My Favorite Ride: Remembering Gary Franklin, and his Chevy S-10 pickup

Gary Franklin and I met when I wrote about his Chevrolet S-10 truck back in 2012.

The next year, we starred in a television movie together. I like the sound of that, and it's mostly true.

So, it wasn't a movie-movie with drama and a plot, but a local documentary filmed for WTIU public television in Bloomington.

Gary and I weren't stars, but we were featured, along with local car guys Joe Wilson and Buddy Weaver, discussing the days of their youth when cruising around town in your fast car on Saturday nights was a way of life.

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I've been thinking about that afternoon in the TV studio since finding out Gary died on Jan. 14. He lived in Ellettsville, and was 71.

The men reminisced that day in 2013, full of memories of a time when a gallon of gasoline could be bought with a coin and cigarettes were 20 cents a pack.

Wilson recalled driving his 1951 two-tone blue Kaiser Henry J between Wyatt’s Drive-In and the Frost Top in downtown Petersburg. “It was two miles from one to the other,” he said. “I put in a lot of miles between the two.”

This was the 1950s, back when high-school boys living in small Midwestern towns cruised the local streets to impress their peers, hoping their car would catch the eye of a pretty girl at a drive-in root beer joint.

Weaver had a not-too-fast, six-cylinder 1949 Chevrolet back then, and cruised Bloomington’s Frisch’s Big Boy. He made tracks driving back and forth on College Avenue and Walnut Street.

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Franklin motored around Owen County's courthouse square a decade later in a car that likely didn't attract much attention, a 1965 Ford Fairlane. Later in his life, he was behind the wheel of his prized 1988 pickup.

If you've ever been to a Thursday night cruise-in at the Hardee's on West Third Street in Bloomington, you've likely seen seen this truck.

In 2000, Gary swapped an under-restoration 1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass for the beat-up truck. The V-8 motor “ended up being no good,” he told me in 2012, and the body had been in about the same state. “It was just a mess,” but he saw possibilities despite the truck's poor condition.

Gary sanded off thick layers of paint and primer, getting down to the metal. He installed a 355-cubic-inch, 400-horsepower motor and tuned up the engine. He ended up dismantling the body and reshaping the truck with sheet metal. Just a portion of the original cab remained. He painted the truck shiny metallic black.

A few years later, a fellow car club member offered to take the truck up a notch with a custom paint job. He promised Gary that when he got it back, "I wouldn’t lose it in the parking lot.”

When the man suggested a two-tone yellow-and-purple color scheme, Gary was on board. They added small flames on the fenders and a black-and-white racing flag design. “It gets a lot of attention at the shows,” he told me.

Gary sure loved that 35-year-old pickup, which got a mention in his obituary: "If you knew Gary, you would know one of his pride and joys would be his 1988 Chevy S-10 Show Truck."

During the documentary discussion, more than 50 years had passed since these men were in high school and they were still cruising in classic automobiles. They carry on a fading tradition.

“The fun is in going and having the camaraderie of the people,” Wilson said. “And the friendships. They last a long time.”

Contact reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Remembering car show regular Gary Franklin and his Chevy S-10 pickup