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Next Meeting
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
6:30 P.M.
Ryan's Family Steakhouse
Florence, Alabama
Announcements
CHRISTMAS DINNER - The Muscle Shoals Region, AACA's annual Christmas Dinner will be Tuesday, December 16,
6:30 p.m. at Ryan's Family Steakhouse in Florence. Cost is $12 per person and members will be expected to
pay for the meal. No gifts will be exchanged.
WEDDING TRANSPORTATION - As a surprise to my husband for our wedding, I would like to rent one of your club
members antique cars to take me from the wedding to the reception at ColdWater Inn in Tuscumbia. The wedding
is local and I would only need about an hour or so of your time. Please if anyone is interested, contact me at
(256) 483-8499 or 718-0818 or glenda_barnett@comcast.net. My wedding is planned for October 3, 2009. I know
that is very far in advance, but I am trying to plan everything way ahead of time.
CUSTOM PORTRAITS - If you would like a custom portrait of your classic car, contact Tal Willis. Willis, a
Savannah Tenn. artist noted for his coastal fine art, has become well known for his custom portraits. His
website is www.talwillis.com. You can reach him by email at tal@talwillis.com.
Calendar of Events 2008
Tuscumbia Christmas Parade
December 2
6:00 p.m.
Tuscumbia, AL
Courtland Christmas Parade
December 4
6:00 p.m.
Courtland, AL
Muscle Shoals Christmas Parade
December 5
7:00 p.m.
Muscle Shoals, AL
Sheffield Christmas Parade
December 6
6:00 p.m.
Sheffield, AL
Cherokee Christmas Parade
December 6
6:00 p.m.
Cherokee, AL
Anderson Christmas Parade
December 6
TBA
Anderson, AL
Elgin Christmas Parade
December 7
TBA
Elgin, AL
Florence Christmas Parade
December 11
7:00 p.m.
Florence, AL
Leighton Christmas Parade
December 13
10:00 a.m.
Leighton, AL
2008 Officers
President:
Bill Davis
767-2825
wldavis3@comcast.net
Secretary/Editor:
James McCollum
314-5769
jmccollum@una.edu
Treasurer:
Charlie Cooper
CharlesCooper@bellsouth.net
Membership Dues
Membership dues are $10 payable at the beginning of each year.
Muscle Shoals Region, AACA
The Muscle Shoals Region, AACA meets each month at 6:30 PM at Sherrod Avenue
Church of Christ, 1207 Sherrod Avenue, Florence, Alabama. Correspondence
should be mailed to Muscle Shoals Region, AACA c/o James McCollum, 104
Lindsey Court, Tuscumbia, Alabama, 35674.
National AACA
The Muscle Shoals Region, AACA is sanctioned by the national Antique
Automobile Club of America. AACA membership is require of all its
regions / chapters members.
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Tuscumbia Veterans Day Parade
- November 18, 2008
Richard Sheridan attended the Tuscumbia Veterans Parade in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Tuesday, November 11 and
filed this report - editor.
The weather cooperated and our program in Tuscumbia went off well. Several of our club members were in the
parade: Orvis (Engelstad), Charlie Grimmitt - 2 vehicles, Charlie Cooper, BJ (Thornton), Leo (Cobb), and
my '49 Chevy. (Richard) Hunnicutt wanted to come but had a conflict.
Romans drove his old railway delivery truck. Cunnigham drove his red Victoria convertible. And there were
a few street rods.
A 100-Year-Old Dream: A Road Just for Cars
- November 1, 2008
By Phil Patton
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Ronald Van Barnett
November 5, 1939 - October 31, 2008
The Muscle Shoals Region, AACA wishes the pass its condolences to the family of Ron Barnett who passed
away Friday, October 31, 2008. Mr. Barnett and his wife Sally presented a program on the Marmon
automobile at a meeting a few years ago.
Mr. Barnett was an avid collector of vintage vehicles. He was active in the North Alabama Region, AACA,
serving as president and national meet chairman. He was a member of the AACA board of directors for 15
years and served as president in 1991.
He served in the U.S. Army from 1962 to 1978. He received a Bronze Star for Vietnam War service. He served many
years as a missile man on Kwajalein and at Vandenburg Air Force Base. He worked for 10 years at Science
Applications International Corp. in logistics and systems analysis.
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It survives only as segments of other highways, as a right of way for power lines and as a bike trail, but
the Long Island Motor Parkway still holds a sense of magic as what some historians say is the country’s
first road built specifically for the automobile. It opened 100 years ago last Friday as a rich man’s dream.
As detailed in a new book, “The Long Island Motor Parkway” by Howard Kroplick and Al Velocci (Arcadia
Publishing), the parkway ran about 45 miles across Long Island, from Queens to Ronkonkoma, and was created
by William Kissam Vanderbilt II, the great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
The younger Vanderbilt was a car enthusiast who loved to race. He had set a speed record of 92 miles an
hour in 1904, the same year he created his own race, the Vanderbilt Cup.
But his race came under fire after a spectator was killed in 1906, and Vanderbilt wanted a safe road on
which to hold the race and on which other car lovers could hurl their new machines free of the dust common
on roads made for horses. The parkway would also be free of “interference from the authorities,” he said in
a speech.
So he created a toll road for high-speed automobile travel. It was built of reinforced concrete, had banked
turns, guard rails and, by building bridges, he eliminated intersections that would slow a driver down. The
Long Island Motor Parkway officially opened on Oct. 10, 1908, and closed in 1938.
Paul Daniel Marriott, a highway historian and consultant in Washington, said road designers began to take
the car into account around 1900. Like Vanderbilt, these early car owners were mostly wealthy men; they were
called “automobilists” on the model of “bicyclists.”
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November Monthly Meeting
- December 1, 2008
The monthly meeting of the Muscle Shoals Region of the Antique Automobile Club of America
was held at Sherrod Avenue Church of Christ on Tuesday, November 25, 2008.
Members in attendance were: Michael Blackburn, Charlie Cooper, Bill Davis, Orvis Engelstad,
Charlie Grimmitt, Bryant Hester, Willie Hickman, Richard Hunnicutt, Jimmy McCollum, and B.J.
Thornton. There was one visitor.
Bill Davis opened the meeting with discussion on the upcoming Christmas parades. A handout
was distributed and correction were made. Parades discussed included Sheffield Christmas
Parade to be held Saturday, December 6 at 6:00 p.m.; Florence Parade to be held Thursday,
December 11 at 7:00 p.m.; and Tuscumbia Parade to be held Tuesday, December 2 at 6:00 p.m.
Members were reminded that the club's annual Christmas Dinner will be Tuesday, December 16,
6:30 p.m. at Ryan's Family Steakhouse in Florence. Cost is $12 per person and members will
paid for the meal. No gifts will be exchanged.
Treasurer Charlie Cooper handed out the treasurer's report showing a balance as of 10-28-08
of $399.44. He also asked that anyone who receives an check from the club to not cash it
at any Sun Trust Bank unless you have an account with them. The bank will charged the club
for any check it cashed if the payee doesn't have an account with them.
Richard Hunnicutt provided a video tape of an episole of MASH which featured a 1951 Plymouth.
Also, we saw slides Richard took several years ago of old cars he spotted in people's yards
around the Shoals area.
Meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
James McCollum
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“Cars were seen as objects for leisure, something to be used on weekends,” Mr. Marriott said in an interview.
“No one dreamed then of commuting to work by car.” The automobile was seen as way of escaping the tyranny of
the railroad schedule, Mr. Marriott added. “It was a way of interacting with nature.”
To finance the parkway, according to historical accounts, Vanderbilt and his associates raised $2
million from investors, some of whom thought the road would raise property values on the Gold Coast
of Long Island. The road’s cost eventually rose to more than $6 million, and a $2 toll (about $45
today) was established. Regular patrons of the highway could buy a medallion good for a year’s passage.
Even the toll houses were worthy of a Vanderbilt: the first six were designed by the architect John
Russell Pope, who also created the Jefferson Memorial and the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda at the Museum
of Natural History in New York. The toll takers and families lived in the houses, called lodges. One
of these has been moved to Garden City, where it has been preserved and houses an exhibition on the
history of the highway. Other lodges became homes.
The Long Island Motor Parkway did not solve the problem it was created to address. The race was run
successfully enough on the new road in 1908 and 1909, but there were two fatal crashes in 1910,
pretty much ending road races on Long Island.
Soon, traffic grew light on the road. In the Great Gatsby era of the 1920s bootleggers found the
parkway a convenient link between their delivery points on secluded beaches and the booming liquor
market of Manhattan. The Vanderbilt Cup Race moved elsewhere, notably to Roosevelt Raceway in 1936
and 1937, when Ferdinand Porsche arrived to watch his Auto Union take first place.
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By then, the public had access to cars as well. When Mr. Vanderbilt began, car owners were feared
and resented in many areas, and speed limits were set as low as 5 m.p.h. Woodrow Wilson feared that
popular irritation at rich motorists would be socially disruptive. “Nothing has spread Socialistic
feeling in this country more than the use of automobiles,” he declared in 1906 when he was president
of Princeton University. “To the countryman they are a picture of arrogance of wealth with all its
independence and carelessness.”
But by the end of Vanderbilt’s life (he died in 1944), the public had come to feel entitled to car
ownership. And there was growing pressure for public highways, like the parkways that the urban
planner Robert Moses was building.
In 1938, Moses refused Vanderbilt’s appeal to incorporate the motor parkway into his new parkway
system. The motor parkway just could not compete with the public roads, even after the toll was
reduced to 40 cents, and Moses eventually gained control of Vanderbilt’s pioneering road for back
taxes of about $80,000. The day of public roads had come, supplanting private highways.
Today, the course of the road and a few ruined overpass bridges, guard rails and mileposts have
been documented in books and Web sites, including VanderbiltCupRaces.com.
Part of the parkway and name survive as Suffolk County Road 67 (radio traffic reports still call
the road the motor parkway). A small stretch was also incorporated into the Meadowbrook Parkway.
But the best place to see remnants of the road is in Cunningham Park in Queens, where two of the
65 bridges that carried it over other roads remain. One is at 73rd Avenue and 99th Street. Another
crosses Hollis Hills Terrace. Another original bridge crosses Springfield Boulevard. The old right
of way is incorporated into the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway for bikers and walkers.
There is a certain irony that a road built for the most modern means of transportation is now being
used for the oldest. The parkway marked the beginning of a process: the road was designed for the
car. But in offering higher speeds, the parkway and other modern roads would push cars to their
technical limits and beyond, inspiring innovation. In that sense, the first modern automobile
highway helped to create the modern automobile.
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