Sunnybell
Novice
Jun 18, 2010, 10:15 PM
Post #2 of 2
(989 views)
|
Timothy Sheard, a 62-year-old mystery novelist, was leaning against his cherry red car, which was drawing mind from passers-by on an otherwise silent Brooklyn street.
The car was a 1969 Avanti II. It looked both retro and futuristic, something that might hold been driven by Serge Gainsbourg in 1960s Paris,Abercrombie Fitch Clothing or perhaps by Neo from “The Matrix.”
Mr. Sheard said he enjoyed the challenge of taking a long trip in a 40-year-old car. “My wife doesn’t acquire this — it’s a guy thing,” he said, distilling the challenge to four simple words: “Can we create it? Can we create it? Can we create it?
“But I don’t judge I’ll execute it again. Next time, I’ll rent a car.”
“I called Studebaker International and said, ‘I need a brake part,’” he continued, referring to a company that specializes in Studebaker parts. “Well, they still had parts for it — most of the parts, not total of them.”
In Ohio, he lost electrical power.
After getting a jump-start,Vibram Five Fingers he drove to another “tiny tiny garage,” where the mechanic made a diagnosis of alternator failure.
“So he goes in the back,” Mr. Sheard recalled, “and he just happens to hold an alternator for the small-block Chevy engine from the ’60s. It had been rebuilt. It was like the ‘Twilight Zone.’”
The portion arrived the next day. “I found a little, tiny mechanic, no name, two young guys,” Mr. Sheard said. “The U.P.S. guy came correct after lunch. He came barreling down this tiny road. They fixed the brakes, and I’m on the road again.”
Mr. Sheard traveled as far north as Milwaukee, after that crossed Lake Michigan on a ferry and drove to Ann Arbor, Mich., where the radiator sprang a leak. (“No problem,” he said. “A tiny stop-leak and I was excellent to go.”)
Mr. Sheard is tall and has a gift for storytelling. Like his books, the stories approach with a twist, including his own life story.
After graduating from college with a philosophy degree, Mr. Sheard attended nursing school and went to work as a hospital nurse in Philadelphia and after that New York.
“When I hit 40,” he said, “I realized that I was in a habit of telling stories about my favorite patients and my favorite co-workers.”
In 1963 Studebaker introduced the Avanti as a halo model, Mr. Sheard said. When the company faced financial troubles in the following years and shifted production to Canada, two car dealers in South Bend, Ind., bought the tooling, the remaining parts and the rights to the Avanti name — and resumed building the car, renamed the Avanti II, in 1965.
“They continued to manufacture it with the same guys that were building it for Studebaker,” Mr. Sheard said. “And they made it for about 20 years.”
Mr. Sheard was in jovial spirits.ed hardy clothing He wore a pink polo shirt, tan khakis and chestnut boat shoes.
Between responding to questions, greeting neighbors and flicking away random detritus that had fallen from tree branches overhead, Mr. Sheard described a rather ambitious book tour.
“I was a tiny bit foolish, a tiny bit romantic,” he said of the three-week, 3,000-mile journey to promote his third novel, “A Race Against Death” (Five Star Books, 2006). “I decided to recede on the book tour driving the Avanti,” he explained. “Which was ridiculous, because you know it’s going to fracture down.”
He added, “Of course it broke down.”
Twice, actually.
“I lost the front brakes in True Religion the mountains of northern Pennsylvania,” Mr. Sheard recalled. “There was no problem because I had the rear brakes, so I was O.K.”
He wrote down the stories — illustrating the spirit of his subjects — and sold them to publications for medical professionals.
http://lovevibramfivefingers.com
|
