Many of the undertakings this olelongrooffan has shared with my fellow Hoons have been described as “Went There, Saw That” experiences and many of those experiences have been at car shows, both local and national in exposure. I have also noted that the capture of images of Tri 5 Bowties at those shows has not been high on my priority list as they seem to be nearly ubiquitous these days. On this past Father’s Day, after viewing the end of the the 24 Hours of LeMans, I decided to head out to the School of The Ozarks to catch their annual Father’s Day car show and brunch. As it was a dark and stormy Sunday morning, I was kinda curious what the turn out would, well, turn out to be. I was not surprised when the area designated for parking for the show cars was at less than fifty percent capacity. And the majority of those cars were, you guessed it, Tri 5 Chevys. Now the spectator parking lot was filled but I noticed the area around the show cars for spectators was sparsely populated. I’m aguessing that brunch must have been pretty tasty.
Anyway, my longerroof cruised the perimeter of that show car lot to make sure there wasn’t some ride this olelongrooffan was missing out on for sharing with my fellow Hoons. Other than a bunch of Tri 5s, there was one of those red and white 2005 or so GT40s that seem to be a near dime a dozen for me (a few years ago, I saw five of them offered for sale at two different auctions over the course of two weeks). Additionally, there was a sweet bone ass stock two tone round fendered Ranchero that a certain Hooniverse Overlord would greatly appreciate. I cruised that spectator parking area once more searching for a close by the show place to light for a bit and found nothing. An executive decision was then made to vacate all these moms, dads, and student kids lingering around, take leave of this almost country club like setting at this quasi private local college and head on down the road.
And that’s what this olelongrooffan did.


And this olelongrooffan vacated that scene without even breaking out my fancydancy image taker. With the lede image, this olelongrooffan had previously captured my quota of Tri 5 images a whiles back at the Mid America Street Rod event attended up there at the Ozark Empire Fairgrounds.
Now at many of the local car shows I attend, there seem to be a multitude of other things going on to keep some of the attendees from getting to antsy while others view the actual reason for the show. At a show I attended a whiles back up there on Commercial Street in the Queen City of the Ozarks, there was an artist (imaged above) who would hand paint your show car on canvas for you to preserve in immortality. Under the colorful canopies seen in the background of the above image there was a whole damn bunch of other stuff for sale and the identification of those goods is beyond this olelongrooffan’s ability. I have never ventured into those areas as they would rob me of the time used for viewing what I had come to these shows to see. It wasn’t an automotive swap meet afterall.

I would, however, stop by the opened tailgate of a 60’s era C-10 to check out a Chevrolet Beretta promo though.
Anyway, at that Commercial Street car show, this olelongrooffan spotted a car of which I previously had no knowledge. I captured too few images of it and wandered on to the fastback parked adjacent. Upon returning to my spacious efficiency condo down south nestled in the Ozark Mountains, I filed a piece on that car show here in the Hooniverse and booked the unused images a room in the “car/2016comlshow” file on one of those thumbdrives this olelongrooffan uses for image storage these days. Yeah, a whiles back, one of my old daily driver laptops shit the bed and I thought I had lost all of the images stored on it. After TheGoodAttorney had one of his IT guys fish that data out of that busted up laptop, he suggested this olelongrooffan start using thumbdrives for storage and dropped several in my grubby little palm. Since then all is well but I have a hell of a time remembering what is where.

By now this olelongrooffan can once again almost hear my fellow Hoons screaming “What the hell does all this rambling have to do with a Gold Bug?”
Well Hoons, it’s like this. Over Father’s Day weekend, when not bumming out about the fact that FS1 had decided to broadcast the prerace activities at a NASCAR truck race instead of the 24 Hours, this olelongrooffan caught a rerun ‘Chasing Classic Cars’ episode starring Wayne Carini on Velocity. This show is one of the few reality automotive shows that still holds my attention. To me, it appears to be one of the most realistic and doesn’t try to dumb down its audience by “restoring” a 68 Camero to concours status in one hour. Besides, Roger is the coolest old man on television since Uncle Joe from the Shady Rest. In that particular episode, Wayne found a 1922 Kissel Gold Bug Speedster that he had snatched up and subsequently flipped at a, I believe, RM Sotheby’s auction.
Well, that episode jogged this olelongrooffan’s feeble mind about a particular Gold Bug I had seen at that Commercial Street show and I thought I might waste a bit of my fellow Hoons day by sharing that capture with you.

One of the things this olelongrooffan has educated myself to do is capture an image of an informational sign about the vehicle in question so that I can remember just what the hell it is when I stumble across its images nearly a year later. While it doesn’t appear to be a rare Speedster that Carini had discovered during his TV show travels, this one was pretty cool in its own right, if I do say so myself. Fatty Arbuckle and Amelia Earhart were some pretty fast company back in the day although both came to a tragic demise.

Based on my limited search ability round these here pipes, the best I can figure is that the Speedster had running boards and a “suicide seat” on each side just behind the doors. These seats would slide out and provide additional passenger seating as the Speedster did not possess this one’s rumble seat. Further, many of the early Kissels I have google imaged have dealer installed Edmund & Jones Model 20 nickle-plated bullet headlights. Apparently Kissel afficionados have debated the authenticity of these headlights as AACA correct near to exhaustion.

Nevertheless, the placement of the storage of golf clubs on these old ragtops is pretty awesome in their own right. I can only suspect just how ruint those canvas golf bags and wooden clubs would become should inclement weather be encountered while heading to and fro the links. And the passengers riding in that rumble seat go without mentioning.

Nearly every Kissel of this body style this olelongrooffan was skilled enough to locate on these here webs had a yellow or tan body with black fenders and undercarriage. I was able to locate a full on yellow 1920 Kissel Gold Bug over on the Second Chance Garage courtesy of Hyman, Ltd. It, as did all of the Kissels I located, appeared to have a full on restoration.

Well Hoons, this one was a far cry from a full on resto and its originality is what made this 1925 Kissel Gold Bug so desirable to this olelongrooffan. Even if it didn’t bring the $150,000 at RM that Wayne Carini’s Speedster did.
Wayne Carini Image Courtesy Simeone Museum
Other Images Copyright Hooniverse 2017/longrooffan