RUMFORD — Saturday afternoon broke the 90-degree mark by 1 p.m. when the fifth annual Classic, Antique, Hot Rod, Muscle Car and Motorcycle Display got under way.

Hosted by Rumford Eagles Club 1248, the show beside Rumford Avenue initially featured 16 vehicles and four motorcycles.

Peru musician and vocalist Billy Scott provided the live music with his jam-band of Terry Moore of Livermore Falls on guitar and vocals, Bob Hodgkins of Mexico on bass and vocals, and Naomi Patrie of Rumford on percussion and vocals.

All money made from the show and evening Pink Sock Hop will go directly to people in Maine suffering from breast cancer, co-organizer Richie Philbrick said.

“Last year, we had a memorial for Matt Plante who passed away, and we raised $1,900, so hopefully, we’ll do as well this year,” Philbrick said.

While Scott and the band performed Johnny Cash tunes, Alan Swett of Mexico showed people photographs of what his restored 1931 Nash looked like six years ago when he first got the rusty mess.

“Oh, my God!” was the usual reaction as Swett flipped through his album of photographs showing the two-year process from junk to fully restored.

“My wife’s mother said, ‘What are you going to do with that piece of junk?’ and I said, ‘I’m going to fix it up,’ but as I’m looking at it, I said, ‘I don’t know what to do, but I’m going to do something to it in time.'”

Swett said he talked with several hot-rodders about what to do, and then got to work on the car.

He took a 3.8L engine out of a 1980 Chevy Malibu with 50,000 miles on it and installed that in the Nash. It also lacked a roof, so he cut the roof out of a van and used that.

“It’s just a good hobby,” Swett said Saturday.

He looked at the line of vehicles parked on either side of the Nash. There was a 1929 T Bucket, a 1932 Ford, two 1933 Chevy trucks, a 1934 Ford three-window coupe and a 1942 Ford coupe.

“This is a damn fine line of vehicles up to 1942,” Randy Graham of Rumford said.

Muscle cars lined the opposite side of the parking lot, along with a 1924 American Lafrance firetruck that was once Rumford’s Engine No. 1.

Graham and Jeff Roy of Rumford rebuilt one of the 1933 Chevy trucks from a ton-and-a-half dump truck.

“When we started out, it was an Eisenhower highway department truck from the, I don’t know what it stands for, but it was ‘CCCP,'” Graham said of Jeff and Andrea Roy’s hot rod.

“This is one of the trucks that my buddy’s great-uncle drove in,” Graham said. “We took it for a ride one day and said, ‘What a junk,’ and (Roy’s) wife said, ‘Why don’t you make it into a hot rod?'”

So they did. Graham said they assembled it once, and then took everything apart, painted the parts and reassembled it. The process from start to finish took 11 years.

But unlike Swett, Graham didn’t consider it a hobby.

“More like an obsession,” he said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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