“Bab” is my father. When I first started talking, I called him “Babby” instead of daddy, and that just kind of stuck. Eventually, I guess I got too old for that, and so it got shortened to “Bab”… It sounds kind of weird to you probably, but to me, his name is “Bab” – and nothing could seem more normal… Bab’s not, though! And I’m sure these tales will veer sideways occasionally to tell some of the classic “Bab Stories”…
Anyway, once this kid had told me that there were E-Type project cars for sale at this shop where he worked in Wilmington, DE, I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Bab. It’s not so much that I wanted an E-Type – or ANY car really. It was more of an in-born desire to find, buy, and fix junk! I had basically been raised on this concept, and Bab had bought, fixed, and sold lots of “junk” – all kinds of stuff. We were always “exploring” – which often meant just wandering around and picking up cool abandoned things here and there – everything ranging from glass electrical insulators out in the woods while hunting, to whole cars. I remember this one time when I was out playing in the woods with a friend of mine in about 5th grade, and we came across this giant pile of junk in the woods – it was actually a farm dump – which was a popular thing to come across when hunting, etc. So I came home and told him, and got his usual response, which was always a very serious “Where.” – and a twinkle in his eye. We went back there, and dragged home some type of horse-drawn seeder – which he promptly restored and placed in our living room.
In addition, I knew he was into – and could fix – old cars. He had a ’57 T-bird for a while when I was younger, and had recently messed around with a Model T speedster, but sold it in disgust when his father passed away suddenly. His latest adventure was the restoration of a 1970 Ventnor 31-foot wood cabin cruiser, and we spent our Summers at that time on the Sassafras River in the upper Chespeake Bay. He had also dragged me to Hershey twice by that point – at 10 with my grandparents and I HATED it, and at 12 with just us and we had lots of fun scrounging around for parts for the Model T speedster – so I had seen the old car hobby in action, and knew that old junk cars COULD be fixed.
So you can imagine my surprise when I went home and told him I had gotten a line on some dead “XKEs” (whatever the hell they are – I still had no clue…) – which he was so hot on a few months earlier, and he said, “Charlie, you can’t restore a car – you don’t know the first thing about it – and you’re sure as hell not turning my house into an auto shop. I think that whole idea is WAY over your head.” And I’m just thinking, “Ok, dude – whatever – I want a Jeep anyway…”
Well, I guess thinking about it now, he must have gotten up the next day and driven STRAIGHT down there – it actually was not far from where he worked – a British car shop called “Open Touring” – owned by Kevin Fernsler in Wilmington, DE. And I guess it took him 2 days to figure this all out, because it was Thursday night at dinner when he dropped the bomb…
We always ate dinner as a family – I mean EVERY night like clockwork around 5:30 or 6:00. It was early May, and we were eating at the picnic table on our back deck – It was my parents, myself, and my sister who was three years younger – 11. I was about 14 and a half, just finishing my freshman year of high school.
“Well, Peggy… I went down to that British car place that Charlie was talking about, and if it’s OK with you, I think we’re going to get one of those Jags and fix it up for his first car.”
Huh? What?… OK – Fuck Jeeps! I switched gears RIGHT THEN AND THERE – and I still had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what an “XKE” was – I’m not sure I could have identified ANY Jaguar!
So Bab goes on to explain how he is going to build the guy that owns the shop a porch on his house, and we are getting the Jag in return. AND – I’m paying for all of the supplies by using the money I had been saving up to buy an Avon inflatable to blast around the river on (I guess I thought I was going to be James Bond or Aqua-man or something – remember, I was really just a kid between the ears…) – which was about $900.
Once we got through all of this, Bab got up and grabbed some photocopied articles and ads from old magazines that I THINK Kevin gave him, but he could have gone to a library and copied them himself for all I know. That’s where I got my first look at an E-Type – I can see it like it’s in my hand right now – it was a page that had three photos on it – a roadster, coupe, and 2+2, but it was black and white and from a crappy 80’s copier. “It’s like this one up here – it’s a convertible” he pointed out where he had drawn 2 stars next to it.
My first impression was that it looked like a cigar on wheels. The image was so bad, that you couldn’t really even make out the features, but there were a few other articles, and I got the basic idea. I can’t say I thought much of the shape – in 1986, it looked SO different from anything I had seen before. You have to realize that there was NO Internet, NO nothing. So if you didn’t see a car on the street, it didn’t really ever even exist – you had no real way of finding out about it as a 14-year-old…
But I just liked the whole idea – I didn’t even know why, really – I was just pumped on the whole idea of fixing up this fast thing and I was feeding off Bab’s excitement I think.
But there was no time to waste on all this – Thursday night was Boy Scouts at 7:00, and we jumped in the car and headed down there – photocopies in hand, and talking about the new project the whole way. I was REALLY into Boy Scouts, and Bab had been at one point a few years ago, but when we moved, he never really got into the new troop, and that was fine – him checking out of Scouts actually did me a favor as I was then able to grow into my own there. At the time, I was a Star scout and was the troop quartermaster in charge of all the equipment. I guess the writing was on the wall that I would be the next “Senior Patrol Leader” (the “head scout” of the troop of about 60 kids) – but I didn’t realize all of that at the time.
My Scoutmaster probably did – and he had started to take a very keen interest in me lately, whereas we hadn’t really hit it off up to this point. He and my father were like oil and water – they had alot of different ideas about things – so I of course thought he was an idiot. He was actually a really good man and a great Scoutmaster, and I learned alot from him – but that was all yet to come too. But we had started to become a little closer I guess, and so I was very excited to tell him this news. He was the same age as my dad – he grew up in the 60’s too…
Now keep in mind, over the next few days, I told EVERYONE about this, so this one only sticks out because of his reaction…
I walked up to him and said something to the effect of, “Hey Mr. Bernhardt, look at this car that I’m getting – my dad and I are going to fix it up together for when I turn 16.” – and handed him the photocopied page with the three E-Types, the roadster at the top with two stars drawn next to it. I remember this like it was 5 minutes ago – I could take you to that church and show you the exact spot of the floor where we were standing…
He stopped, took the paper and looked at it – for a long time – much longer than it would take to “get it”. Then he kind of looked up over the top of the paper and down at me and said, “Charlie, your father loves you very much.” – and he handed me the papers back and walked away…
