14.Cars and Street Racing

(Direct Quote from my Dad) During High School I never really worried too much about my classes and homework, I just really like cars. When I went to Webster Schroder I attended the Forman center for auto body. During the time my aunt asked me to fix up her older beat up 68’ Camaro. The Camaro had some rust around the edges and an old beat up convertible top. Every day I would have to drive the car to the Forman Center and work on the rust and the faded paint, at the end of each day I would spray paint some primer on the spots that I just finished working on. After a couple of months, this car was so ugly that nobody wanted to be seen driving in it. Towards the end of the year the Camaro was ready for paint. I painted it Factory Chevy Blue, cleaned up the tires and had a new white top put on it. After the car was done I drove over to my friend’s house. From the day forward everybody wanted to be seen driving in this car. After giving it back to my aunts I decided that I wanted my own car looking like that. So after buying another 68’ Camaro I had a lot of work to do. I had to rebuild the engine, change the wheels and tires, and then needed to repaint it. (Before and After Pictures) A few years after the Camaro was done my friend called and said that there was a wrecked 80’ Corvette that he had scene. After buying that car I fixed that one all up too. After making these cars I always would want to test how fast they would go. So my friends and I would take our cars down to Lake Ave. in Charlotte where many people would go to show off their car and race them. After walking around Charlotte for a while, you would pick out a car that you wanted to race against. After you had the car you wanted to race against you would drive up to the parkway and race. At the time I was a really big fan of foreigner and since Lou Graham was from Rochester he would sing about racing in Charlotte and on Lake Avenue. In his song Rev on the Red Line, he sings about watching people race on Lake Avenue. (1 minute and 8 seconds into the song you hear him say Lake Avenue)