We had 22 members and 3 visitors in attendance.
Our visitors were Boyd Fox, Dick Lunsford, and Linda
Lee Atkinson-Page (now our newest member).
Randall Thomas, our drive chairman, has planned
some drives through parts of West Virginia for the new
year. If you have any ideas for your favorite drive,
please contact Randall.
The program for our first meeting was a video of the
1988 LeMans race featuring the Groupe 44 Jaguar
racing team.
We now have the new club “Tee” shirts for sale and
the club sweat shirts are also available.
The next club meeting will be February 14, 2002.
Please plan to be with us.
Your newsletter editor is floundering and will soon go
under if not rescued by you, the ABCS members.
Contrary to popular belief, there is not a river of
interesting articles about British cars flowing in front of
my house. Oh sure, I can fill space each month with
funny stories received on the Internet but you would
soon get bored with such trivia.
Send me pictures, upcoming events, tech articles,
anything you would like to see in print and I will gladly
credit you with the information in the next edition. The
newsletter is published on the 1st of each month, so
your submittal deadline is the 25th. You can use e-
mail or snail mail, whichever is most convenient. Just
use something!!!
The 3rd annual Colonial Vintage Car Show & Antique
Fair is on the green at beautiful Walsingham Academy
in historic Williamsburg, VA, Saturday, March 16,
2002.
This is a popular vote car show with judging and
balloting conducted by the registrants. Registration
fee is $15 and is due soon.
For more information, contact Rob Mann at 757-872-7227,
manns@mindspring.com
or Doug Wilson at 757-565-4668,
midoridew311@cs.com.
I told you about my first Big Healey that I bought as a
29th birthday present for myself and then the keys fell
through the floorboards in front of the Barter Theatre.
Well, there’s more.
At the same time, I bought a 2nd Healey 3000 that also
had promise. I purchased both cars from a preacher
who lived between Blountville, TN and Johnson City.
We spent the better part of an afternoon rounding up
the various parts of both cars from all over the
countryside. This car was wrecked. I mean really
wrecked. The right front corner was smashed very
badly. Even to my untrained eye, the damage
extended beyond the fender into that part of the car
behind the front fender. I later learned that this part
was called a “front shroud”. No problem; you just buy
another front shroud.
NO ONE HAD SHROUDS.
None listed for sale in the Healey Club Newsletter,
none were available anywhere. But I had an ace yet
to play. On the way to Galax, VA., at Hillsville, I had
found a gold mine. There was a house there where
Healeys of all shapes and sizes abounded. All I had
to do was to talk that guy out of a shroud and we were
in business.
I went there and found Mr. Woodrow Worrell at home.
Mr. Worrell listened to my sad tale of woe and then
politely told me that he didn’t have any shrouds for
sale, either. As I pleaded with him to sell me a shroud
from one of the many derelict Healeys that festooned
the fields around his home, he appeared to ‘nod off’
and would stay that way for a while. He would come
to and appear to have heard what I was saying, but he
wouldn’t budge at all. “I just couldn’t sell a part from
one of them cars”, he would say.
vDamn. Stuck again!
So, I tried the only other approach I could think of.
Out of desperation, I offered to sell Mr. Worrell this car
of mine for $500. He asked about its condition and I
told him frankly that it was wrecked and badly in need
of fender and shroud. Undaunted by that news, Mr.
Worrell inquired of the general state of the car other
than that. I explained that it had a good title and was
a very low mileage late model Healey 3000 with a
good interior and relatively unused top. Mr. Worrell
stated that he wanted to see the car, but thought he
might buy it and that I would be hearing from him. I
returned home and continued my agricultural pursuits,
part of what I did in that bicentennial year of 1976.
Lo and behold, out of the blue one Saturday morning,
my Mother phoned to tell me that some strange man
was there at her house to look at my car. It was, of
course, none other than Mr. Worrell.
When I eventually arrived at my Mother’s house, Mr.
Worrell was there and asleep. Mr. Worrell suffered
from narcolepsy, a fairly rare disease, that would put
him to sleep in the midst of a conversation, only to
have him wake up 30 minutes later and pick up right
where he had left off as though he had just blinked his
eyes! That was particularly hard on the other person,
because what do you do for that twenty or forty-five
minute lapse when you know he’s going to come back
around and expect you to be right there where he left
you. I never knew what else to do except just sit and
wait, thinking he might find out he was sick if I wasn’t
there!
I showed Mr. Worrell the car and I could see that he
appreciated it. Even for a wrecked car, this one still
had plenty of class. I suppose it was the fact that it
had obviously new tires and a new convertible top and
a well-maintained air about it. Plus, it was red and
many of us are suckers still for red sports cars. Mr.
Worrell had his sights set on both of the Healeys and
on my Grandmother’s Murphy bed. It was a little hard
to get him refocused solely on that wrecked Healey,
especially as it all had to be done between naps.
Mr. Worrell thought it over for a while, then pulled out
a wad of bills that could have choked a horse from his
trousers pocket and offered me $250. I told him that if
the car wasn’t worth the $500 I was asking for it, then I
could always keep it until it was worth that much. He
then extracted the other $250 and handed me that.
After I signed the title and gave it to him, he said that
“the boys would be along in a couple of days to pick it
up”.
Sure enough, on Wednesday of the following week,
Mr. Worrell’s two sons and another man showed up in
a huge pickup truck with a towing dolly attached to
retrieve the Healey. We collected the various parts for
the car, rolled it out of Mother’s basement, hooked it
up and it disappeared, literally.
Passing through Hillsville a couple of years after that, I
didn’t find Mr. Worrell at home. I stopped at the
Worrell carpet Company in nearby Galax and inquired
after Mr. Worrell. He was there and asleep, of course.
I talked with him and one of his sons (who had picked
up the car) for some time. Healey people do like to
talk about their cars!
The car was in a body shop undergoing restoration
just when Ol’ Bud had time to work on it. Ten years
later, Mr. Worrell had passed on, but the same son
had the same story to tell: “Ol’ Bud still wasn’t through
with it”! I never found out what became of that car but
would love to know. The car was a ’66 model, serial
no. HBJ8L34393. If you hear from it, let me know!
President: Robert Hall, 423-262-0402, carandplaneman@hotmail.com
Vice-President: Gael Bright, 423-239-4247, sgbright@chartertn.net
Secretary: Clarence (CC) Goodson, 423-928-2023
Treasurer: Al Bradley, 540-628-4763, bradal@naxs.com
Programs: John Hanlin, 423-239-5603
Driving Events: Randall Thomas, 606-432-5153 rthomas1@se-tel.com
Newsletter: Jane Ogle, 423-282-5687, jogle@johnsoncitytn.org
Webpage: Herren Floyd, 423-239-5455, herrenfloyd@chartertn.net