Five decades of muscle

MOSES LAKE — The first car for Dave Robins was a 1947 Frazer.

Robins and his twin brother were about 14 years old, he said, and were mowing lawns that summer. One of their clients was an older man, a veteran with limited mobility and limited means. He gave the brothers the old Frazer as payment for their work.

“We pushed that thing home,” Robins remembered, three or four blocks away.

They proudly displayed it to their dad when he came home that evening. But Dad thought the car represented a lesson the boys needed to learn. 

Consider the circumstances of your customers, he told them. So they pushed the car back, and at their dad’s orders they mowed the man’s lawn for free for the rest of the summer.

“Every car has a story like that,” said Robins, current president of the Moses Lake Classic Car Club.

The club is celebrating its 50th year in 2024 and started off its anniversary year with its annual donation to the Moses Lake Food Bank. The club raised about $770. 

“It happens to be the largest one we’ve ever given,” Robins said.

The Horseless Carriage Club — as it was originally known — was founded in 1974, but it had its roots in a club that dated all the way back to the 1950s, made up of guys stationed out at the old Larson Air Force Base. O.C. Hagen was a member of the original car club, the Pacers Moses Lake Auto Club, and talked about some of his memories in a 2013 letter to a classic car club member, the late Joe McCulloch. 

“This was in late, late 1953 or early 1954, prior to the relocation of approximately half the base personnel after a like group rotated from Japan and Korea,” Hagen wrote. 

They were young guys with their first cars, most of their rides a few years old. Hagen remembered his car well, a 1950 Chevrolet Bel-Air. 

“I devoted the better part of three weeks of my four-week furlough ‘customizing’ (the car) with de-chroming, installing Pontiac taillights, a one-piece Oldsmobile windshield and other miscellaneous (parts), as well as a ‘Royal Marine,’ bright aquamarine, paint job,” Hagen wrote.

He could remember the cars owned by two other Pacers members.

“One was a 1951 Ford Victoria with a continental kit, and the other, a 1952 Ford post two-door sedan that had tailpipes exiting out the ‘old’ taillight openings and the addition of larger Pontiac taillights,” he wrote.

The club is open to any kind of ride, not just classics — any car, any truck, any motorcycle, any bicycle, old or new. They’ve got a lot of events scheduled for 2024, charitable fundraisers among them, because that, Robins said in an earlier interview, is the club’s goal.

“You just go and help out,” he said. “Our goal has been to be as helpful as we can.”

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.

    Cars line the street at the MLCCC show at the 2023 Sip ‘n Stroll in September.
  

    Members of the Moses Lake Classic Car Club and the Lakesiders Car Club pose for a picture last summer.
  

    The award-winning 1934 Ford Cabriolet - not like it came from the factory - owned by Moses Lake Classic Car Club members Tom and Bette Jo Carlton.
  

    A cool and award-winning car can come from any era, like the 1991 Chevrolet Geo convertible owned by Karen and Clay Cook.