Lunch at the Little Onion

My plan for Wednesday was to drive south to Santa Ana and join my dad and the guys for lunch. Wednesday = The Little Onion and they leave the shop at 11:00 AM on the dot. Reason being that the restaurant fills up by 11:30. On Tuesday I thought that Peter (Peter Thompson, Shannon's former employer from NZ, and our good friend) might like to join us if he was free that afternoon, so I emailed him the invite. He emailed me back; he would be there. If you click on the pictures they enlarge really big. Good to see some details in the backgrounds.

Art, Pete and Phill-the-Painter at the Little Onion


After lunch, I gave Pete the shop tours, Full-Bore, CARS, Squeaks and Miracle Design. Pete was very interested in dad's button making machine. This was his first time to Art's shop, so he received the personal tour.


Greg gave Art some "Trophy Girl" display pictures after the exhibit closed at the museum.


Motor talk.

More motor talk.

I wanted some good pictures of art for a portrait that Shannon is doing. This one won't be used.

A friend sent Art a 1952 Hot Rod Magazine with the story of the Beast III, Art's ride into the Bonneville 200 MPH Club. The car is being restored by Mark Brinker.

Here is a little video. I always have to include video.


We drove down the street to Miracle Design, Phill Whetstone's custom paint and pinstriping business. This is Phill's new '32 roadster. He put 2000 miles on it in the last 2 weeks, going to Pleasanton and Yosemite. The car is beautiful, what else would you expect?

Phill and Peter.

The paint.

So I said good-bye to the guys and headed back up North to La Verne. The huge cloud in the distance is the FIRE which is still going strong and has burned over 140,000 acres of land.

I had to make a stop on the way home at the NHRA Museum. I need to take a picture of the #25 car of Arts.

Here are some of Shannon's California Hot Rod Reunion portraits of the Honorees for 2003. This was the very first year she did them and is still doing them to date. She finished the 2009 Honoree portraits while she was visiting us here for 3 months during the Summer.

I was working at the Museum back then and Greg needed to find an artist so he asked me if Shannon draws portraits. I told him that she once drew a beautiful portrait of a horse, and I brought the drawing in for him to see. He gave me the picture of Bruce Geisler and said take this to Shannon and see what she can do. He loved it and said she has the job.

Like I said, I came to get a picture of the 25 car. Well that was not going to happen because it is in line with other race cars and I need a distance shot.

So I went upstairs to visit Greg Sharp, knowing that he would have photos of the car. When I got to the top of the stairs in the office, what to you know? Jim Travis sitting there talking to Greg and Rosebud. I got the usual warm welcome from Greg - something like Oh No not You! Poor Greg, when I show up it's usually because I want something, and I did.

First off I asked him if he could go downstairs and move those race cars out of the way so that I can get a good shot of the 25 car. He laughed and told me to ask Wayne to do that. I suggested that if he might have a photo that I could borrow, then we wouldn't need to move the cars (NOT THAT THOSE CARS WOULD REALLY BE MOVED AT MY REQUEST!)

I followed him into his office, so did Jim Travis. Within 1 minute Greg pulled out the magical folder with about 15 pictures of the car for me to choose one. He said "We have a love/hate relationship, don't we?" It's love right now Greg, thank you for helping.

Then the 3 of us shot-the-breeze for about a half hour. There is always so much to talk about especially when you're talking racing with the old-guys.

Thanks for reading my blog everyone or everytwo of you.

And... Thank you Pete for joining us and for taking the art supplies to Shannon.

Kathy

PS - Carl was fishing and caught his limit + We're having fish for dinner.