1998 James Dean Run Car Show photos

1998 James Dean Run Car Show photos

     Updated 27 May 1999. URL is http://our.tentativetimes.net/fest98/cars2.html

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Second page of car photos

Car tee-shirts

Car awards page

Links out

The Cluster Busters’ James Dean Run

Read news about the Mid-Century Mercury club car show in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Sunday, May 30th!

Each year the car show grows more spectacular. Even though this original show has split into three rival shows, the James Dean Run thrills Fairmount with over 2600 cars, a parade of neon, a daylight parade, vendors galore and great music, dances, prizes and celebrities. If I am ever cloned, I’ll report on the Ducktail Run in Gas City and the Rebel Run in Muncie, Indiana. But until then, luxuriate in the James Dean Run extravaganza.

Mostly Many Mercurys

I’m making this page for me, because I didn’t get to make one last year. If you do what you love, you’re bound to be good at it. Mercury lovers, love along with me.

   Waiting for me in the sunlight, my pearls and gold-dust Fast Eddie Mercury. Stand reverently beside her. Someday she will be mine. Someday, some way. For sure, Ed promises, as soon as I win the lottery.

You remember this car from last year’s paeon of praise at pearls.html. Ed Lepold, a Michelangelo of leadsleds, made it.

They announced the winning Merc for next year’s poster and tee shirt. No one I asked could point it out to me. The car’s name is Calypso, owned by Steve Grable(?). (I can’t really read my husband’s notes.) General concensus is that it is probably this car:

This is a luscious car. I heard that every other year, the committee choses a fancy car, and on the alternate years they choose a basic Mercury. So we shall see whether we guessed right, that this is the Calypso.

    Lavender pearl 1950 Merc built for his own use by KOA Hall of Fame builder Doug Thompson.

This is a little sad. You will be seeing a whole page on this car if Waymon Hawkins of Brookville, Ohio sends me the specs. This was the personal car of Doug Thompson who only sold it because he had to pay medical bills. There was a little growling from other owners — they noticed it, all right! Another stunning beauty under the shade of the oaks in the Mercury Corral at the James Dean Run. Made the top 20 Merc cut.

    The car that started it all for me. In 1996 this was fascinating, and for sale. In 1997 I met the new owner and learned what he had done to it since he bought it. (Just electrical and solenoid tricks. It was almost perfect when he bought it.) This year the owner has been too busy to show it. He has taken it to only three shows all year. But we got to visit it again, at the James Dean Run. Maybe he wants to sell it, since he can’t take time to enjoy it….

    Ginny and Alfred Gregory brought her baby blues back this year, from Maryland. Mmmmmm, this car has its own page from last year. I’ll add some pictures to it!

    This is probably my husband’s favorite of the show. It stopped him dead in his tracks. I kept telling him it wasn’t a James Dean car, but he didn’t care. He really loved this one.

What can you say about a car this beautiful? Just "congratulations." Wow.

Please visit the second page of cars to see more of these fine rides. Then there will be a page for the awards, one for car shirts and one for Joe Bailon I hope….

the index for the 1998 James Dean Festival,

This is all part of the Contents of DEANERS e-zine

Here’s Otto’s cover, the parent of this family of magazines.


This page made by Sandra Weinhardt. Send all additions and corrections for the Bluffton pages to us at editor@tentativetimes.net

The contents of this page but not the links to outside resources of course) are ©copyright 98 by Sandra Weinhardt, all rights reserved except where otherwise specified.