sludgo Rides Shotgun with trusted

A dignified gentleman with a genial smile, twinkling eyes, and a snowy-white thatch of hair, @trusted_one began our ride by pointing out that he was wearing his car show shirt, expressing how funny it was to discover when he pulled it out of the closet after all these years that it had shrunk so much! I laughed at the joke as he humbly confided he was suffering from “imposter syndrome,” finding himself the subject of the latest Riding Shotgun series. Told me he couln’t hold a flame to most of the guys on the site. But I wasn’t concerned that I had an imposter on my hands. Not one bit. Knew right off the bat I had the Real Deal.

You’re known throughout the Bring a Trailer community for having managed the sale of literally hundreds if not thousands of cars for charity. Clearly you’re interested in them. Ahem. How’d you get hooked?

Well, my dad was an Oldsmobile Man, just like yours. Every two years he’d get a new Oldsmobile. All different types. Starfires and Delta 88s. But he worked for the Forest Service and we moved a lot, and I think when I really got the bug was when we moved to Pocatello, Idaho. The first person I met there was someone you might call a geek or a nerd these days. He had bright red hair and freckles and was a little pudgy and wore glasses and had invited me over to his house. Turned out his dad was an oral surgeon and they were a really rich family. I remember he had an Avanti sitting in his garage—probably the only one in Pocatello if not in all of Idaho! I thought that thing looked so cool. Anyway, my friend invited me to sleep over and the next morning his dad asked if I wanted to go for a drive in his new car, a silver split-window Corvette! There was no back seat of course but I just crawled back there anyway and I remember looking up through that split window when he dropped the clutch. It just rumbled then screamed and I thought “Wow!” I’d never felt anything like that!

The next day I went out and bought the Monogram or Revell model for a ’63 Corvette and spray painted it silver just like his was so that was probably the start of my car thing.

Did you get into scale modeling then?

Yeah, I learned a lot through models. I liked the strange stuff. Big Daddy Roth’s Beatnik Bandit and Mysterion and George Barris’ Drag-u-la. I remember for Christmas I got a model kit that was called the Big T. It was larger scale, about two feet long, and was a bucket-T and had all the parts—Pitman arms and tie-rods and headers—so I really saw how a car was put together. Then for my birthday I got a Visible V8 that taught me how engines worked. I learned about pistons and camshafts and crankshafts. You could hook up a battery to it and watch it work. It was pretty cool!

First car story, please.

When I was fifteen I got my permit and my dad said he could buy a cheap car for me and I could pay the insurance and maintenance on it. Alternately, I could buy the car and he’d put me on his policy and maintain it. I took the first option, but told him I’d like it to fit a certain criteria—something ’55 to ’57 and two doors. The next day he came back with a butt-ugly two-door ’56 Dodge Coronet, pink over white. Huge Dolly Parton bumpers. I told him I wouldn’t even sit in it. Handed him the title back and he said okay. And then kept it.

I hustled out and mowed lawns and delivered newspapers and did plenty of babysitting and picked pounds of green beans to raise the money to buy my own car. Really wanted a ’55 to ’57 Chevy, but you couldn’t touch those. Noticed the ’58s weren’t very popular so they were more affordable and I got a Biscayne two-door. Still a pretty cool car, maybe not what every guy wanted but was pretty nice. I re-did the interior myself in black naugahyde, not as good as the tuck-and-roll stuff that was coming up from Mexico, but I learned a lot doing it. Every penny I got I put into that car, but I soon learned that girls didn’t really care about chrome dipsticks and chrome valve covers and chrome air cleaners!

Oh, I don’t know—I’ve known a few that did. But now I want to hear a good second car story.

Mine was a ’65 Impala. A 283 with three-on-the-tree and overdrive. Bought it because at the time I had this big Slingerland drum set that would fit in the trunk. I was afraid people were going to race me and knew I wouldn’t do very well, so I ordered some “427/435 HP” stickers from JC Whitney and some exhaust cutouts that mounted on the headers. You activated them from under the dash and they’d open up into straight pipes. I switched around two plug wires too to make the engine kind of lope like I had this big racing cam. With that and the stickers no one ever tried to race me. Me and my fake SuperSport. Kept it all through high school.

Then something interesting happened. My grandparents in Pierre, South Dakota, won a Pontiac convertible in a Rexall Drug sweepstakes. It was red with a black top and really nice but when they picked it up they didn’t think it was their type of car. They held onto it for a while but then called me and asked if I’d like to have it. Sure!

At the time I was a sophomore at West Point, so during spring break my roommate and I flew into Pierre on a twin-prop to pick it up. Had a three day break so we visited for a day then started the drive back. Running a little late, we were going through Pennsylvania on the turnpike and I was speeding. Probably 85 with the limit at 70. Got pulled over by a trooper. He walked up to the car. Asked for license, registration, insurance. Looked at it all and said none of it matches. The car’s plates were from South Dakota but its insurance was from California and my license was from Utah while my address was in New York. Paused for a minute and said he wasn’t going to take the time to figure it all out. That if I was a cadet the only thing he had left to say to me was one thing: Beat Navy!

Cool to be young and single and rolling in a red Poncho convertible.

Yes, but there was a problem. You’ weren’t allowed to have a car at West Point until your senior year so I had to hide it for the time being at a colonel’s house. He taught English at The Point and I’d taught his kids how to ski and they’d kind of adopted me and he let me keep it in an extra garage he had! If I’d’ve gotten caught it would’ve been two months of confinement to my room and about 100 hours walking with my rifle on a Punishment Tour. But I didn’t!

What ride came next?

Well, I’ve always liked sports cars, but I’m not into Ferraris or Lamborghinis. I’m an engineer and a practical guy—not really a wrencher. I like Saabs and Volvos and Mercedes, and during senior year at The Point when you can finally have a car they have “Car Day” where all the dealers come and have their cars in the parking lot of the football stadium so you can drive them. I drove a Mercedes 350SL that day and loved it. Rode great and handled really nice in tight corners and when you closed the door it was like a bank vault.

My dad had made another deal with me that if I made it through West Point he’d go half with me on a car, but the cadet price for the Mercedes was $14,000, so when I called him and told him what his half for my car was he screamed, “what are you getting?!” I told him and he said, “No, you’re going to be a second lieutenant when you graduate. You need something more practical.” So I test-drove a Z. Thought it was a pretty fun car and ordered one, but when the time came for delivery the dealer told us that all of them were stuck at the port in Elizabeth, New Jersey, because they didn’t meet emissions requirements. We could cancel our order if we wanted or wait for it.

At the time I was dating a girl who lived in Queens and was visiting her and there was a Lincoln dealership that had an orange Z. I went in and told them the story about my ordered Z and asked if theirs was for sale and they said that it was. They explained to me that a guy had won the lottery and had told himself that if that ever happened he was going to buy a brand new Lincoln Continental, so he’d come in with the Z he’d just bought a couple weeks earlier, traded on the Lincoln and paid cash for the rest. I asked what he’d sell it for and he said to make an offer. I said “how about $3,800?” and he said he didn’t know what it was worth but since I was a cadet…Sold. Beat Navy, Go Army, again. And at last I had my Z.

A great car.

It really was. I drove it across the country with my roommate who had a Z, too. We called it the “sow your oats tour”—two young guys coming from an all-male school with sports cars and freedom and two months off before we reported to infantry training.

Drove day and night all the way across country to California because we were both from the Bay Area, using NoDoz and drinking lots of Coke to keep awake. Drove side-by-side on the freeway at night and if one of us started to weave because we were falling asleep the other would honk his horn to wake him up. Some guardian angels were definitely looking out for us!

Back to your military service? Why Army?

First of all, I want to say that while I served, I’m not a hero. Not necessarily a military man. I wanted to be a rock star. I had music scholarships to several colleges. Was planning to be a musician and make a fortune. But during my junior year in high school my dad said I should try and get an appointment to the Air Force Academy because everything was paid for—tuition and room and meals and uniforms and books—everything. Well, the only way you could get an appointment was with a congressional appointment or a Presidential appointment so I wrote a letter to the senator in Utah, and out of the 88 guys who applied for the single appointment, he ended up narrowing it down to two of us. He said we both were leaders in our schools and captains of sports teams with 4.0 GPAs, but the thing that set me apart was that I held a job while doing all that stuff. He said that was tough to do and made me a good candidate for the Academy.

Then, a problem: two weeks before I was supposed to report, they notified me that somehow I’d forgotten to take my color-blindness test and my depth-perception exam. So I took them but failed miserably and they said they couldn’t take me. So much for being a jet-jockey. But my mother had a cousin who was a big shot at West Point and she called him and he told her they didn’t have a color-blind limitation. In fact, they preferred soldiers who were color-blind because they can see better at night. He also said he had a guy there who wanted to go to the Air Force and thought he’d switch with me and that’s exactly what happened. That’s how I ended up at West Point.

This was around the time of the Vietnam War, right?

Yep. We were all scared to death. I knew I’d be ranked in the infantry because I was at the bottom of my class, so I was worried about that, but I think it was my senior year where they said they weren’t going to send any more troops over from West Point. Missed it by just a few weeks. Lucky me.

I never had any thoughts of making the Army a career. I appreciated the education—they say it’s a quarter-million dollar education and I believe that—and honestly my five-year commitment went by pretty quick, although in your early twenties that feels like forever.

Then what?

When you get out of the Army you have to be in the Reserves for a year, so when I moved to Pennsylvania I went to the unit that was closest to my house. It was a medical unit and I went in and asked if they had any positions for non-medical personnel and they said they needed a personnel officer. They liked I was a member of the infantry and signed me up! It was great. Medical people are intelligent and there were lots of doctors and nurses. Our first mobilization was to Nicaragua during the time of the Contras and the Sandinistas, and I was sort of back in battle what with the Sandinistas firing shots at our perimeter and I remember thinking I might as well have stayed in the infantry! But you just kind of flip a switch and become a different person. Your training kicks in and you do what you’ve got to do, protect the people you need to protect.

My last thing with the medical unit was during Desert Shield at a two-star general’s headquarters. I was in charge of of mobilizing the medical units. Had twenty years in by then and had to fly to Minot, North Dakota which was about five degrees below zero when I got in. There was this whole hospital unit there and I had to stand in front of them and thank them for their service and tell them that the President didn’t need them anymore and that he was disbanding the unit. These were people who’d given their lives to the service of their country and now they were being treated like they were disposable. Now we need you, now we don’t. I had to do that to two different hospital units and that’s when I said, that’s it. Couldn’t do it. It just wasn’t right. And that was the end of my military career.

Had to be a difficult passage to travel.

Ironically, the experience was similar to how I ended up with the car charity auction gig. The company I was running back then employed six hundred people and I had to downsize it. I knew all my employees individually and they all thought we were going to continue to grow and their job was secure, but when the market turned I had to lay off three hundred of them. That hurt me personally. It was a lot of pressure and stress and I had a massive stroke. I had to do extensive occupational and physical therapy to learn how to shave and brush my teeth and write, and when I started typing on the computer it was all gibberish. Clearly I couldn’t do my old job anymore and had no idea what I was going to do. I was in my fifties—too young to retire.

So what did you do?

Well, that was around the time I’d been getting fed up with California and their emissions laws. I’d had three cars that failed the test including a Scarab Z that I’d brought into the state. They just laughed at me. Said they couldn’t give me a certificate unless I put back in the original engine. That I couldn’t leave the 327 and that the headers weren’t legal and the exhaust wasn’t legal and I didn’t have a smog pump and I’d be better off taking it back to the state where I bought it and selling it and that’s exactly what I did!

Then I remembered that diesels were exempt from being smogged so I went on eBay. Found a [Mercedes] 240D with 300k miles on it. It was a good looking car with a four-speed, so I bid on it and won. Got it for $1,200. It was being sold by a charity where the money went to the Boys and Girls Clubs. The charity was being run by two guys, and when we were talking they said it seemed like I knew a lot about cars then asked if I wanted to help them out. I told them it was probably a good time because I’d just suffered the stroke and was trying to get back on my feet, and maybe I could handle cars. They asked if I had any place I could park stuff and I told them the company I’d been with was a defense contractor that had closed down and moved back east and left me with the building to try and help the real-estate people get it sold. I told them it was a strange building with no windows, but it did have parking for 600 cars, and that was that. They started bringing cars up, and it was great. I found that even if I had 100 or more cars I could remember every one of them—the mileage and the KBB price and the history of the car and how it ran. It was something I could do. People would just call me up and ask about whatever car and I’d always tell them the truth about it, living by the Honor Code I had at West Point. That’s how I got my screen name “Trusted One.” I ended up doing it for twenty years! Loved cars and loved people and it brought those two things together.

Worst car to pass through your hands?

The first Porsche I ever had!

Ha! Gotta hear about that!

Honestly, I never liked Porsches a whole lot. Had never ridden in one or driven one and always thought they were just glorified Volkswagens, but I saw one listed on Craigslist for five or six grand. A 912 soft-window. I called the guy and told him I was on my way. Got there and was the first one, but while I was there three other cars pulled up. He said those were other people coming to look at it and if I wanted it I’d better take it so I said I’d take it. He’d said it was a good car and I like to trust people so I gave him the money and got in the car and drove off. Took it to my shop the next day to look it over and they put it on the lift and as soon as it started to raise it literally buckled in half. All the longitudinals had rusted out. The guy had sprayed it with some thick black crap to make it look good and when my mechanic dropped it down he told me that I didn’t want that car. We couldn’t even hardly get the door closed anymore because the car had bent so bad. I put it back on Craigslist and was honest about the rust but even so some guy came and said he loved soft-windows and wanted to buy it. Said he was a welder and could fix anything. Paid me what I had into it and took it away and I thought I maybe never wanted another Porsche!

Okay, now the story of the one you’d like back.

It was a ’59 190 SL. Ever since Dad wouldn’t go in with me on the 350 I had wanted an SL, and when I lived in Fort Hood, Texas, there was a guy who lived next door who was a salesman for a Mazda-Mercedes dealership. I told him if he ever ran across a good deal on a nice SL to let me know and one day he knocked on my door. Told me to come out and take a look at a barn-find. Original gray paint, white top, red interior. Said a lady’s husband had it and when he’d passed away she’d parked it in the barn. Started it every week and drove it around the property then parked it again. Came to the dealership wanting another Mercedes and got to talking to him about it and he asked if he could see it. Went out and saw it and immediately asked what she wanted for it and she said how about three thousand dollars. Sold! He got into it and drove it back to the dealership. Only 33,600 miles on the odometer. He asked me if I was interested and told me I could pay him what he’d paid for it. Score! It was a nice car and I drove it back and forth to work for about a year, but every time I drove it I was always worried that someone was going to hit me. Then my second child came along and it didn’t have a backseat and really wasn’t practical for me to keep so I decided to sell it. But I’d like to have that one back.

What’s on the horizon for trusted_one? Any mountains left to climb?

Well, after two head-on car crashes and a plane crash and a helicopter crash, a stroke at forty thousand feet, and a downhill ski racing accident, I’m just trying to preserve myself and make the world a better place wherever I can. I don’t know what God has in store for me, why he’s gotten me through these nine lives. Maybe it’s just to teach people and interact with people and be myself and sit back and enjoy the grandkids.

Maybe it is, my friend. Maybe it is. Thanks for the ride.