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Coleman resident hits the open highway in his
'60 Olds
By Bill Whitaker
If you want a good definition of faith, it might be piling
your wife into a 1960 Oldsmobile and driving from Coleman to Lansing,
Mich., in late summer.
That's real faith, both in your marriage and your transportation.
"Actually, my wife wasn't worried at all," Ron Diener
said of his August trip to Oldsmobile's much-ballyhooed 100th
birthday bash. "Jean knows my capabilities as far as taking
care of the car. There's not two pieces on that car I haven't
had apart.
"She knows we're going to make it there, and if we have
a problem on the road, she has faith in my ability to fix it."
The trip went smoothly, too. On the way up, the car suffered
a minor generator problem, "and it didn't delay us two hours."
Former maintenance chief at the <I>Reporter-News<I>
and later First Baptist Church of Abilene, Ron is now semi-retired
and living in a comfortable old home in nearby Coleman. When he's
not running about taking care of rental properties, he's tinkering
with his '60 Olds.
He's had it since 1972.
"I love power and speed," admitted this native of
the Great Lakes region. "Growing up in Michigan, you just
naturally grow up with cars. I loved cars and, well, I loved drag-racing.
I guess my love of the Oldsmobile comes from all that. It's just
a big, fast car."
So late this summer, Ron Diener put his own meticulously restored
Olds to the test when he and wife Jean decided to drive it to
Lansing to attend a company birthday party recognizing the birth
of Ransom E. Olds' greatest achievement.
TOOLING AROUND
"I'm only the third owner," he said of his Olds,
once owned by a member of Abilene's prominent Hooks roofing family.
"I needed a car to get around in and my friend Arthur Siewert,
who also worked at the Reporter-News - well, he was ashamed to
ask $100 for it but he did. Really, I got it cheap. Of course,
it was in pretty bad shape - lots of use and too little maintenance.
"But I like to tinker. I expect to take a broken alarm
clock to my grave, along with the tools to fix it."
At the time, he had plenty of other responsibilities, so efforts
to restore the car came gradually. For instance, when Ron bought
the Olds, the transmission was shot and he could only count on
first and fourth gears: "I drove it that way 10 years before
I got it fixed, too."
While Ron has owned and restored other cars, the '60 Olds became
a family favorite.
"My wife loves it, but it's too big for her to wheel it
around town," he said. "I was going to sell it up there
this summer, but she talked me out of it halfway to Michigan.
The kids - we've had four of 'em - they love it, too. My youngest
daughter used to drive it to Abilene High.
"Other kids would joke that the front end got to school
five minutes before the back end did."
GOING TOPLESS
Ron has always enjoyed cars that had a little history to them,
beginning about 1950 with his first car, a 1929 Model A Ford that
Ron's aunt and uncle owned.
"It didn't have a top on it and didn't have any upholstery,
but that was common then," Ron said. "It had been caught
in a flood up in Michigan, after the Clinton River overflowed.
For about four days it sat in water six or eight feet over the
roof.
"My aunt and uncle said I could have it for $15 if I could
get it out of the driveway. They underestimated me." Ron
has long been an Olds man. He's owned two other Oldsmobiles through
the years and has always admired the attention to detail given
these substantial automobiles. Needless to say, he was in Olds
paradise when he got to Lansing.
"We had a motorcade one morning, sponsored by Oldsmobile,
and there were 2,200 Oldsmobiles parked in the parking lot that
morning, all of them waiting. It was an awesome sight. One had
been shipped in from Australia and another came from Nova Scotia.
"I guess the big thrill was just being with all these
people who had a common interest," he said. "I was in
hog heaven there for four days. I couldn't believe all the cars
that showed up - some 3,000 of them, and all Oldsmobiles."
Most interesting footnote from the Olds' B-Day bash came after
a 1907 Oldsmobile with a curved dash hit a chuckhole, cracking
the axle and the dashboard.
"One of the supervisors from the tool department at Oldsmobile
happened to see it and told the guys to load it up on a trailer
and take it to Oldsmobile. Well, Oldsmobile built the parts for
it and put it all back together for the owner, no charge.
"They told him the 1907 Oldsmobile had a 90-year warranty,"
Ron said, smiling. "I imagine that one brought them lots
of publicity!"
Bill Whitaker, who unwittingly has just become part of the
Oldsmobile publicity machine, has never been in an Oldsmobile.
He can be reached by calling 676-6732.
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Copyright ©1996 or
1997, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps. Publications
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