Indian Summer

Not sure if “Indian summer” is a phrase you’re still allowed in the age of Woke. Regardless, we had the perfect Indian summer Saturday in these parts today. Sunshine all day and T-shirt and shorts temperatures. First weekend in October means it’s Pumpkinfest in Port Elgin. That’s only a hop and a skip from Falling Downs, plus we get to stop off at Tuggies on the Rez for cheap gas and cheap smokes. The Pumpkinfest is allegedly about the giant vegetables that arrive at what was originally the Port Elgin fall fair. Fall fairs are a big deal in rural Ontario. Every two-bit hick-town has one. Even former two-bit hick-towns that have long since become suburbs of Toronto still have them. I’m looking at you, Orangeville and Shelburne. But I digress. We don’t go to Port Elgin for the two-ton pumpkins. We go for the car show. It comes two or three weeks after the Concours at Cobble Beach. That one is ten minutes down the road, and we’ve been a few times. Fifty bucks to get in the gate. A lot of world-class stuff that arrived in hundred thousand dollar trailers with quarter million tow vehicles. Who doesn’t want to spend fifty bucks to see an actual original Bugatti? The Pumpkinfest car show, on the other hand, is all stuff the owners drove there. The town blocks off a few blocks of the downtown for a day. You won’t see any Bugattis, but you’ve got the entire catalogue of North American iron, plus a good sampling of European stuff. And it’s absolutely free! So we wander around downtown Port Elgin for an hour and a half, with Bruno in tow. You can’t imagine how many people want to stop and tell you how beautiful this runt Italian mastiff is. It’s non stop. When Bruno had his fill of strangers wanting to touch him, we motored down the Lake Huron shore to Kincardine, for lunch at the Erie Belle, where they promote themselves as the “House of Fish & Chips.” I was a fan long before the gluten thing reared its ugly head, and I am happy to report the Erie Belle has gluten-free fish & chips that will rival anything you ever had. We’re on the patio with Bruno catching the shade under the table, when a gaggle of millennials comes in and settles into the far end of the patio. There’s eight of them, and they’re engaged in a quite lively conversation. This has no bearing on us whatsoever. We’re at least forty feet away. But about ten minutes in, the Farm Manager remarks that none of them appear to have their phones out. What? How is such a thing even conceivable? I was seated with my back to them, but as we were leaving I went over to check them out. I thought at least a few might have their phones flat on the table in front of them, but no! Who can imagine such a thing?! Eight millennials gathered round a table on a restaurant patio, and not a phone in sight? There is hope for humanity!

Cinderella's carriage

Took in the car show over at Pumpkinfest in Port Elgin on Saturday. It offers substantially more bang for the buck than the Cobble Beach extravaganza that happens two or three weeks earlier. That's because Port Elgin charges zero admission, whereas Cobble is $45 per, if I remember correctly.

Port Elgin is a little more grass-roots. Pretty much everything there drove to Port Elgin under its own power, which isn't a claim most of the field at Cobble Beach can make.

Port Elgin is where you'll find a late-sixties muscle car that the loving owner spent ten years and all his disposable income restoring.

Cobble Beach is where you'll find the rarest of rarities that the doting owner dropped off at a high end resto shop and dropped several hundred thousand dollars on its restoration.

They are both well worth-while.

There was some very cool stuff on view. How about a '69 SS 427 Yenko Chevelle?

Saw a '67 Impala SS identical to one I owned; 327 Powerglide, but in blue instead of the beigey-brown of mine.

There was a Rebel Machine in red. First one I'd seen although I'd read there was some built that weren't the red white and blue of the Machine I owned.

Perhaps my favourite was a '69 Coronet R/T, plain white, black interior, buckets, four-speed, dog-dish hubcaps... that transported me straight back to my late teens. A beautiful car!

Big turnout of Corvettes this year, especially the latest ones, which isn't very interesting because you can see those anytime you want in the showroom of your local Chevy dealer.

There were a number of older Vettes as well, all the way back to the fifties. One that caught my eye was a '62 that looked like it was in barn-find condition, cracked fibreglass and all. I remember seeing one just like it back in the early sixties at Pinehurst Conservation Area down near what is now Cambridge.

At the time, my dad worked at Omark, and they had their annual factory picnic out at Pinehurst. Are factory picnics still a thing?

Anyway, I was impressed with the cool cars some of Dad's coworkers could afford, including a very pretty little '62 Corvette Convertible. It made such an impression on me that I recall it to this day.

In hindsight, it's amazing that factory parking lots used to sport all sorts of the high-end muscle cars. Working-class guys were 99% of the market for those cars.


But times changed. Insurance and pollution regs pretty much put the kibosh on the muscle car genre. Then NAFTA came along. Twenty dollar an hour factory jobs in Ohio or Michigan or right here in Ontario became two dollar an hour jobs in Mexico.

Factory parking lots in my home town aren't that big anymore, because much of the workforce takes the bus. What cars remain in the parking lot are more likely to be fifteen year old Hyundais rather than late model Corvettes.


Thank goodness for progress!