Yorba Linda Couple Collect Automobile-Related Items and a Bit of This and That

Right away you get the feeling that things are different at the Chappell home in Yorba Linda. For instance, it has a gas station pump in front and two others in the backyard, along with a working telephone booth, pet chickens, five antique cars, two trucks and 500 signs.

Although there is antique furniture, a working slot machine, collections of hand fans and perfume bottles and old-time movie posters featuring such actors as Johnnie Mack Brown, most everything else has to do with cars.

“I just happen to like cars and the things that go into them,” said Paul V. Chappell, 42, who makes a living painting and repairing homes. He has cars dating to 1932, 1934, 1935, 1936 and 1940, plus 1949 and 1953 pickup trucks. Also a 1963 Porsche.

He said his 15-year-old son can hardly wait to get his driver’s license.

An outing for the family--which includes wife, Janice Chappell, 39, and their two children--usually consists of visits to antique car swap meets to buy parts and trade with other car collectors. “It’s like going out on a treasure hunt every time we go looking for stuff,” she said.

His current craze is collecting glass globes that once sat atop gas station pumps. “They’re tough to find,” he said. “Everyone is looking for them, and they can be very expensive.”

His globe collection includes those from Shell, Texaco, Buffalo and Sinclair gas companies. “I imagine if I put globes out front, people would want to buy them like the gas station pump,” he said, noting that he also gets offers to buy the 1934 Ford he drives to the store and elsewhere.

His wife, a former model who stays fit with five-a-week Jazzercise sessions, finds happiness in the yesteryear, but in a different way.

“Sometimes I’ll put on clothes from another era and go to lunch with a friend in our 1934 Ford sedan,” she said. “It’s a fantasy to me. Maybe I should have been born in a different time.”

The Chappells started collecting and restoring cars about 10 years ago, “and everything else just kind of goes along with the car.”

But while he zeroes in on car items, he might have a hard time explaining why he has a cast iron, pot belly stove that once warmed a train’s caboose.

“I just happened to like it,” he declared.

The church wanted to raise some money so it cleverly held a free car wash with sponsors pledging money on the number of cars washed, sort of like a jog-a-thon that pays by the mile.

In this case, reports Michael W. Patton, youth minister of the sponsoring Anaheim First Christian Church, 13 volunteers washed 61 cars and raised a little more than $800 that will go toward building homes for the needy in Mexico.

“We’re kind of happy we didn’t put much advertising out on this,” Patton said. “We probably couldn’t handle more cars.”

But the weary car washers had enough energy for one more. They washed the church bus.

When Gene Starr, principal of Los Coyotes Elementary School in La Palma, had the chance to cruise on the USS Gary, a guided missile frigate, he got two thrills--it’s his school’s “adopted” ship and he traveled with his son, who is a ship’s officer.

“One of the things that surprised me was the number of sailors who didn’t receive mail,” said Starr, who rode along as part of a special Navy program for family members. “One sailor told me: ‘You don’t know how great it made me feel to get a letter from pen pals at your school.’ ” He explained that his girlfriend had just dumped him, Starr said.

As a school project, fifth- and sixth-graders write to sailors aboard the Gary, and the 388 students followed the ship’s recent 48,000-nautical-mile cruise, which was outlined on a large map in the school cafeteria.

Starr, 59, of Fountain Valley, said he once had another experience on a ship: “I was in the merchant marine for six miserable, sick months.”

He said he liked this trip better.

Acknowledgments--William Brashears, a security guard who pulled Loara High School graduate Jennifer Willhoff, 18, from her car, in which she was severely burned, was honored with a plaque for his heroic deed during a benefit program at the Anaheim school. The event raised about $3,000 to help pay Willhoff’s hospital bills and rehabilitation costs. Saddleback High School junior Katrina Wilson of Santa Ana was named Miss Black Orange County.