A Happy Father’s Day

This video requires a commitment from you. It’s pushing three hours long. In TikTok world, it’s the equivalent of a trip to the moon. But it’s worth it, for various reasons.

The Tube is awash with people bringing a trailer and rescuing cars from barns, and from other guys with trailers. I’ve watched a lot of them. I especially enjoy the fellows that put the cars back the way they were when they were new. The fellows that paint 1970s Toyotas the color of a stripper’s toenails after adding a supercharged 428, not so much.

I think these fellers at Turnin’ Rust are a little different, and more commendable. Like many who stumble on internet notoriety, they’ve cycled through a handful of names while deciding which side of the bread the butter is on. They’ve been at it much longer, and without a camera pointed at them for most of it. They’re a father/son team (with little sister recording), laboring in obscurity in a very obscure place, Bogata Texas. It’s pronounced “buh GAY tah,” I think. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I used to live in Maine, and we pronounce Calais “callous,” so I never cast any pronunciation aspersions.

Well, however you say it, Bogata Texas is The Last Picture Show in the flesh. It’s been shedding population for forty or fifty years, and has been whittled down from 1,500 people to about 1,000. The Bushes, Wyatt and Lance, have been fixing cars in Bogata for whoever’s left. Their skill set is an interesting one. They’re completely accustomed to resurrecting autos too far gone for anyone else to even attempt them, simply to get them back to running, and being useful again.

This isn’t Jay Leno’s operating room for Maseratis. While it’s interesting to see old supercars getting their very molecules polished enough to become museum pieces, I can’t count it as useful behavior. Making something work again, restoring its usefulness for regular people, is something else again. And just how many guys who’ve had a taste of TV notoriety have a zillion-dollar personal car collection? I’ve lost track. It can be a little off-putting. A museum for one person sounds like something Saddam Hussein would enjoy. Or maybe Tutankhamen.

The Turnin’ Rust folk’s specialty appears to be old Volkswagens. That’s not what I’d expect from someone fixing cars in the flatlands between Dallas and Oklahoma, but what do I know? Beetles were cheap and easy to fix back in the day. My brother had a VW, and it was a blessing that it was easy to fix, because it needed fixing all the damn time. But that was just a testament to its value to the impoverished. Cheap enough to buy, easy enough to fix is a mostly forgotten set of requirements for a daily driver. Cars today are mostly interchangeable, and ultimately disposable when they need substantial repairs.

The father/son team features a series of videos with no speaking, and no music. Those are a tonic for a weary internaut. They work together wordlessly, each knowing the other’s minds, and accomplish all sorts of difficult things without any chafing between them. The stuck bolts provide the only friction.

This video has plenty of discussion in it. It’s not surprising. Getting a 1947 International truck running after being left to rust in a field for decades is hard. I’ve picked this video out of their catalog of similar projects because it featured the longest list of seemingly insuperable impediments to their mission: to simply get the thing to run.

The opportunities to give up for good reason that they squandered along the way boggled my mind. They never complained, never flagged. No matter how hard it was, they kept going. And like all of their videos, there’s no cursing, and no high-fives. When things go badly, they regroup and continue. When things go right, they thank the lord instead of strutting and preening. And they do it all, literally, as shade tree mechanics. Their truck tire engine stand is marvelous.

And the grin on the phlegmatic, avuncular dad’s face at around 2:48:00 alone is worth the price of admission. The son is grinning, too, but it’s different. I know dad’s grin. I’ve experienced it once or twice with my own sons. If you could bottle it, you’d sell more of it than Jack Daniel’s ever could.