I buy the oddest thing I can find. Just like me, it’s got to be unusual.

Jim Mitchell’s roots go back to the early settlers of the Santa Clarita Valley. That may explain his front yard full of vintage pickup trucks, a house full of Coca-Cola memorabilia and a mustache that is straight off a tintype. Mitchell lives in Newhall with his wife, Gayle. My great-great-grandfather, Col. John Mitchell, homesteaded here about 100 years ago in the Saugus-Newhall area. Now it’s considered Valencia. That’s the more elite part of town. He had about 3,000 acres up in the Placerita Canyon area.

I was raised on the old home ranch. We raised cattle. I remember walking on stilts, riding bicycles and never wearing shoes. I rode a horse and drove a tractor, the whole thing. I loved it. It was the greatest way to be brought up.

I started out driving parts about 30 years ago for a Ford dealer. I got out of that and went into construction for about 10 years. There was no future in construction as far as I was concerned. It was all non-union stuff. So I went back to a union, a teamster’s job. I drive a truck, heavy duty stuff, mostly in the Valley and Los Angeles area.

I had a friend with a long mustache, a French guy. He waxed it real thin. I decided I was going to do what he’s doing. I started blow drying this one here with hair spray. That makes it look bigger. It takes about six years to get this long. I’ve had this one for eight years. I just got a trophy down at the Conejo Valley Days in Thousand Oaks. They had most unusual, most unique, longest, best groomed. They had beards and sideburns, contests for the whole bit. I won the most unique. I’ve won it two or three times.

I had a pickup truck about 20 years ago, and about 10 years ago I bought another one. It led to another one and another one. I’ve got nine of them from 1908 to 1956. We go to a lot of parades, car shows and street rod runs where you park in the street and thousands of people come through and look at them. We have a Christmas tree run up at Ojai. It costs us $8 a car to enter, and much of that money goes to a charity. They raffle off oil, transmissions--you can win just about anything.

I had my old Model A pickup on display at the Country Scene down there by Hansen Dam. Probably a million people took my picture. They just loved my old truck. It’s totally barnyard style. I put a bearskin rug on top of it. All this old junk I put out, old signs, old skulls. I’ve got some old hand-turning grinders for sharpening tools. Old people see that, and it brings back so many memories that they just love it. Younger people don’t know what that grinder was for, and they want to know.

When we drive the freeways in the Model A, people will go by us going 70 miles an hour and all of a sudden they hit their brakes and wait till we catch up. They slow down to look at the pickup and when they see the mustache their mouths fall open. They take pictures or give us the thumbs up sign. I’ve seen a lot of near accidents doing that.

We go to two or three swap meets on Sundays. I buy the oddest thing I can find. Just like me, it’s got to be unusual. The last time I bought a Coke machine. We had a heck of a problem bringing it back. It was a small machine for Coca-Cola, but it was pretty big for the pickup.

We like Coca-Cola things. We’ve got the whole house full, walls in the living room, stuff down the hall, bedrooms full of it, stuff on the patio. You’re looking at Coke signs from the ‘20s and ‘30s. we’ve got about 60 clocks. We have probably 300 framed advertisements from National Geographic, Post and Life magazines. We ran across a sign that said, “Coca-Cola Drive” at a swap meet, and I put it on the fence in the front yard.

Many people go out and pay a couple hundred bucks to put a nice picture on the wall. I’ve thought about it. I’d rather put a couple hundred dollars on two or three clocks or some signs, something that’s going to bring back some memories to somebody. And 20 years from now it’s going to be worth some money. If you invest in the old, it’s going to be worth more than if you invest in the new.