Jerry Conklin cruised Van Neus Boulevard in 1959

MAINE USA. The steaming, yellow, hot mega machine of a car rolled in fashionable late to Holy Donut Morning Meet in Maryland. It immediately caught everyone’s eye and became the center of attention. It was something in the way it motioned. Slowly, with a muffled murmur it parked with a secure motion underneath a rising sun. A silver fox emerged from the driver’s seat in a white t-shirt and back slick. It could have been the opening scene of a very good movie. By Lars Krantz Translation Ellen Kay Krantz

Was it not exactly like in American graffiti? Is everything fictional? Is the movie really a reflection of reality or has the movie become reality? Let’s go for a ride with the hottest car in the show and have a talk with the coolest guy I have ever met.
– Jump in, let’s take her for a ride, Jerry said.

I check my back pockets three times to make sure I don’t have anything with sharp edges lodged in there somewhere. I wouldn’t want to ruin the white leather seats. When the pat down of myself is done, I slowly motion in place in the custom dream. The leather makes that creaky sound and we ride low with a low ceiling which gives Jerry that characteristic wrinkles on the neck whilst he exits the car show area.  The heavily masseused Chevy from 1951 is stiff. Stiff in the suspension. The quarter glass says: No Bags.
– I got really tired of getting the question if it had air ride and wrote that, Jerry says.
– That’s how we used to do it, and so it will remain, Mr. Conklin adds and gives more gas so fast that the transmission jumps the entire register. After that show he puts it into second gear and gives the motor room to breathe on engine break. Its 92 degrees and goose bumps spread throughout my arms. He is slowly chewing on a piece of gum. He calls the morning cars show for “church”.
– I’ve been coming here for over ten years now. If you’re a custom guy, that’s the way it is, Jerry says.
– My buddies ask me if I’m going to church on Sunday and we all know this is the place we have in mind.
He has built everything on his yellow custom that was a 1951 Chevrolet Fleetline from the start. Everything from frame to body to finishing paintwork. He turns the small steering wheel and crosses a road hump diagonally. The car is firm and free from unwanted noise, answers perfectly to the gas pedal and smells like new. During the crossing of the hump we both hear the scratching noise despite the diagonal maneuver and Jerry gives a smirk behind dark sun glasses.

-“We cruised along Van Neus Boulevard at nighttime with what you had. You could by a car in the afternoon, do a fast paint job and cruise all night. I remember when the first hamburger diners opened. Bob’s Big Boy was the place to be. They were first with the double hamburger. Jay Leno was a young guy who ran around the cars. One night he cut the head of the Bob doll and put it on a hamburger tray that sat on one of the cars. We went there every night during the week. Lots of people circled the diner and the radio stations played that Rock and Roll. During the day I worked in a body shop. Cars, cars, cars. All 24 hours of the day.”
– It’s an honor to be riding with you, I say.
He looks at me.
– Why? I’m just a car guy and nowadays someone has to put a gun to my head before I spackle or polish. I do bodywork for a living and I still like to create things in steel.
– We weren’t very picky way back when, he says and refers to California during the 50’s- He was 18 in 1959.

We step out. The Chevy is looow. In the front the original frame has been substituted for a Camaro sub frame. The kickup in the back has received a 10-inch c-section. Which means that the kickup frame has been lifted 10 inches in order to let the rear axle creep further up and closer to the frame.
– It takes two screw jacks to get it to rise in the back nowadays, Jerry says.
Any form of a spare tire has been excluded from the symphony. Two bottles of tire spray has neatly been placed in the trunk. If that doesn’t do the trick the only way to proceed is to call AAA. Jerry has chopped many cars in his days. The most recent one was a Ford 32.
– I sat in the body shop, staring at the Chevy for two weeks before deciding how to proceed, Jerry says with a smile and keeps on going:
-I started with chopping the top with four inch in the front and two in the back. Then I slid the top forward to make it meet up with the windshield, leaned the B-pillar, angled the back windshield and sectioned the trunk. I created the Fender skirt to be higher at first and then filled it up from underneath until i was satisfied with the overall look.

Sunday morning, 92 sizzling degrees and empty streets. In that moment it rolls in to the veteran’s church on hot asphalt.

He impatiently waits while the photo shoot is in progress. He want it to be over with. He wants to drive.
– Why don’t you call it a wrap already, let’s go! He says and I do as he says, we jump in and cruise the city streets at 11 am that Sunday morning.
– I often wish more young people would come to our get-togethers’ but when they do, they ride girly cars with plastic skirts. It is what it is, I figure we’ll keep on keeping on until we bite the dust.

That’s when I tell him about Sweden, about the rockabilly culture, the Mexican quilts and about the car shows with all the youngsters that build these amazing cars but he doesn’t listen. Americans don’t listen and I have started to realize why. Everything pass the boarder is a black hole. They don’t study geography as we do in school. Sweden is a very small country and our survival depends on our knowledge about other places. We learn English, German, Spanish and we are well aware of our modest size.

America is the big world. America IS the big world and American children are taught the same thing in school which is a disadvantage for them when they encounter other cultures. But cross your heart, how interested are we in listening to a man from India that chatters on in horrible Swedish about how in some areas during some weekends in July consume dumplings with lingonberry jam, walk around in overalls, drive SAAB’s on the fields and listen to Kalle Jularbo on A-track?
– Because that is probably what it sounds like through the ears of Jerry Conklin. He is the real deal who actually lived in the reality of 1959. Way long before there were a Bob Falfa, Steve Bolander, Laurie Hendersson and John Milner.

Artsy car. The body is softly curved in all the right places.  Taillights from a Cadillac extends in the rear. Jerry does all the work himself, including paint.