Monthly Meeting Minutes March 16, 2015

44 Members in attendance

CMGC President Dave Novak opened the meeting at 8:00 pm and recognized new members and guests. Tim Schafer of Lombard joined today and is the owner of a 1979 Midget.

Guest Speaker - John Twist talked to the club about his life with MGs, reminiscing of encounters with past CMGC members, his start with University Motors Ltd in England and subsequent founding of University Motors Ltd in Grand Rapids.

Break & 50:50 raffle – Bill Mennell was the winner of $47.

Longtime member Barney Gaylord and his son Elliot were in town from Texas and shared a quick overview of the past months on the road in their MGA visiting MG car clubs along the eastern seaboard. After a quick stop in town to exchange a noisy transmission they will be heading back to Texas to continue their vagabond journey to visit MG car clubs in the western states.

Events since last meeting:
Swap Meet – Jim Evans noted that both vendor and customer counts were down 20% this year despite good weather. Final accounting is not yet complete although a summary will be available by next months’ meeting.

Up coming Driving/Social Event Schedule

“SUmmer is icumen in, luh-de sing cuc-cu.” Those Old English folks sure spoke in a strange manner. Why can’t they speak proper English like we do here in the good old U.S. of A? Perhaps that’s why we had that little tiff back in ’76. Was it just caused by a misunderstanding due to poor communicating? We gave them back their tea and they sent us MGs and other LBCs. As a coffee drinker I think that we get the better end of that deal. But I digress. I don’t know about the cuckoos, but the cardinals and other song birds are singing loudly. I might be pushing summer a bit, but spring has surely arrived. March certainly has had some gorgeous days, although as I write this on the first day of spring a light snow is in the forecast. But that will just be a minor set-back. It’s time to dust off those Beach Boy tapes/CDs and hit the road for some top down driving.

The Red Car
Don Stanford, 1954, 182 pages, paperback

This edition was printed in 1971, back when paperbacks were small. They could fit into a back pocket of a pair of Levis, sneaked into high school class, placed behind a text book and read during a boring calculus lecture. Or maybe it was detention study hall. I sat thru plenty of both. Anyway, this is the book that introduced many a youth to the world of MGs. Maybe you were one of them. The teenage hero, Hap Adams, without his father’s consent, buys a wrecked TC and eventually gets it entered into the newly formed local road race. One of the protagonists is named (need I say more) Arata. This is a nice light book that will take you back to your youth. As it was written for teens back in the 50s it should not be too advanced for the average MG owner of today. Sorry Triumph people, there are no pictures.



-- ~~ Bill Mennell