Thanksgiving Day 1990, Bodywork and PaintA year had gone by and not much of anything had been done to my Camaro but today was the day and while mom was inside doing her thing with making the feast and preparing for the rest of the extended family to arrive; dad and I were busy out in the garage looking over and inspecting my car.. Looking back on it now, I had spent my childhood up to that point in the garage, junk yards/salvage yards working on cars (or in my case being the wrench monkey or “hey hold this”) but this was something different.. This was gonna be MY car..!!. As we changed the oil, coolant, replaced the plugs, cap & rotor and drain & refilled the gas tank; it was time to fire this beast. With a new battery set in ready to light the spark to the “mountain motor” of a 307, I stepped on the throttle several times while turning the key. And then all of a sudden with a belch and a fart the engine roared to life but I quickly realized this wasn’t as cool as sitting in dads 68 when he would start it up and we would head out to a car show or cruise-in.. Even though the experience was short lived as fuel was spraying out of every orifice of the mighty 2bbl the engine was alive and I had myself a running, almost driving ride.. Oh yeah, to say I had a shit eatin’ grin on my face the entire day would have been an understatement..
As the year came to an end, I quickly realized that we had a long way to go with getting my car presentable and ready for the road. As many have done, this was not the only project that was going on in the Cook household. Dad was working on the first pace car during this time as well.. So it was expected that my car was taking a back seat but we would work on it from time to time. This was fine by me as I was completely out of cash and didn’t have the income being a 12yr old kid as what money I did save was gone from the purchase of the car or at least the majority of the payment. But dad being the great father picked up the slack and helped me with whatever was needed, which was a lot as the car had to be put on a frame machine and pulled back out. It was funny to hear the guys in the body shop of Wilson Co Motors. The main frame guy was concerned as he said that ole frame machine was ah poppin’ and ah moanin’ and making sounds they had never heard before.. Thankfully it all worked out and the frame and body was back into its somewhat original shape. It also got a GM quarter on the passenger side and GM fender on the driver. Once the car was back and the carb rebuilt it was time to hang a good used passenger door on the car. With a little persuasion and a little luck the door was on and everything looked good.
Next on the check off list was the paint.. Being that the car was originally Frost Green with dark green interior; I like many at the time, was not a fan of the color.. Regret it now but what’s done is done. I wanted to go with a blue and wanted to swap the interior to black and from the words of my dad; “that interior is too cherry to pull it out and swap it and until your ass gets a job, Im not paying for it!!” Needless to say the interior stayed green.. Although he tried to persuade me that Frost was would be pretty color in a base clear; I knew what I wanted and if I couldn’t have it then I wanted Rallye Green.. Looking back; I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground and should have listened to the old man but what did he know.. I was almost a teenager now and I KNEW what was and what WASN’T cool… We are in 1991 by this time and we are taking the car over to the paint and body guys house occasionally on weekends so we would do the prep and work with him looking over to make sure we are doing everything we needed to do correctly or at least in this eyes since he would be the one laying the paint. This helped with the cost plus we learned a little bit about that side of the restorations. But before we started doing the sanding, blocking, filling and priming we needed to get it down to bare metal and a fresh surface to see what we were working with here.. You have to realize that Lebanon being a small town there were a lot of things done; like in many small towns across America, that most today would think as environmentally damaging or dangerous. The local Walmart had a small little self-serve car wash in front of it and to the right and just behind the Hardees.. So with $20 bucks in hand we venture off into said Walmart and get us a couple gallons of aircraft paint stripper.. And you guessed it rolled on over to the very back of the car wash stalls and began pouring out and spreading the stripper onto the cars paint.. Then with a few quarters and a putty knife we spatula’d that old lacquer paint off the car and pressure washed it into the drain.!!. Which btw just happened to dump off into the local town creek.. Yeah we were dumb but we didn’t know any better! After running out and sending me back to Walmart to buy the last of their stripper I come walking up to dad talking with a man that seemed a little concerned as to what we were doing.. Come to find out one of our local “good Samaritan” tree hugger types called the owner of the car wash to tell them that someone was washing toxic chemicals down his drains. As I walked up I asked dad who was that? Thinking it was a fellow car guy curious about the car. He said that was the owner and he’s giving us 30 mins to finish up and make it look like we were never here. Needless to say the stall was spotless and everything was diluted down so that no living creatures were harmed as a result.
Since I was at the age that sports were a major part of my past time and since most of my games were on Saturdays; dad would do the majority of the bodywork so I could continue with my sports.. Obviously Im not in the Hall of Fame or a multi-millionaire retired athlete but the fact that he sacrificed his time and energy so I could try new things and expand my abilities was to say the least, amazingly generous. Now it’s time to lay the paint and we found a another local paint booth that we were given the ok to use but the problem was the heat in the booth was down and it was 40° outside so we ended up bringing a kerosene heater to try and warm everything up past 70°.. As one would imagine the old kerosene heater trick didn’t work out so well and we ended up with a butt load of orange peel.. So that set things back a couple months but finally in the spring of 1992 we got a clean coat of base clear and back to the house to finish up.. Now remember this is gonna be a teenagers first car so this wasn’t a top shelf A+++ paint job but for a couple of rednecks from Tennessee it turned out pretty good!! Of course later that summer the car was finished and back to looking like a kickass Camaro.. The major problem with all of this was I was only 14!!! Argghhh.. I did however with dad riding shotgun would drive that beast every chance I got.. My parents even took it on vacation the following year because.. Well.. They could!! That and it had A/C and it was a Camaro obviously. Another memorable moment was when we took the car over to Mrs. Brockett’s house to show her what her old car looks like now. As she came out of her front door she looked it over and said, “ see you boys put one of those humps on the hood and that little flip on the trunk”.. You could tell her seeing her old car even though it wasn’t exactly as how she remembered it gave her joy and happiness to see it back on the car again.. Sadly though not long after that Mrs. Brockett passed away. Later that year we entered it into the Lebanon Christmas Parade and I watched as they (mom & dad) cruised it down West Main Street with a big red bow on the front and rear bumpers; I must say it looked pretty dang good and I know Mrs. Brockett would have been proud..!!.
This picture was from that Thanksgiving Day after we had put it back under the shed. Remember that shit eatin' grin..?.
Pop's workin' hard on getting that fender nice and smooth...
Finally to have some visual progress of all the hard work and to get some shiny paint!!
All the trim and chrome are back on. Also notice that I knew early on that the mighty 307 would not stay between the fenders forever.. 
Christmas Parade! With mom just ah wavin' and a smilin'. 
