HAMLET — Among the attractions at the 37th Annual Seaboard Festival will be the Car Show which will feature some of the rarest rides in the region, each with their own special significance to its owner whether flash and style, or something deeper.
There will be at least 70 cars at the show Saturday on Main Street in Hamlet, but you’d be hard pressed to find two like Kenny Phillips’ in this area. His 1934 International pickup truck, rusted to perfection, is now what’s known as a “rat rod,” which typically refers to pre-1950’s cars whose exterior is nearly or completely rusted.
Phillips works for Wheels of Yesteryear in Myrtle Beach, where he said he makes cars “pretty.” He said people who know him through that work always ask when he’s going to paint the rat rod, but he never will.
“It’s got the original patina that Mother Nature gave it,” Phillips said. He found the car at a friend’s warehouse about five years ago and at the time it was a “pile of parts” he said he had to strap together to get home. He had always wanted a car from the 1930’s.
“When I saw it I knew what it needed to be,” he said. “It just had that look about it, I just couldn’t change it and put paint on it. That would ruin it.”
It took Phillips and a friend about two years working together on nights and weekends to get the rod up to being road-worthy. Rat rods typically have a supped-up bike mounted in the cargo bed — for whatever reason — but Phillips had to find a way to fit one in much smaller space.
He mentioned what he was looking for to a friend who suggested a similarly rusted-out tricycle, which just so happened to be the perfect size for the car.
“I’ve never washed (the tricycle),” Phillips said. “The dirt on the wheels is the same dirt that it had when I got it.”
Rat rods earned their name from their general look: decades of oxidation giving them a dark, dirty red color with a pointed nose created by the open hood and the often bloated rear, as well as the tendency of rats to gnaw off the bottom edges of the brittle rusted metal, according to Phillips.
He said they’re much more popular in California and that he only knows of two or three others in Richmond County.
The car has its original body, grille and frame, with a few updates of Phillips’. The seats are from an old Army Jeep. Keeping with the “rat” theme, Phillips has a rubber rat mounted on the center console. His gear shift is a stretched out “S” shape that nearly reached the roof, with a brass ball from a horse collar for the knob. He made the overflow tank for the radiator out of an old fire extinguisher.
The lone clean spot on the entire vehicle, aside from the exposed 1964 Chevrolet Impala motor, is a small white box attached to the outside of the dashboard on the passenger side. This box, no bigger than a small matchbox, is a GPS that is hooked up to the speedometer and is able to calculate the speed and give Phillips has an accurate reading.
Phillips ran the Seaboard Festival Car show about 10 years ago. He said the car show culture is not as dominant as it used to be, and in conversations with people from those days they can’t figure out why.
“I know there’s enough people in Richmond County that have cars but won’t bring them out and show them,” Phillips said. “I have not figured that out, I wish I could.”
“The last thing I have…”
Brian Terry and his father, Charles, had always restored Ford tractors and lawnmowers together, until they came upon a red 1950 Studebaker truck at a junk yard in Aberdeen.
They worked on it in Charles’ shop at his home in Ellerbe for five years to restore it to safe driving condition, and back to its pristine red with a “1950 Ellerbe” tag on the front bumper. Terry, program coordinator for Richmond Community College’s Electric Utility Substation and Relay Technology program, said his dad could “fix anything” simply because he grew up on a farm in the 1930’s and ‘40’s.
His dad “just loved cars” and used to race on the dirt track at the Rockingham Raceway which used to be near where Richmond County Hospice now sits. Terry said his dad wanted to restore the Studebaker to ride in the Farmer’s Day Parade in Ellerbe, and just to “putter” around town.
“I let him enjoy it that way,” Terry said, though he wanted to enter it in car shows.
Charles Terry died in December 2017 at age 79. Terry said he never got to take his dad to a car show with their truck, but restoring it formed some of his best memories of them together.
“That was a really special time between my dad and I. Sometimes fathers and sons don’t get along all the time — it was our common ground,” Terry said. “He was a tinkerer and I was always trying to get jobs done.
“When I go back to the garage all I can see is him,” he continued. “I kind of think he’s looking down on me when I’m working on the truck.”
His father willed the truck to him when he died, and he said he only enters it in car shows that benefit the community.
“That’s what it’s for, it’s there to be shared,” Terry said. “I don’t mind giving rides because it’s something that they’ll experience and remember for the rest of their lives.”
The Seaboard Festival is free and will be held — rain or shine — from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Oct. 26 on Main Street in Hamlet.
