Hot rods and stolen hearts

MOSES LAKE — You could easily fall in love a dozen times walking up Third Avenue in Moses Lake Saturday.

Arrayed along both sides of Moses Lake’s main drag was a display of vehicles representing every part of the 20th century (and bits of the 21st), gleaming in the sun and filling viewers with a longing to get behind a wheel and go flying down an open road.

This was the 37th annual Moses Lake Classic Car Club show, and the first held in conjunction with the Moses Lake Spring Festival. In past years it’s been held at the park next to the library, and later on side streets, according to club president Karen Crook, but this year the Spring Festival committee wanted it to take a more prominent role.

All in all, 139 cars were on display, said Crook. Events included a traditional poker run and a walking poker run among the businesses downtown during the show.

Although hot rods and muscle cars from the 1950s and ’60s were well represented, entries included vehicles as diverse as a 1929 Essex, a 1983 Buick Riviera and a 15-passenger Ford bus from 1931. There were even a couple of motorcycles and a couple of vintage bicycles interspersed among the cars.

Tom Isham of Ephrata exhibited a 1986 Buick hearse, complete with skeletons in the front seats and a disembodied head named Waldo in the back. The skeletons, he explained, were his ex and her boyfriend, while Waldo was merely a passenger who had a bit too much to drink the night before.

Not far away, Gary Johnson of Yakima soaked up the sun behind his two-tone 1940 Oldsmobile. “Fourteen and a half red cows died” to make the Olds’ red leather interior, a bystander quipped.

Rick Volk of Moses Lake had a piece of his youth on display in the form of a blue 1966 Chevy II Nova.

“I’ve had it since 1979,” Volk said. “It was my first high school car. I let it sit for about 15 years, then started fixing it up around 1999 or 2000. Did all the work myself. I put a new engine in two years ago.”

“I think it did fine (compared to past years),” Crook said. “The Spring Festival did a lot. The committee worked hard on it, doing extra things for us.”

Crook credited the club’s volunteers as well as the City of Moses Lake, for the show’s success. But the real stars were made of steel and chrome and rubber. And dreams.