highway. Expecting about 40,000 spectators, 250,000 showed up for that inaugural cruise. The annual dream cruise is now the largest automotive event in the world, drawing 50,000 classic cars and 2 million spectators along its 16 mile route from Detroit to Pontiac. Nearly 100 area charities benefit from the sale of official Dream Cruise merchandise and refreshments each year.

Click this link for previous blogposts about the Dream Cruise. And here’s a video of this year’s cruise. Note that our cruiser, a 2004 retro-Tbird, is shown at the 4:10 mark.

Unofficially, Dream Cruise Week starts out on the Sunday before when various car clubs caravan up and down Woodward. The Thunderbird Club we belong to typically has 30-40 classics for that Sunday cruise, which finishes with dinner at a local restaurant.

The heart of the Dream Cruise is the Irish restaurant pictured here. A local oldies radio station broadcasts out of the location all week and on Saturday, only plays classic car tunes.

Here’s Ted, my retired barber, aka Theo the Thief, touring Woodward in his ’49 Ford.

Here’s my favorite Dream Cruise photo as it shows a red ’62’ Chevy just like my first car documented in this previous blogpost.

Here are some more photos from this year’s cruise:

Say what?

Edsel in front of Berkley’s classic movie theater

Beast in show

A giant boar greets as you walk up behind this 1952 Ford truck turned Rat Rod. Approach it from the front and be prepared for sharp red metal teeth that encapsulate a giant drill bit. This is the Beast and Barry Robinson, 60, of Brownstown is the mastermind behind it.

He used to be into show cars but then got hooked on finding unique additions to the truck. Like the whiskey barrel he has in the cab that holds the gas tank and the glass skull that retains radiator overflow.

“I’m having more fun with this than the fancy cars,” he said.

It’s easy to miss fun, spooky additions to the truck at first glance. There are lasers that pop out of the eyes and mouth, for example. Inside are rats stuck in traps, on the back sits an artillery shell topped with a red light and for extra oomph it has school bus “stop” tail lights.

Perhaps the best feature: “When you go over a big bump the teeth chomp,” Robinson said. “It’s made to look all rusty but it’s almost all new parts. It will never be finished. It’s a work in progress always.”

Fun times along Woodward - till next year.

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Family Memories - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Family Memories

Recently, my wife and I attended mass at St. Remy’s in Russia while spending the weekend. In a few pews in front of us was a young couple with 5 children, the oldest a boy about 10, three daughters 4-8 and a newborn son being held in his mother’s arms. I motioned to my wife that this family could have been our family 65 years ago, with me being the oldest boy and my brother the baby as we are 10 years apart, and my three sisters in between.

Ever since seeing that family in church, memories of my parents and our family at that same stage have been coming to mind. For example, I can distinctly recall the exact seat in church at St. Michael’s where our family always sat. And just like this young family we observed in St. Remy’s church, I was always next to Dad at the end and my sisters next to Mom, with my baby brother in her arms. The St. Remy kids behaved perfectly just as our parents insisted we behave in church. Even my baby brother somehow knew to keep quiet, uncharacteristic for him even to this day. The St. Remy's father also had on a suit, just like Dad always wore to church.

Mom & Dad, following their religious heritage, named all their kids after biblical saints, David, Sara, Ann, Lucy & Luke. Sara, my oldest sister, is a retired nurse for an retinologist in Dayton who now works part time for the local library in Bellbrook where she and her husband Don live. Sara was a great athlete growing up and I sure wish she could have played girls sports had they existed back then. One of her best friends growing up was another outstanding athlete, Jane Poeppelman, the long time former girls basketball coach at Ft. Loramie, preceding current coach Carla Siegel.

My middle sister, Ann and her husband Woody, live on a farm east of Sidney raising beef cattle and sheep. Ann always had an uncanny ability to remember dates and name, especially birthdays and wedding anniversaries of our many relatives. She’s like an encyclopedia for such trivialities. Woody is a renowned judge of sheep, traveling around the country to judge various shows. Ann’s biggest claim to fame is her decorating skills, with their home all decked out in scarlet and gray Buckeye decor. Here’s their toilet.

My youngest sister, Lucy, is a retired pediatric nurse, who also served in the emergency room earlier in her career. Needless to say, she’s cool under pressure, and is a fantastic medical resource for our family. Her dedication to Mom & Dad during their last years provided unceasing comfort for them. Now that she’s retired, her green thumb learned so well from Mom has literally blossomed, as she’s won best in show at the Shelby County Fair several times as documented in this previous blog. Her husband Leroy, is co-owner of Gaier’s Chrysler Dodge Jeep in Ft. Loramie, a long time Fish Report advertiser.

My brother, Luke, is married to Gretchen and they live in Piqua, but are on the road motorcycling a lot now that he’s retired from full time work. Luke was worried that he’d be bored in retirement, but like a lot of us retirees, the many activities that are now available more than fill the day. For example, Gretchen inherited her family home and the two of them are now restoring and renovating it for a family member to live. I had the chance to help Luke hang some drywall for a few hours while my wife spent time with her Mother during our recent visit.

Luke has been my partner in our golf invitational here in Michigan for the last 15 years, which is always a memorable highlight for us each July. We’ve won our flight twice and always have a great time. Luke wears his Buckeye shirt, so to offset the effect, I wear my maize and blue golf hat.

Here’s a 1917 photo of my grandparents and their five children, two girls and three boys, with my Dad age 4 shown in front of my Grandfather. My grandparents didn’t stop there, eventually having 14 children as shown in the adjacent photo from 1924.

Similarly, my Mother’s family was also large with 11 children as shown on this 1937 photo.

Needless to say, I could go on forever about my family and the memories growing up. And that’s exactly how over the last 6 years, 300 blogposts came about. More to come Fish Report readers.

 Celebrating Dad’s birthday

After Dad’s funeral mass, April 19, 2008

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Round the World Trip - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Round the World Trip

Continuing the Round the World venture during my days at Ford in the early 80’s, after stopping in Hiroshima, Japan, my Mazda sidekick Kurahashi and I headed to Seoul, South Korea to visit Kia, an automotive company partially owned by Mazda at the time Ford acquired 33% of the Japanese auto company. Since Mazda owned 24% of Kia, Ford had an 8% stake. The purpose of our stop was to see if any vehicles under development by Kia could be rebadged to be Ford products in the Far East.

The Kia Sportage, a small sport utility vehicle, was of interest. The vehicle was well designed, but a little too small for the US market. So instead Kurahashi and I recommended Ford and Mazda jointly develop a compact utility platform, which was INDEED pursued with the outcome being the Ford Escape and Mazda Tribute, a program I incidentally co-lead with Kurahashi. There were other derivatives off the platform, like the Mercury Mariner, Ford Kuga and Lincoln Corsair, all told now selling about 500,000 units per year around the world.

Needless to say, jointly developing a vehicle with Mazda meant many additional visits to Japan, 13 trips in all during my Ford career. A highlight of many trips was a visit to Kobe for some of their world famous beef after the direct flight from Detroit to Osaka before taking the bullet train to Hiroshima. A tour of a Kobe beef farm was a memorable highlight, which I’ll write about in a future blog.

After South Korea, Kurahashi and I headed to Thailand, where Ford and Mazda were building a new truck plant to produce the Ford Ranger and Mazda B-Series pick-ups for the Far East markets. The plant was on schedule and under budget, so our job was easy!

That allowed us time to explore Bangkok and the outstanding food of Thailand. I learned first hand the hard way that the most spiciest Thai food comes first, with each successive course less and less spicy. Those first tastes really called for a lot of beer to squelch the spiciness, but it hooked me on Thai food from that moment on.

Next we traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malasia, the site of an electronics joint venture making automotive engine controllers for Ford and Mazda vehicles. Since electronics were becoming more and more integral to the vehicle, it was felt that to best control the supply of such parts, making them internally was crucial to high quality and on-time delivery of such components. That strategy has obviously fallen apart as evidenced by the current shortage of integrated chips severely restricting automotive production.

Kuala Lampur is a beautiful city and the capital of Malasia. It used to be part of the British Commonwealth, gaining its independence in 1957, but still maintains a parliamentary form of government. The electronics plant was just being launched and had available capacity for additional product, which was recommended but never pursued. About that time, Henry Ford II stepped down as CEO, and he always insisted that Ford not invest in any Communist-run country. So rather than China, we were always looking for plant sites in the Far East in countries other than China. That policy changed when HFII stepped down, but it meant Ford was a decade behind its competitors in growing in China. To this day, Ford is barely in the top 10 auto sales in China. Ditto for Russia. Frankly, I agreed with the policy, but other competitors obviously didn’t.

We couldn’t get a flight out of Kuala Lampur to our next site, Madras, India, so we took a train to Singapore and explored the amazing city for a half day before catching an overnight flight to India. Singapore used to be part of Malasia, but was expelled in 1965 for ideological differences to become it’s own country, also parliamentarian by design because of it’s former British rule. Today, Singapore is considered the most expensive city in the world, and back in the early 1980’s it’s citizens enjoyed an amazing quality of life. Now it’s more of a tax haven for corporations and the rich as it has the lowest tax rate among developed countries. Plus it’s crime rate is essentially zero, with no tolerance for corruption or illegal activity. Some of their punishments are bizarre and archaic; for example, caning is the predominant punishment for misdemeanors (for spitting chewing gum on the street for example). Sure seems to work, but ouch!

Arriving in Madras, now called Chennai, along the eastern shore of India, was quite a contrast to beautiful Singapore. Madras is famous for a lightweight cotton fabric with a plaid design. The various colors would purposely “bleed” into each other when washed, to provide a distinctive fashion look popular by Ivy Leaguers back in the 1960’s, in sharp contrast to the tie dyed hippy look also prevalent at the time.

Ford and Mazda were just starting the construction of an assembly plant in Madras. The road to the plant site from the hotel was laden with resting cows in the median strip, an amazing site. Cows are considered sacred in India and are left to roam freely. Crazy!

The new plant under construction on a 350 acre site was a modern facility in sharp contrast to the primitive structures in the rest of Madras. Consistent with Henry Ford’s original strategy to bring affordable transportation and well paying jobs to the masses, similarly this plant has done the same to the Chennai region over the 40 years since the plant was built. Engine machining operations, a stamping facility and vehicle assembly are included on the site, employing over 3000 people.

After Madras, I flew back to Detroit via Amsterdam while Kurahashi returned to Japan. Over the course of the one week trip, I had “slept" 4 nights on an airplane, so upon arriving at Amsterdam’s Shiphol airport after an all night flight, I can still distinctly recall the amazingly soothing voice of the female airport announcer. Here’s her story!

In 2015, Ford divested itself of it’s shares of Mazda allowing the two companies to move forward on their own. As part of the transaction, Ford ended up with full ownership of all the plants we visited during our Around The World trip in the early 1980’s, and all but the Malasia electronics plant are still in operation. After returning to one of the plants years later, I observed how fit the workers were compared to the scrawny new hires working at the time the plant opened. And the parking lot was full, as now the employees could afford to buy a vehicle. Being apart of Ford’s growth into the Far East and to see those local economies thrive via free enterprise replicating Henry Ford’s original strategy in the US was a highlight of my 35 year automotive career.

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Around the World Trip - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Around the World Trip

In last week’s blog about Japan following the Tokyo Olympics, I promised to share the details of an around-the-world trip with a first stop in Hiroshima, Japan. At the time in the early 1980’s, my employer, Ford Motor Company, sent me to review first hand all the new Ford operations being established in the Far East. The trip entailed visits to Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and India. Each operation had a local partner to assist with the political and logistical issues and help Ford get a foothold in each country. Mazda, based in Hiroshima, Japan, was already a partner with Ford on several small car programs, so given their Far East presence, they also were helping. So that’s why the first stop was in Hiroshima to meet up with my Mazda counterpart named Kurahashi who would be joining me.

But before we left for our next stop in South Korea, Kurahashi provided a personally guided tour of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the site of the first of two nuclear bomb detonations (Nagasaki) that ended World War II. Check out this previous blogpost for more on the subject. Kurahashi was a very gracious host and provided a perspective beyond simply touring the site and reading the inscriptions on each display.

For example, he shared that the Genbaku Dome pictured here was originally an art and education exhibition center that was designed by a Czeck architect to be earthquake proof, and as it turns out, atomic bomb proof, since it was the only structure left standing in the central city of Hiroshima. The bomb literally exploded directly above the dome so all the forces were directly downward at this spot, which allowed the steel beams and concrete to absorb the blow, while every other building around the area suffered the bomb's lateral forces that flattened everything to the ground.

Kurahashi also shared that one of the survivors of Hiroshima actually also lived through the blast at Nagasaki. This story intrigued me and years later I read a book about the man's experiences. Here’s a recap of his story from the History Channel.

The tour of the Memorial represented a very moving experience that I will never forget. Let’s hope and pray the message being commemorated by the Peace Park Memorial keeps mankind from detonating another nuclear bomb.

Speaking of nuclear threat, Seoul, South Korea, our next stop, was only 30 miles from the DMZ and North Korean border. Back then North Korea didn’t have nuclear capability, so such a threat was not really a factor during our visit like it would be if traveling there today.

More on the RTW trip next week. No nuclear threats, promise!

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Japan - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Japan

Watching the Tokyo Olympics has brought back many memories from my first trip to Japan in 1976. At the time I was working for Ford and boss Henry Ford II, after discovering the company was buying air conditioning compressors from General Motors, directed the engineering department to find another source, as he didn’t want to give a single cent to his top competitor.

As a member of the team to investigate alternative designs, we flew to Japan to check out a design by Nippondenso (now known as Denso). The flight included stopovers in Alaska on the way to Japan and Hawaii on the way back as described in this previous blogpost.

Once landing in Japan at Narita Airport north of Tokyo, we traveled to the Okura Hotel across the street from the Imperial Palace, very close to the site of the current Olympic stadium shown in this aerial photo. I recall waking up early due to the 13 hour time change and walking in the park surrounding the palace at daybreak. Later that morning, we visited the Ford offices and then traveled by bullet train to Nagoya where Nippondenso was located. Even back then, the bullet train traveled over 100 mph and always ran right on time. The site of Mount Fuji that day was perfect, just like this photo.

Our hotel was right across the street from the Nagoya castle pictured here. We had an opportunity to tour the castle that also served as a museum. Back in those days, few foreigners visited the interior of Japan where Nagoya was located, so none of the displays were understandable.

Unfortunately, the bed in the tiny hotel room was only 6” long, way too short for my 6’4” frame! And the toilets were literally holes in the floor.

Literally everything was miniature size compared to US standards. For example, this backhoe along the street in Nagoya was smaller than me! You see a lot of them now in the US, but not back in the 1970’s.

At a department store near the hotel, I bought my wife a pearl that was supposedly still in the shell! Indeed it was, a beautiful black pearl that was mounted on a necklace that she still wears occasionally. At the same store, I also bought a ball glove that was always my favorite for softball. Still have it somewhere.

At Nippondenso, we met with company officials, who took us on a plant tour where their air conditioning compressor was produced.

We were very impressed with what we saw and ask them to provide a quote for the Ford business. But at that time, they did not have any manufacturing plants in the US and indicated the shipping costs would be prohibitive if shipped from Japan. However, they expressed a willingness to license the design so Ford could produce the product themselves. This concept interested us since GM was making their own compressors, plus Ford had an available Philco plant in Indiana that had manufactured refrigerator compressors.

So that's exactly what we did, and I had the opportunity to lead the launch of the air conditioning compressor at the plant. We lived in Richmond, IN about 30 minutes north and only about 45 minutes from the Loramie/Russia area, which brought us much closer to home than Michigan. Plus my wife was pregnant at the time of the move, so once our son was born, the grandparents and other relatives could readily come to visit.

Over the course of my career, I made 13 trips to Japan, with the most memorable being the first stop on a round-the-world trip which included a memorable stop in Hiroshima that I’ll have to write about in some future blog. In the meantime, enjoy the Tokyo Olympics.

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