Meteor shower visible late Thursday night

After the moon sets, around 1:30 you should start seeing them

Best 2am - 4am

That "Star" is Antares

It's quite large

Tonopah, NV, the star-gazing capital of the world.

I live just west of Tonopah. Very rural, very dark skies here. Clear tonight with no clouds, should be spectacular.

A loving husband and father of 2 wonderful little boys of his own.

Thanks

He now has a special TOY (LOVE), a 1940 Buick Special Model 41, the baby of the line, that was his Grand-Dads and before that his Great Aunts, (yes it Runs and is fully Restored).

So cool! ;)

I had a Buick, 8 cylinder, left anyone in the dust from a dead stop to a roaring take off! Loved that car.

You are welcome in Reno anytime. Amazing stargazing 30 minutes from town. Tonapah is very good but it is a drive from anywhere.

Whoa.

That’s when cars were made Beauties, not like today.

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car
January, 2007 - David Traver Adolphus

We hear from many HCC readers that our monthly Driveable Dream is their favorite feature in the magazine. You love crusty, trusty cars that are still serviceable and sometimes even dependable, despite their years and lack of polish—and we do, too. Certainly, Elwyn Derr (”Bud,” to everyone who knows him for more than a minute or two) was excited when ace photographer Don Spiro told him he was going to photograph his 1940 Buick Special Model 41 for HCC.

Don had sent us a fantastic reconnaissance photo of Bud’s Buick, corroded, tarnished, oxidized and imposing. We told Don we had to have it, Don told Bud, and Bud...Bud started polishing. You’d have done the same, and when Don showed up, he found the beautiful car you see here.

So what is a Driveable Dream car? We’re not trying to promote neglect and abuse, but to feature cars that are preserved, loved and cared for. We couldn’t penalize Bud for doing just that, as his family has been caring for their Buick since his aunt and uncle, Henry and Vera Skinner, rolled it off the lot at the Motor Inn dealership in their hometown of Albert Lea, Minnesota, on October 2, 1939 (Motor Inn is still there, by the way, selling Buicks since 1908). Bud still holds on to Henry’s mortgage paper on the car: $590 borrowed, and not less than $30 a month until paid. The rest was accounted for with the trade-in of their 1933 De Soto, not a trifling sum in the Depression, even for a railroad engineer like Henry.

“It was my uncle’s pride and joy,” said Bud, who says the farthest it ever traveled was the 100 or so miles due north to Minneapolis-St. Paul, and even then, it only stretched its Dynaflash Eight that far on three or four occasions.

The first time Bud saw it was just before he entered the Navy in 1944. He had a Biloxi Blues experience: “I was on a base in Pensacola when Germany surrendered, and in Williamsburg when Japan surrendered, training for advance base supply command.” Had the U.S. invaded Japan, Bud would have been on the ground with the first and fifth waves, setting up field kitchens.

Bud says his aunt and uncle doted on the Buick, drying it off if they were caught in the rain, and garaging it through the long Minnesota winters. “After WWII, he had a sun visor installed, what comfort!” said Bud. That was one of few options left off in 1939, as they purchased it equipped with a factory push-button radio, clock and turn signals, and optional fresh air defroster (an intake ducts air from the grille to the defroster) and horizontal grille guard.

Henry died in 1953, and Vera garaged the Buick for a few years. She started driving it again later in the ‘50s, though, and in Henry’s honor, lavished the same standard of care on it that he’d always provided. Bud recalls visiting Vera with his youngest son around that time, heading for a trip into the country. “Oh, Aunt Vera, this car’s too old to drive out there,” his eight- or nine-year-old told her, and said she should get a new car. But after cruising flawlessly for the day at 65 mph, he turned into a convert.

“One fall, the missus put it into the garage for the winter, but didn’t take it out for a couple of summers. I found out she had cataracts,” said Bud. Prematurely retired with 60,000 miles showing, it sat until 1980. “A lot of people wanted to buy it, and she had a list of names. I said, ‘Put my name on the list.’ She called me, she said she knew I loved it and wouldn’t hot rod it around town.” Bud showed up one day in September with a new set of whitewalls to replace the 1953-vintage tires on which it sat, and hooked it behind his Ford F-250 pickup with a tow bar. “Every time I stopped for gas or food, people stopped me,” he said of the trip 700 miles east to his home in Detroit.

It didn’t require much to get it running, and he was content to drive it around Detroit with its buildup of wax, undercarriage grease and tarnished chrome. He tired of that after a while, and broke out the rubbing compound, discovering the original Acadia Gray paint was in tolerable condition, although there were spots where it was down to bare metal, and displayed all the layers of primer in between. With 40 years of use by then, he was proud to display his first old car. His first, and only. “I lived in Detroit, it just seemed to be in the blood to love old cars,” he said, but he had never before owned anything older than “used.” Still, Bud grew up on a farm and, like all farm kids, was a fair backyard mechanic, “and more so now than I used to be. Dad was a good shade-tree mechanic, too, and I learned a lot from him while I was still in grade school.”

Bud soon moved to a northern suburb of Detroit (not too far from Flint, Michigan, where the Buick was built), and built a big garage to keep the car’s streak of indoor nights alive. He continued to tinker with it, “cleaned the engine somewhat” and overhauled the brake system. He started cruising with the local clubs, at one point appearing in a huge show (”I was entrant number 950”) at the former Packard proving grounds. “I’m not one to go after awards, but my aunt was still living, so I brought the pictures up to her and brought a smile to her face.”

Still driving it regularly, it started to get hard to start, and around 1984 he pulled off the front end sheetmetal, had a valve job done and the engine repainted, “It seemed to run fine, but something still wasn’t right,” so the engine came out again, and he discovered a bad main thrust bearing. “I thought, we could just put a new bearing in it—but while we have it apart....” A full engine overhaul resulted. “We turned the crank only 1/10,000th of an inch, so it wasn’t too damaged. I caught it just in time.” He also had the cylinder head and valve seats reground, and installed new connecting rod and main bearings, piston rings, and valve inserts. For durability, he replaced the babbitt bearings with insert bearings. “I got extra help from the Buick Club of Southeast Michigan,” he mentioned. He did keep the 6-volt electrical system, but has added a third brake lamp, and put together a system to run halogen headlamps with half the usual juice.

By 1993, Bud was thinking about retiring, and headed for Sierra Vista, Arizona, where, in October, the car was used in the TV movie Roswell, in the company of Kyle MacLachlan, Martin Sheen and Dwight Yoakam. “I love the weather here! You don’t put it up on blocks for the winter, and then get it down and try to crank it—you drive it year round.”

A couple of years later, after joining the VMCCA Hummingbird Chapter and touring, he decided the paint was just too thin to tolerate, and it was time to refinish it. “I just wanted to make it more presentable,” Bud told us. “Only thing was, I got lazy, and told them to put clear coat on it. And I don’t miss polishing it, not at 80 years old.” The color is an exact match for the original, however. “And the interior is original, and it shows it,” although Harry, Vera and Bud’s care is evident here as well, in a back seat that with the exception of modern safety belts looks almost showroom new, and an engine-turned dash that still sports all its original, delicate knobs and switches. Only on the driver’s side does the impact of almost 70 years of driving show, in worn door trim, and tattered and discolored fabric. We’ve seen worse on cars a quarter its age. (We’ve seen worse on cars from the 21st century, for that matter.)

There is a little leakage from the transmission seals. “One time, I was touring and it started raining. I pulled over into a fellow’s driveway, and he offered to move his car—I said forget it, it’s not housebroken!” Part of that may be attributed to the limited use it sees today. “I have a bad back, and with a brace on, there isn’t enough room between me and the wheel. I only take it out once or twice a week for coffee, and to local shows.”

Another generation is waiting in the wings to take over the Buick one day, too. Bud’s grandson, an aeronautical engineer in Chandler, Arizona, has helped Bud a lot with the car in recent years.

The Buick is Bud’s first and last old car, but it also looks like the start of the old-car hobby for the whole family. His grandson will take over its care one day, and you can bet his great-grandchildren will also have the bug. Bud’s 1940 Buick Special Model 41 is the continuation of his family’s pride, a true dream that will keep on rolling for generations to come.

Owner’s View
“It’s a 1940 Buick Special Model 41, the baby of the line, with a 121-inch wheelbase and a 248-cu.in. straight-eight. With a 3-3/32 bore and 4-1/8 stroke, it produces 107hp. My uncle loved driving it, taking his missus shopping, to church and visiting her friends. They’d sneak off to the lake fishing when the weather was nice.

“When my family and I would visit, we’d go for rides, and of course, I was a Fix Or Repair Daily man, but they’d catch me looking at it out of the corner of my eye.

“It brings back memories to the older folks and shows younger folks what our cars were like. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a car roped off at a show, and a guy 10 feet away shaking. I tell people, touch it, breathe on it, spit on it—it washes off. Just watch your rings, belt buckles and purses. I’m a different hobbyist.”

This depicts a view to the north at a very high northern latitude during the summer. The local time is after midnight, and the sun is just below the horizon, and will soon rise in the north northeast.

I had a similar view of the big dipper from Chicago’s latitude on Tuesday and Wednesday night, trying to observe some Perseids.

On Tuesday night ( 1 AM to 1:30AM Wednesday morning) I saw about 4 bright meteors radiating from the northeast, where Perseus was on the horizon. One very bright one streaked across half the sky in less than half a second ( The Perseids are famously fast. ) Another left a very brief sparkling trail.

Wednesday night I saw one bright one, and a number of strange ones, which I attributed to “head on” views, except it’s hard to believe they occurred three or four in a cluster over a few minutes. I was about to write them off as “unknowns” when I saw a very definite “head on” view which appeared as a miniature firework because it had sparkles. Of course very quick compared to a firework of any kind, and high in the sky just below Cassiopeia.

Thursday night I caught one bright one around 9 PM as the clouds were starting to move in, but there was still a large patch of clear sky with Cassiopeia and even Polaris visible for about half an hour. I thought I had a good enough view that I should have seen more if there was any kind of real peak happening.

The after midnight recommendation is overplayed. It’s not as though they suddenly start up then. The radiant, in Perseus, of course, is on the horizon by 10PM, and this actually favors the overhead view of long trails which will skim the upper atmosphere.

“Trust me I know what I’m doin’”

Not to mention the noctilucent clouds on the horizon and the Aurora Borealis in the Northern Sky...