After 42 years, old Chevy may get rolling this year

MARION - Maybe, just maybe, this year Ron Van Note will finish restoration of the 1931 Chevrolet station wagon that was in pieces when he bought it 42 years ago.

“I hope so,” says Ron, 83. “People ask me all the time. I say, it's a hobby. I'm not going to rush it.”

Friends also wonder why a lifelong carpenter and building contractor would restore an antique car. Shouldn't he be making end tables or grandfather clocks or at least something out of wood?

Ah, hah.

That's the beauty of this station wagon. It's a woody. As in an entire body, from the windshield back, made of white oak.

When Ron paid $700 for it in 1969 and gathered the pieces from four garages in Illinois, he was busy with Van Note Construction started 15 years earlier. But, Ron also loved old cars, having become a car show judge in 1959 and joining a dozen friends in 1962 to form an Antique Automobile Club chapter.

“I think,” he says, “it's fun to restore something that's a part of history.”

Ron's history goes back to Plato, a village south of Tipton, where at age 11 he built a ramshackle clubhouse from old barn lumber. “I can't remember when I didn't want to be a carpenter,” he says. “Even in my baby book it says, ‘Wait a minute, dad, I'll get my hammer'”

But Ron also grew up poor there and in Cedar Rapids. He and brother, Howard, bought $10 bicycles and paid them off at 50 cents a week, earning money by delivering for the pharmacist. His mother reminded him the family often had but $2 a month.

“I look back, my memories are pretty good,” he smiles. “Maybe better than they really were.”

After two years in the Navy during World War II, Ron became an apprentice carpenter, then soon began his own business which he'd operate for 43 years. He would marry, have three children, build his Marion house in 1960 and become a Chevy man - as a kid his first car was a 1929 Ford Model A while his first antique car was a 1915 Ford Model-T.

Ron has bought and sold a 1931 Chevy cabriolet and a 1940 woody wagon, has kept his 1931 5-passenger coupe and worked on and off on the ‘31 woody that came with only rudimentary pieces of original wood.

“General Motors,” Ron laughs, “was termite bait. That's why this is a rare car. I've judged a lot of car shows in my time and I haven't seen one like it.”

The station wagon sold for $675 in 1931 with its Hercules wooden body and deluxe trim - chrome headlights, wire wheels, side mount spares on the running board.

The engine had been rebuilt, but Ron had it rebuilt again. He also had seats recovered, but prepared the rest of the car in his shops - a huge one out back, an attached garage and his basement.

As you'd expect, Ron built the wooden body himself. He did it on the frame to ensure a proper fit, but rigged up a jig on casters so he could remove it. The detail is immaculate, from square-headed carriage bolts and square nuts to the wainscoting-style wooden roof which required two days just to cut the 30 narrow full-length boards.

“There is a lot of trial and error fitting,” Ron says. “I didn't have any plans that said, make this this size, this length.”

He found original gauges in boxes and had original door handles rechromed for more than $100 each.

Ron has keep track of what he's spent, but has never added it up. He really doesn't want to know.

“No. 1,” he says, “it's a hobby. No 2, since my wife is gone (Dorothy died in 2009) it helps a lot. I get into it and I get lost.”

And one of these days, he may get it done.