On the Road Again
There is nothing 15-year-old Brande Reilley would rather do this summer than putter through the wheat fields of Kansas in a noisy, rattling, 72-year-old truck with no air-conditioning and no radio.
It’s a vintage truck Brande helped put together--a shiny blue 1928 Model A Ford pickup built from a rickety chassis and scraps of metal in Fillmore High School’s auto restoration class. Those hot, barren roads she and three of her classmates will travel make up the course of a national cross-country race that, if they win, could mean thousands of dollars in scholarship money.
And the teacher, Lin Thomas of Fillmore High School, happens to be Brande’s grandfather, who taught her to love old trucks.
For Brande, this is an opportunity of a lifetime.
It’s one that Thomas, 60, gives to a handful of students each year, helping them to restore an antique car and taking them on the Great Race, a two-week, nationwide trek of pre-1950 vehicles sponsored by the History Channel. The race starts in Atlanta June 17 and ends in Pasadena June 30.
In its third year of competing, the Fillmore team--made up of three adult drivers and four student navigators--will go up against nine other schools and youth groups from around the country. But they are the only entrants who actually built their vehicle from scratch, Thomas said.
He created the auto restoration class as a way to merge his “disease-like” obsession for old cars with his passion for teaching, he said.
Every year, he starts the students off with a pile of rusted, twisted car parts collected from junkyards, swap meets, and sometimes even metal scraps found in river bottoms. Through the nine-month school year--as the students learn the principles of restoration, including welding, sheet metal and machining--they earn the right to work on the car.
It seems to be working.
Every day at 6 a.m., when Thomas arrives at the shop, students are waiting for him. When the bell rings at the end of class, he is chasing them out, though some beg to let them stay through the next period. After school, they are back.
“For a lot of them, this is the biggest thing in their life,” Thomas said. “And it fits right in with what I want to teach them. It may start out junk, but if you apply a good work ethic, it’s possible to create something valuable.”
Brande, the only girl in Thomas’ third-period class, said not only was she eager to take a class with her grandfather, she was sick of being clueless about the car terminology her guy friends are fond of throwing around.
Now, she can hold her own in a conversation about how an engine works or how a body is put together. And she is no longer afraid of the sparks from the welding torch, though that is still fodder for teasing.
“They always make fun of me,” she said, rolling her eyes.
The car and Thomas’ program have evolved over the years.
This year’s Model A is equipped with a gear-splitter for better hill-climbing and a more precise speedometer. But still, the little pickup can only go about 55 mph and, as Thomas attests to, doesn’t always stay in one piece along the way.
And the Great Race, once out of reach to the average Fillmore teenager, is an event now ingrained in the school’s culture, said Fillmore High Principal John Wilber. It’s a fete the whole town rallies behind, said Mayor Don Gunderson.
Nearly everyone in the small, tightknit city--from Rotary clubs to church groups--has chipped in to help fund the cause. The car costs about $8,000 to build, and the price tag for the cross-country trip is about $15,000, Thomas said.
The money is scraped together through corporate sponsorships and from various club meetings, where the kids deliver presentations on what they’ve done and solicit donations.
“It’s really a neat thing, what Lin is doing,” Gunderson said. “Our kids don’t realize they’re as good as they are, because they don’t get many chances to get out of Fillmore and compete with other people.”
Last year, the team came within 11 seconds of the top prize.
This time, they are going to take first place. They can feel it.
“Oh, we’ll win,” said 16-year-old Curtis French, the only student on this year’s team who participated last year. “We have a better truck with better stuff in it.”
It may be their last chance.
After 36 years of teaching, Thomas is planning to retire at the end of next year. This year’s Great Race is supposed to be his last.
Meanwhile, the focus is on this year’s odyssey, which will take the old Model A to places like Hendersonville, N.C.; Sedalia, Mo.; and Topeka, Kan.
Brande is looking forward to the excitement of the cross-country race, to the sunsets and mountain vistas of the American landscape, and to bonding with her grandpa.
“He’s someone to look up to,” she said as she filed down a pesky piece of plywood above the Model A’s windshield in the shop class last week. “He devotes his life to the school and the students.”
