On Sunday, June 2, Grace and I went to the Oak Park, IL “Day in Our Village” Vintage Car Show. Here is Grace’s report, I only wish we’d taken pictures:
I was very excited about this show, hoping to see Corvairs, Falcons and Rancheros. Bryan & I rode past Scoville Park in downtown OP, looking for vintage cars. Seeing none, we parked and asked a helpful lady. “Oh, it’s over on Lake, they’ve blocked off the whole street.” Cool! We get the bikes and ride over. We park and walk, passing the store where Tracie bought Bryan’s “Vegetables are Ugly” t-shirt, past the Thai restaurant where you can order “The King and I Pork on a Stick”, past the park district stage, past the card store where Bryan pays $36 for a calendar with a Vespa on it (after pushing me down and screaming, “MINE!”), past the inflatable moonwalk thing, to find… one 1954 Chevy and one Plymouth Fury sitting in front of Panda Express.
“Um, were there more cars here earlier and they left? Will more cars be coming later?” No, and no. The cars are beautiful and their owners are very nice. People wander over to look at them, get egg rolls, etc. Bryan and I decide to “enter” our scooters in the car show and spend way too much time deciding on the best way to get them over to the “concourse”. Five minutes later the “car show” has doubled in size and now includes a 1963 GL and a 1971 Primavera. Yay!
“Highlights”include:
-Bryan carefully explaining the moped, class L, and class M categories to some old guy who probably didn’t even know what day it was.
-Small sticky children getting their mustardy hands all over the scooters and breathing moist hot dog air into Bryan’s helmet.
-A discussion on why sandals on guys are by and large totally, errr, “un-manly.”
-Debate if we should get free hot dogs because we are part of the “car show”.
-Counting how many times people pointed at the GL and said “Look! It has a spare tire!”
After we feel like enough people have paid attention to us for the day, and the crowd of small children gets larger, stickier, and more insistant on sitting on the scooters, we decide to pack it in. We say goodbye to our new vintage car friends and make a mental note to skip this next year.