Metal Conny isn´t of track

The itinerant artist in automotive sheet Metal, MetalConny, was seen drifting around with two bikes during the Classic Car Week. Both had his unmistakable twist. The bikes are called Abstinence and Sober. by Krantz

For decades, Metal Conny amazed the world with his talent for chopping roofs and extending fenders. He has built rods and customs, straightend original cars and reversed rusty scrap heaps to plate pure beauties. Always for others.

MetalConny’s magic hands have created show winners and trophy harvesters. When his sheet metal is draped in chrome and candy and gets first prizes and the first pages are Metal Conny all ready far away.

The vagabond in wagon construction is then crawling on  a new cement floor forming tomorrow’s winners. An artist soul. A traveling man in the art of custom building . A vagabond without address that sleeps in the backseat of someones projekt.

Conny recently turned 44 years. Driver’s license, he has never had.
– Except for one single day back when he was 18.
The police came and took the note for his debauchery with EPA tractors retroactively just as he celebrated the lawful performance of the thing he had loved since birth, the car.

– Now I have lived half my life drunk he said to him self at his 44:th birthday. Second half I’ll live sober. He put on the cork  24 weeks ago. When he slid around  the Classic Car Week, he was in his sixteenth week.

The bikes are named Abstinence and Sober. The red one he built during the first weeks. The silver one is recently finished.

I was most worried that I would not be able to create without being drunk … but you see the bikes, he says.
Conny says a lot with few words. He sentences are as loaded as his hands. He presses and pryes the right places and get a lot done.

The detail work hits you. The old lamp has gotten a newer led lamp funktion. The bikes are comfortable and everything works of course.

The first time I meat Conny many, many years ago, he looked like he ‘d been sleeping under a rock. He hung on the end of a string pulled by a large dog. Today is a tanned man sitting with one hand on the handle bar quinting into the sun with a quiet smile.

– We’re gona barbeque tonight … and drinkcoffee, he says. Tomorrow is a new day.
– There are many things you want to keep up. We get exercise too, he says.
.They pull off on the bikes. People pointing and waving, taking pictures.

I encounter them during the week. Metal Conny tells friendly for new ears and posing. He winks at me under his cap. When  he takes away  it’s done with the vitality, balance and gleam of an athlete.

Sometimes he turns the frames upside down. When he’s done everything looks perfectly needed. But why  bikes and mopeds?

The kids biking time was castrated by a knowledgeable police officer.  Only eleven years old Conny was taken by the police when he rode through the streets of Bjasta, Angermanland. He had built a bike chopper and the trooper felt the had reason to deprive the young welder the joy of his home made bike. The pain never goes out. Therefore bikes.

I follow Metal Conny with my  eyes. A slim, fit silhouette raises his arm waveing  without looking backwards and disappears in the direct light among the cars.
– A friend of Conny at the campsight figured out that man had consumed 60,000 beer cans.

I shake my head. Life is interesting

——————————————————————————————-

Follow Metal Conny on his FB page Top Shop Garage