In the second half of the fifties, I was in high school in NJ, one of the “car guys,” as opposed to the “jocks,” or the”geeks.” Every cent I earned went into a ’39 Ford DeLuxe rumble seat roadster. Equipped with the usual goodies – 3 Stromberg carbs, Edelbrock finned aluminum heads, glasspaks – and a few less usual items like its vacuum-operated Columbia two-speed rear, it was my Deep Cherry Metallic pride and joy.
The problem was finding – and affording – parts, a situation shared by two friends who had ’40 Standard coupes, almost duplicates of the ’39 DeLuxe. Remember, this was long before restoration was a big deal and before replica parts were available. Salvage yards were our haunt.
We must have visited half of the junkyards within three hours of our homes. One of us heard of a small yard in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, down behind the Hotel Bethlehem. We visited one day and asked the usual question: “Have you got any ‘39/’40 Ford parts?” To our amazement, the crusty old coot who owned the place said, “Yeah, seems like there’s some old Ford stuff in the hayloft of the big barn.”
As we found our way up to the hayloft, we guessed we’d find mostly unusable, rusted, cruddy parts. Boy, were we ever wrong! There in the hayloft was a pile of parts that people like us would kill for. Complete sets of fenders, still wrapped in cosmolene and brown paper. Pristine bumpers wrapped the same way, Complete grille assemblies. And headlight rims, brand new and still perfect. And those beautiful ’39 taillights, 2 pairs of them. And the less attractive ’40 chevron-style taillights.
I can’t remember how much we paid for it, but we bought the whole lot. Drove home and borrowed a truck to come back the next day and pick it all up. After we had skimmed off the stuff the three of us needed for our Fords, we looked up other Ford enthusiasts and sold the rest, for enough to cover all our costs.
We didn’t find a car in that barn behind the Hotel Bethlehem, but it seems to me what we found was even better: the fountain of youth for two ‘40s and a ’39.
