For reasons that will become obvious, I’m going to have to disguise people’s names and alter company names. Also I’m going to have to compress some time lines to save space… Please remember that unless you know who I am behind the handle “Jet in Columbus” no one could possibly figure out who YOU are, so don’t be so paranoid!
ALL PHOTOS IN THESE BLOGS ARE PUBLISHED AS SMALL IMAGES-SIMPLY CLICK ANY ONE YOU'D LIKE TO SEE AND IT WILL ENLARGE FOR YOU... THANKS…
This is how I lived the good life and then found myself living on the edge of suicide.
By 1989 I’d scrimped and saved enough to finally start living the good life while I was young enough and had the looks to enjoy it. In that year I moved into a nice one-bedroom third-floor apartment in the heart of downtown Columbus, Ohio. I had hopes of one day living up in the penthouse, but for the moment the apartment served my needs, since I was rarely at home most of the time anyway. Instead I was away on either art business, in San Diego or shuttling pizzas around. Most of my clients were here locally, and the rest were in San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.
By then I had eventually taken up photography seriously. My uncle had given me my first tiny camera as a child by helping me purchase it with the Bazooka bubblegum wrappers I'd been saving.
Why settle down in Columbus?
Right out of High School, my sister helped me move away from the soap opera that was my hometown of Moon Township-a suburb of Pittsburgh. I wound up in Barberton Ohio, just south of Akron. I worked midnight to eight in the morning doing maintenance work for McDonald's for just shy of ten years.
I had always liked to pencil sketch and had even dabbled in acrylics oils, and one day a friend noticed a doodle of the house I'd grown up in on my wall. He asked if I could do an artist’s conception of what a home he wanted to build would look like from a set of blueprints. Just for fun I did several showing different versions with siding, brick, stucco etc. As word got around, other friends would describe their hopeless fantasy dream homes, and I’d do faux-blueprints, wall paintings and sketches as a sideline living.
Two days before a full-field inspection of our McDonald's, a bunch of black & white prints of historical pictures were vandalized at our store. I was asked if I could quickly produce some replacements in time for the inspection. This one is of the long-gone American Hotel.
I guess they liked them because shortly afterward I was invited to do some landscapes for a couple of other McDonald's in the area under construction; mostly pictures of local homes, farms, and businesses that’d burned down, or had been torn down. There's a few more examples near the bottom of this chapter.
Jet'sArt Custom Illustrations was born.
One day on a business trip with some friends, I discovered and fell in love with Columbus, Ohio. After moving down here and setting up shop, my friend Rich talked me into purchasing a little 1979 Triumph Spitfire convertible. A friend took a polaroid of it-it's the only photo I have because my Nikon was stolen from my car at a rest stop on Rt. 70. (It's the top image of three below-The one without a wing... and before you ask, it came with the stripes already on it.)
Wing?
Uh Rich?...I've never driven a car with a clutch before! He taught me how to drive a "standard" the same way he'd taught his wife... In the middle of a school parking lot, he showed me the shift pattern, showed me where the clutch pedal was, then got out of the car... Needless to say, after about a month of cussing I had to replace the clutch. His wife would later laughingly confide that the reason that he'd talked me into buying it was because he'd hoped I'd destroy the little *%^#@! trying to learn a clutch and then give up and sell it to him really cheap.
To quote "Tweetie Bird"... He don't know me vewy well; do he?
He pulled a practical joke on me one morning... I went out to find he'd painted "JET'S RUNNERS" on the tires in giant white lettering.
WING?? .......(patience)
No one told me just how hard it'd be to find parts for the little British 2-seater... because they stopped making them in 1980. When I decided to replace that clutch, I discovered that the only way to get the transmission out... was through the interior ...which meant my taking out the passenger compartment tranny cover, floor shifter housing, seats, and the carpet... oy. Oddly enough, the more I learned its "pain in the ass" foibles, the more I grew to love it.
Shortly thereafter and out of necessity, I began buying several of its cousins, brothers and sisters
to get replacement parts such as very breakable pot-metal interior door handles, trim pieces, tail lights, mirrors etc, not to mention hard-to-find engine parts. Looking back, I don't seem to recall that I had ever wanted to know about a Stromberg "side-draft" carburetor... or for that matter how to adjust one. The stock 4-cylinder 1500cc engine came with a carburetor that occasionally requires you to unscrew the cap on the top of it and put a couple of drops of oil in it every so often??? I'd never seen a carburetor that stuck out of the side of an engine. I was going to ask what that canister stuck sideways on it was, until I guessed correctly that it was the air cleaner. It took me 20 minutes of muttering to myself to discover that the fuel float that I was trying to locate and adjust was only accessible through the bottom (?) of that little carburetor!
A riding lawn mower engine?
Nah too big for that-It produced damned good fuel economy though and the little thing "hauled
ass." (went fast for you non-Americans)
In all of my photos, I couldn't find even one Spitfire with an open engine compartment. I found this one on the web. (In case you suspect me of doing it, I'd never paint anything even resembling pink... yuk) Take note of those chrome clips up there just behind the wheel wells. If you undo them, the whole entire front clip flips up and stands vertically on the bumper! You'll need to know that in just a few paragraphs hence...
With four cars to pick things off of, I spent all of my spare time restoring it, and in fact wound up with enough spare parts to build two good ones, one for long trips (plain brown) and one to show off in (the striped one below). Rich managed a pizza shop in Hilliard, Ohio, and during the winter break in the art business, I delivered pizzas for him. A huge blizzard hit that winter and he in his little Spitfire and I in mine, were the only two vehicles that didn't wander off into a snow drift and get stuck. The comical part of that is when I got stuck, I simply put the car in first, got out, and lifted up the back end, then rushed to get back into the car... I had a lot of fun that winter.
I eventually sold one of the restored Spitfires (the one without the stripes) to a constantly begging and pleading collector in Chicago and was pleasantly surprised that I got enough for it to have paid for both cars and then some! He sent me on a scavenger hunt by telling me about a couple of rumored mid-70s Spitfire prototypes and after doing some research and a ton of driving, I discovered not one but TWO brown "JetFire Xs" (!) with those distinctive "Super Bee/bird" rear spoiler wings. The middle one's serial number ended in Xo2 and the bottom one ended in X05. They apparently had been proposed for the American market, but never went into production and they'd somehow avoided the usual practice of putting failed prototypes to death in a crusher. Now come on-with a name like Jetfire how could I resist?... So I bought both
of them. I found out later that British Leland couldn't use the name Jetfire because GM had named an Oldsmobile that and they held the rights to it. Oddly enough, they're both titled as 1979 models, but I think they may actually have been based on two different model years. Either that or one was updated after it was built to display the final "1980-1" model, which was the last year they were built.
They both came with stock OEM equipment in "plain Jane" BL brown when I got them, with the following exceptions...
The spoilers...obviously, but each "wing" was of a different design, materials, and probably manufacturers. I saw a photo of one on a race track with a HUGE one. If it hadn't been for the weight of the engine, it probably would've rested on its back bumper with its nose in the air. Both cars also had identical custom tan interiors, but without the usual plaid tartan in the door and seat panels. I liked the yellow paint trim stripes that came on my stock Spitfire so much that I had it (kinda) duplicated on the middle one (stripes) to set off its wing...
Unique to the middle one in the above image to the left (yellow stripes + wing)
It had a huge Triumph logo on the hood (excuse me, bonnet) in yellow, which the other didn't. It vaguely resembles a "T/A screaming chicken", but not quite. It had flared body-colored brown side mirrors with a yellow trim stripe. After deciding to keep this one, I matched the yellow color when I and a friend with a paint shop added the stripes later.
...Of course Bill (the backyard mechanic guy I was buying/swapping parts from) had a screaming fit when he saw I'd had the very rare car repainted. It got three coats of stock brown paint, another two of the yellow, and three of clear-coat... then it was sanded to within an inch of its life to a near mirror finish.
It has twin five-foot-tall tilted back antennas on either side of the fiberglass airfoil. The passenger side one is for the AM/FM cassette and the driver side one is for a CB radio. Someone wandered off with the CB equipment (but fortunately not the wiring) before I got it, so I installed my own. (I had a great CB handle back then, which required anyone wanting to talk to me to call "Earth"... This is Snowman to Earth!)
Oddly enough an admiring cop at a restaurant pointed out that it had no side marker lights, which shocked me because after a couple of months you'd think I'd have noticed!?! I frowned and went out to look for myself... he was right!
The bottom car of the image above had a much cleaner look to it, but "felt" smaller, and it had an unusual set of accessories that I'd never seen on a Triumph Spitfire. It came with a bulked-up 4-cylinder with a Weber carb on it, but I didn't have it long enough to figure out where the motor was from (probably a Brit brand or something shop-built.) It also had a metal interior transmission cover instead of the usual fiberglass.
It came with black wheel hubs, flat black flared side mirrors, electric windows (!), windshield wipers with a delay circuit, electric 6-way driver seat (!!!) a motorized rear-view mirror that auto-tilted when someone with high beams was behind you, no stock body striping along the sides and it sported the more modern black rubber bumper. For some unfathomable reason, the tan interior and seats came with black carpet, and the matching floor mats had big white Triumph logos which would've been a bitch to keep clean.
It had an unusual airfoil that folds/curves in at the bottom supports and appears to be fiberglass over steel. It looked very breakable and if I hadn't bought it as an investment to resell rather than keep, I probably would've junked it in favor a duplicate of it's twin brother's much sturdier wing. I felt sorry for the poor thing and transferred my "Jet's Runners" tires to it to give it a more sporty look until I could get out and buy stock white-letter radials for it.
Frantic car collectors began hating/dreading/blacklisting me because I had a knack for finding unusual cars and then had the nerve to actually drive the damned things, customize them, and let them run free to terrorize the unsuspecting local townsfolk, rather than grow old and bored somewhere in peace on display. I had a friend build me a new dashboard out of mahogany (All Spitfires' dashes were hand-made out of wood) for the striped one, and installed digital instruments (another unforgivable sin from what I'm told.) What? Oh calm down; I saved the original to put back on... what're you cringing about?
After all, isn't that what they're made for... driving? I loved driving it too, and it was great at gas stations and restaurants, but the cops kept pulling me over because they wanted to know what the hell it was. I got used to them taking photos of it too, and then sending me on my way.
From what I'm told there were only five prototype versions ever built, each with a different air foil and engine; one was missing, three were still in existence and one had been wrecked beyond repair on a race track...
In my travels, I spotted a beautiful brown absolutely
immaculate Triumph TR7 and fell in lust... uh love. After having it checked over by a body shop, I was astonished to discover there were only two very minor dings on the whole car, and it had its original paint!
A week or so later I bought a 2nd older brown TR7 to strip body parts off of, in case I needed them for the good one. As it turned out I didn't need them and the second older one got the dreaded (by others) yellow stripe treatment and became my daily driver while the nice one you see to the right took me on business trips.
I also soon learned that the downfall of every Triumph is its dreaded and storied Lucas electrical system. I began storing aluminum foil in the glove compartment to wrap fuses with until I could get home.
I don't think I even thought about how much I was spending back then. I was doing well enough to be careless with my budget. That financial condition was to the point where I'd pay my apartment rent up a year in advance and overpay hundreds on my utilities so I wouldn't have to be bothered with them.
Bill and I started looking for a warehouse where we could stash the cars that we were buying and then stripping for parts. Without really trying and out of necessity, we started a business (with me a silent 1/3 partner) selling and repairing Triumphs and MGs, and parting out what was left. (Cue the Pet Shop Boys) "I've got the brains, you've got the brawn-let's make lots of money!" Much to my surprise my partner Bill did quite well in the mechanic/business end of things.
A couple of months after I’d lovingly completed my older TR7 the way I wanted it, a drunk driver doing about 60mph plowed into me on a rainy night near Ohio
State University. I was sitting at a dead stop at a light and he hit me from behind, crushing the back of it all the way to the seats, and slammed me diagonally across the intersection and into a tree… then continued on as if nothing had happened.
Fortunately there was a Columbus cop coming the opposite direction and radioed help for me, while he chased him down.
Two mind-boggling things happened that night. I had to be pried out of the car and was amazed to find that I only had a couple of bruises. The second was; take a look at the deck lid in the bottom photo of the wreck. The Camaro crushed the trunk nearly to the seats (the gas tank is behind those very seats by the way) and yet the trunk lid was almost completely untouched and is hanging right where it should have been!!
His insurance company asked if they could surprise me with an offer of something special if I’d settle without litigation. All they'd tell me sight-unseen was that it was a Triumph TR8 convertible...
(Well, it was titled a TR"8" convertible) anyway. I spent a couple of days fantasizing and wondered if it was some freshly painted bondo-covered junker.
The next week Bill called me all in hysterics and ordered me to get down to the shop NOW.
They delivered it to our shop wrapped up like a Christmas present. I signed a document releasing them from further damages and took possession of it. It was in nearly pristine show-car condition except for the top which had been damaged while in storage. I think I nearly fainted on the spot when Bill pointed out that I hadn't noticed that decal over the right tail light, having been distracted by the custom one-of-a-kind tail lights themselves... it says TR9-with a rather cryptic serial number beneath it?!? I researched and could find no mention of a mid or late 70s TR9. (Compare the stock taillights on the brown one above to the ones below-big difference.
My not noticing it is understandable... I had since moved forward and was too busy staring wide-eyed at the front end... and wondering what was underneath it. Problem was I couldn't find...
If you're not familiar with Triumphs and you haven't enlarged the photo yet, you may not have noticed some peculiarities unique to this particular car. For one thing there's no hood (bonnet)!?! The guys laughed when I tried to raise a hood that wasn't there. The metal front fenders and bonnet had been replaced with a one-piece fiberglass unit. See that clip on the fender in front of the door? Undo them on both sides and you''ll discover that the car was configured just like a Triumph Spitfire and everything forward of the doors-including the wheel wells-pivots up and forward, hinged on the front bumper! I loved the Spitfires for that very reason because it gives you complete access to any part of the engine from nearly any angle.
I was also distracted by a neat bit of custom "metal shopping." Someone had recessed the door handles into black triangles to make them look like a vent for a mid-engined car.
I took these photos after I'd driven it in the rain down to a shop to have a new top put on it (apparently the poor unsuspecting thing had stuff piled on top of it while it was hiding under its tarp.) The duct tape and immaculate paint had me a little suspicious too, but after I had a few body men look it over, they said "No bondo." While they did that, I tore the back end apart trying to figure out why the backup lights blinked with the turnsignals. (crossed ground wire.)
I was looking at a rare car that had been stored in the back of some Jaguar dealership and forgotten... that only happens in fairy tales and car lover's wet-dreams. I also discovered where the big pop-up headlights used to be, now was replaced by modern rectangular headlights underneath that sank down beneath the bumper until they were turned on; then they'd swing up to just beneath the blackout plastic... using the same motors that used to operate the old headlights. Even I was impressed!
His insurance company had the nerve to call and ask me if I liked it. It was a fight not to gush. Note the custom British vanity plates! Whoever transformed it had dumped the standard little small-block V8 and replaced it with a more modern fuel-injected Buick 3.8 liter V6 "Grand National." That was then connected up to a Borg-Warner 5-speed manual with overdrive transmission, and they'd completed the drive train with a rebuilt Ford 9-inch 12-bolt rear end off of a ’69 Ford Torino.
The rear drive train was so big, it was necessary to install air shocks to jack the back up so that the beefed up drive shaft would clear the interior tunnel. Perched atop the power plant was a new and enthusiastic Holley 4-barrel and Edelbrock intakes. Also along for the ride were Cyclone headers and stainless steel pipes... just to make it sound good.
I believe it was Jay Leno who while stating what he thought of a Porsche he'd just driven said regarding it... "If you have an erection lasting more than four hours, consult your physician."
I knew the feeling.
People unfamiliar with the little British sports convertible were always complimenting me on the European wedge styling. Those at intersections were aghast at how fast I could power away from traffic lights, assuming (wrongly) that there was some dinky little power plant under the hood. It also sported the only pair of British Racing Green fog lamps under the front bumper in the U.S.
I eventually sold my beautiful and untouched brown one to the same collector that just wouldn't let me alone before. His chest all inflated at saving the poor thing from me. Where it is now, I'm not sure... probably some undisclosed location with a guard on it...I had no intention of hiding that beauty under a tarp, but I wasn't going to overdrive it either, so with the proceeds I bought a “daily driver”…
...a midnight blue turbo-
charged fuel injected Cobra Thunderbird.
The only thing that gives it away to victims of my lead-foot at intersections, was that little chrome Cobra emblem behind the front wheel well? It's got a gas-guzzling 5-liter Cobra Mustang super motor under that grandfatherly looking hood... that'll press you into your seat-Ho ho ho!! I used to be known for never driving a normal car without a story connected to it.
I loved that car ... The striped brown "Jetfire" was borrowed by a friend who wanted to drive it to a local car show. On the way back it was broadsided by a cab running a stop sign. It died as it lived-having fun being gawked at... Ohhhhh Ahhhhh!
I miss the Cobra T-Bird too. A few years later I had the nerve to use it as a pizza car. I sold it to an assistant manager who promptly blew the engine... alas.
While all of this was going on, a good friend of mine talked me into doing a 24 x 36 portrait of Little Raven, Chief of the Arapahos in pencil and charcoal for his local Bureau of Indian Affairs. It's displayed on the wall behind his desk.
Life went on and my partner Bill really started making us some good money and we were gaining a great reputation in the local area… Then his wife sued for divorce, insisted that the business be sold as part of the settlement so she could grab half of his share of what the shop was worth. Bill was devastated and was left with barely two nickels to scrape together.
My money and time was tied up in other ventures, and Jet’sArt Custom Illustrations of course, so I couldn't help him much. I waited until after the divorce was settled and she couldn't take anything else from him, and then signed over my nearly completed yellow TR? to him and my titles to the junkers to sell for what he could get for them, and then arranged for the new buyers of the business to hire him to remodel the shop into an auto parts store in exchange for a small apartment in back where he could live rent free and be employed as a mechanic/salesman/night watchman for them. He has since moved down south somewhere and we lost contact.
I loved that yellow car. I drove it around for about a month before we started transforming it. If anyone knows where it is now, I'd love to see it completed.
Such is life...
This is another example of some artwork I used to do professionally... The image/screen print below is from a nifty screen saver I'd created for
my office help's computers where my image (bottom right) and logo fade in and out of the picture in different places and in different sizes. If you catch "me" with the cursor, it would bring up a game menu (for when I was out of the office and they were bored). It's entitled "The Woods". Click on it to enlarge it-though I should warn you it's designed for a 28 inch wide screen graphics monitor...
My art business flourished a few years later, mostly designing custom graphics for CD covers for local bands or graphs and charts that businesses used for inventories etc. In my spare time I worked on a gay spy novel entitled "System 10" and its sequel, "A Ghost of a Chance." It seemed like I'd just finish updating
the 600-page single-spaced manuscript, when technology would lurch ahead faster than I could rewrite it, so the book wound up on the back burner again and again... alas. A publisher friend said it'd only sell if it had a lot of sex and violence in it, and so I reworked it accordingly. Now I'm seriously thinking of taking it back to its original state and selling it as a period piece.
In the 1990s a good friend named Brian S. let me hitch a ride in his private "time-share" business jet (that's it on the cover of my manuscript behind the two people shaking hands) for a trip to San Diego. I paid half the fuel and airport fees-it was great. We’d stop to refuel in Las Vegas and I’d have a good time at MGM Grand's blackjack tables.
I've always dabbled in photography, but never-ever seriously. I'd taken one of my Nikons with me on the trip, and had it with me while visiting a friend's small movie studio. As a joke, I was talked into designing the box artwork for a gay X-rated feature that he was producing. To my shock they actually liked my ideas better than their pro's work! They offered me an irregular job whenever I was in town, which eventually became a regular pastime around three times a year.
As I became more experienced, he took me under his wing and taught me videography too. I graduated to much larger and more complicated equipment, none of which I'd be able to explain having-not that it mattered because it all had to stay at the studio in San Diego anyway. I started submitting scripts later and to my shock some were accepted! (Yes, porn has scripts-how do you think they're copyrighted?)
The piece to the right is 48 x 24 and is framed in brass. The lady who was interviewed for this said it was her grandfather and she had an unusual request, considering it'd be displayed in public. He was the local blacksmith and when he posed for the photo many considered it immoral for a man to blatantly display his chest, especially if it was muscular and specifically if it was hairy. Therefore when the plate was developed his undershirt was airbrushed closed to his neck. She asked me if I could draw it open as he was very proud of his physique, having to tote heavy wagon wheels all day... I was happy to do it, and got a bonus hug from her when she saw it.
I began earning some good money-not insanely great money, but it helped me live comfortably and was a factor in my moving into my penthouse and buying some great cars. On one such trip I paid to have my favorite sister flown down to meet me in Las Vegas for some fun at the tables, then afterward we flew back on a commercial airline to her home in Oregon for a great visit.
I recall once offering on a whim to buy her a new refrigerator for Christmas, and it almost came to blows when she wouldn't let me. She's always been very independent and self-reliant. I could see how it'd prick her ego for me to do that, and now I'm sorry I did. I'd always had an open and over-willing wallet when my family was concerned... and despite my current hard times still do.
I've often wondered how my family didn't figure out something was going on, since most of them thought I was only a pizza delivery guy... despite a hefty bank account, a downtown penthouse filled with curios and collectibles, and a fancy car. At one point while touring around Oregon with one of my sisters, I let it slip that I was doing some video work, I don't think she actually understood what I'd meant-in fact she may not have even heard me, but just in the slight case I let it slip again I went out with her and bought a little Sharp camcorder at Sears to explain any further "slip of the tongues" away.
Back then, only two members of my family actually knew about what I was doing on the west coast; my favorite sister and a wonderful aunt. I'd never exactly sworn them to secrecy, after all I'd been disowned by the rest of my folks years ago anyway for being gay. Sometimes I think that they see me as some evil lying perverted homoSEXual who probably has kidnapped and molested every little boy I saw and would rot in hell in eternal damnation. I've mostly shrugged it off figuring if they found out they'd start pointing fingers and self-righteously saying in unison "See, I told you!", which most of them do anyway without provocation.
If certain members of my hypocritical and judgmental family actually knew just how many of their number were gay, they'd spend the next solid month in church, PRAYING that it wasn't some sort of contagious disease, which it nearly is...
...denial runs rampant in my clan-even I'm not immune to it at times.
I figured it was a lost cause after learning that the sister who still lives near Pittsburgh where we all grew up, actually married and raised a family for 18 years and never told her kids that I even existed!
Speaking of relatives, my one regret was that some of my family were going through tough times while I was enjoying myself. My younger brother had been in the navy serving on an aircraft carrier during the Gulf War(s). I was so worried about him, I became addicted to CNN Headline news hoping I wouldn't hear bad news about him.
Before they sent him there, he was stationed somewhere at the naval base in San Diego with his wife and I often wondered what he'd think if he'd seen me all bulked up. He probably wouldn't have recognized me... Hell; I didn't recognize me.
He eventually moved to Seattle and is doing very well for himself.
The 36 x 24 painting below (yes that's a painting) is of a general store in East Liberty Corners.
The owner broke down in tears when she saw her long-gone business. She had only one complaint...
She blurted out with a laugh that the sidewalk was never that clean and uncluttered out front.
My older sister in Oregon from my father's first marriage owned a great restaurant in the Willamette National Forest, but it was going under because of local economic bad times, the road through the National Park was often closed and fraught with landslides or downed trees, and her health was failing. I began sending $1,000 checks and Wal-Mart gift cards to them to help make ends meet, without asking for anything in return. I mention this only because later on in my time of need, my father would throw it up in my face.
It’s a sign of the times when you occasionally do something nice for someone, just because it feels good to do it, but then they always suspect that you have an ulterior motive hidden somewhere.
One of my very best friends had moved to Chicago and on one of my visits there he asked for a loan of $40,000 because he’d run into unexpected expenses while opening up a bar in the suburbs. Some real estate magnate was converting a big warehouse into condos, and rather than tear it down, he sold an attached building to Tom. Unexpectedly the building wouldn’t pass inspection without a new roof. It felt good to be able to help him out and even better that I realized I had enough cash socked away that I could do it without too much financial pain.
ALL PHOTOS IN THESE BLOGS ARE PUBLISHED AS SMALL IMAGES-SIMPLY CLICK ANY ONE YOU'D LIKE TO SEE AND IT WILL ENLARGE FOR YOU... THANKS…
This is how I lived the good life and then found myself living on the edge of suicide.
By 1989 I’d scrimped and saved enough to finally start living the good life while I was young enough and had the looks to enjoy it. In that year I moved into a nice one-bedroom third-floor apartment in the heart of downtown Columbus, Ohio. I had hopes of one day living up in the penthouse, but for the moment the apartment served my needs, since I was rarely at home most of the time anyway. Instead I was away on either art business, in San Diego or shuttling pizzas around. Most of my clients were here locally, and the rest were in San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.By then I had eventually taken up photography seriously. My uncle had given me my first tiny camera as a child by helping me purchase it with the Bazooka bubblegum wrappers I'd been saving.
Why settle down in Columbus?
Right out of High School, my sister helped me move away from the soap opera that was my hometown of Moon Township-a suburb of Pittsburgh. I wound up in Barberton Ohio, just south of Akron. I worked midnight to eight in the morning doing maintenance work for McDonald's for just shy of ten years.
I had always liked to pencil sketch and had even dabbled in acrylics oils, and one day a friend noticed a doodle of the house I'd grown up in on my wall. He asked if I could do an artist’s conception of what a home he wanted to build would look like from a set of blueprints. Just for fun I did several showing different versions with siding, brick, stucco etc. As word got around, other friends would describe their hopeless fantasy dream homes, and I’d do faux-blueprints, wall paintings and sketches as a sideline living.
Two days before a full-field inspection of our McDonald's, a bunch of black & white prints of historical pictures were vandalized at our store. I was asked if I could quickly produce some replacements in time for the inspection. This one is of the long-gone American Hotel.
I guess they liked them because shortly afterward I was invited to do some landscapes for a couple of other McDonald's in the area under construction; mostly pictures of local homes, farms, and businesses that’d burned down, or had been torn down. There's a few more examples near the bottom of this chapter.
Jet'sArt Custom Illustrations was born.
One day on a business trip with some friends, I discovered and fell in love with Columbus, Ohio. After moving down here and setting up shop, my friend Rich talked me into purchasing a little 1979 Triumph Spitfire convertible. A friend took a polaroid of it-it's the only photo I have because my Nikon was stolen from my car at a rest stop on Rt. 70. (It's the top image of three below-The one without a wing... and before you ask, it came with the stripes already on it.)
Wing?
Uh Rich?...I've never driven a car with a clutch before! He taught me how to drive a "standard" the same way he'd taught his wife... In the middle of a school parking lot, he showed me the shift pattern, showed me where the clutch pedal was, then got out of the car... Needless to say, after about a month of cussing I had to replace the clutch. His wife would later laughingly confide that the reason that he'd talked me into buying it was because he'd hoped I'd destroy the little *%^#@! trying to learn a clutch and then give up and sell it to him really cheap.
To quote "Tweetie Bird"... He don't know me vewy well; do he?
He pulled a practical joke on me one morning... I went out to find he'd painted "JET'S RUNNERS" on the tires in giant white lettering.
WING?? .......(patience)
No one told me just how hard it'd be to find parts for the little British 2-seater... because they stopped making them in 1980. When I decided to replace that clutch, I discovered that the only way to get the transmission out... was through the interior ...which meant my taking out the passenger compartment tranny cover, floor shifter housing, seats, and the carpet... oy. Oddly enough, the more I learned its "pain in the ass" foibles, the more I grew to love it.
Shortly thereafter and out of necessity, I began buying several of its cousins, brothers and sisters
to get replacement parts such as very breakable pot-metal interior door handles, trim pieces, tail lights, mirrors etc, not to mention hard-to-find engine parts. Looking back, I don't seem to recall that I had ever wanted to know about a Stromberg "side-draft" carburetor... or for that matter how to adjust one. The stock 4-cylinder 1500cc engine came with a carburetor that occasionally requires you to unscrew the cap on the top of it and put a couple of drops of oil in it every so often??? I'd never seen a carburetor that stuck out of the side of an engine. I was going to ask what that canister stuck sideways on it was, until I guessed correctly that it was the air cleaner. It took me 20 minutes of muttering to myself to discover that the fuel float that I was trying to locate and adjust was only accessible through the bottom (?) of that little carburetor!A riding lawn mower engine?
Nah too big for that-It produced damned good fuel economy though and the little thing "hauled
ass." (went fast for you non-Americans)In all of my photos, I couldn't find even one Spitfire with an open engine compartment. I found this one on the web. (In case you suspect me of doing it, I'd never paint anything even resembling pink... yuk) Take note of those chrome clips up there just behind the wheel wells. If you undo them, the whole entire front clip flips up and stands vertically on the bumper! You'll need to know that in just a few paragraphs hence...
With four cars to pick things off of, I spent all of my spare time restoring it, and in fact wound up with enough spare parts to build two good ones, one for long trips (plain brown) and one to show off in (the striped one below). Rich managed a pizza shop in Hilliard, Ohio, and during the winter break in the art business, I delivered pizzas for him. A huge blizzard hit that winter and he in his little Spitfire and I in mine, were the only two vehicles that didn't wander off into a snow drift and get stuck. The comical part of that is when I got stuck, I simply put the car in first, got out, and lifted up the back end, then rushed to get back into the car... I had a lot of fun that winter.
I eventually sold one of the restored Spitfires (the one without the stripes) to a constantly begging and pleading collector in Chicago and was pleasantly surprised that I got enough for it to have paid for both cars and then some! He sent me on a scavenger hunt by telling me about a couple of rumored mid-70s Spitfire prototypes and after doing some research and a ton of driving, I discovered not one but TWO brown "JetFire Xs" (!) with those distinctive "Super Bee/bird" rear spoiler wings. The middle one's serial number ended in Xo2 and the bottom one ended in X05. They apparently had been proposed for the American market, but never went into production and they'd somehow avoided the usual practice of putting failed prototypes to death in a crusher. Now come on-with a name like Jetfire how could I resist?... So I bought both
of them. I found out later that British Leland couldn't use the name Jetfire because GM had named an Oldsmobile that and they held the rights to it. Oddly enough, they're both titled as 1979 models, but I think they may actually have been based on two different model years. Either that or one was updated after it was built to display the final "1980-1" model, which was the last year they were built.They both came with stock OEM equipment in "plain Jane" BL brown when I got them, with the following exceptions...
The spoilers...obviously, but each "wing" was of a different design, materials, and probably manufacturers. I saw a photo of one on a race track with a HUGE one. If it hadn't been for the weight of the engine, it probably would've rested on its back bumper with its nose in the air. Both cars also had identical custom tan interiors, but without the usual plaid tartan in the door and seat panels. I liked the yellow paint trim stripes that came on my stock Spitfire so much that I had it (kinda) duplicated on the middle one (stripes) to set off its wing...
Unique to the middle one in the above image to the left (yellow stripes + wing)
It had a huge Triumph logo on the hood (excuse me, bonnet) in yellow, which the other didn't. It vaguely resembles a "T/A screaming chicken", but not quite. It had flared body-colored brown side mirrors with a yellow trim stripe. After deciding to keep this one, I matched the yellow color when I and a friend with a paint shop added the stripes later....Of course Bill (the backyard mechanic guy I was buying/swapping parts from) had a screaming fit when he saw I'd had the very rare car repainted. It got three coats of stock brown paint, another two of the yellow, and three of clear-coat... then it was sanded to within an inch of its life to a near mirror finish.
It has twin five-foot-tall tilted back antennas on either side of the fiberglass airfoil. The passenger side one is for the AM/FM cassette and the driver side one is for a CB radio. Someone wandered off with the CB equipment (but fortunately not the wiring) before I got it, so I installed my own. (I had a great CB handle back then, which required anyone wanting to talk to me to call "Earth"... This is Snowman to Earth!)
Oddly enough an admiring cop at a restaurant pointed out that it had no side marker lights, which shocked me because after a couple of months you'd think I'd have noticed!?! I frowned and went out to look for myself... he was right!
The bottom car of the image above had a much cleaner look to it, but "felt" smaller, and it had an unusual set of accessories that I'd never seen on a Triumph Spitfire. It came with a bulked-up 4-cylinder with a Weber carb on it, but I didn't have it long enough to figure out where the motor was from (probably a Brit brand or something shop-built.) It also had a metal interior transmission cover instead of the usual fiberglass.
It came with black wheel hubs, flat black flared side mirrors, electric windows (!), windshield wipers with a delay circuit, electric 6-way driver seat (!!!) a motorized rear-view mirror that auto-tilted when someone with high beams was behind you, no stock body striping along the sides and it sported the more modern black rubber bumper. For some unfathomable reason, the tan interior and seats came with black carpet, and the matching floor mats had big white Triumph logos which would've been a bitch to keep clean.
It had an unusual airfoil that folds/curves in at the bottom supports and appears to be fiberglass over steel. It looked very breakable and if I hadn't bought it as an investment to resell rather than keep, I probably would've junked it in favor a duplicate of it's twin brother's much sturdier wing. I felt sorry for the poor thing and transferred my "Jet's Runners" tires to it to give it a more sporty look until I could get out and buy stock white-letter radials for it.
Frantic car collectors began hating/dreading/blacklisting me because I had a knack for finding unusual cars and then had the nerve to actually drive the damned things, customize them, and let them run free to terrorize the unsuspecting local townsfolk, rather than grow old and bored somewhere in peace on display. I had a friend build me a new dashboard out of mahogany (All Spitfires' dashes were hand-made out of wood) for the striped one, and installed digital instruments (another unforgivable sin from what I'm told.) What? Oh calm down; I saved the original to put back on... what're you cringing about?
After all, isn't that what they're made for... driving? I loved driving it too, and it was great at gas stations and restaurants, but the cops kept pulling me over because they wanted to know what the hell it was. I got used to them taking photos of it too, and then sending me on my way.
From what I'm told there were only five prototype versions ever built, each with a different air foil and engine; one was missing, three were still in existence and one had been wrecked beyond repair on a race track...
In my travels, I spotted a beautiful brown absolutely
immaculate Triumph TR7 and fell in lust... uh love. After having it checked over by a body shop, I was astonished to discover there were only two very minor dings on the whole car, and it had its original paint!A week or so later I bought a 2nd older brown TR7 to strip body parts off of, in case I needed them for the good one. As it turned out I didn't need them and the second older one got the dreaded (by others) yellow stripe treatment and became my daily driver while the nice one you see to the right took me on business trips.
I also soon learned that the downfall of every Triumph is its dreaded and storied Lucas electrical system. I began storing aluminum foil in the glove compartment to wrap fuses with until I could get home.
I don't think I even thought about how much I was spending back then. I was doing well enough to be careless with my budget. That financial condition was to the point where I'd pay my apartment rent up a year in advance and overpay hundreds on my utilities so I wouldn't have to be bothered with them.
Bill and I started looking for a warehouse where we could stash the cars that we were buying and then stripping for parts. Without really trying and out of necessity, we started a business (with me a silent 1/3 partner) selling and repairing Triumphs and MGs, and parting out what was left. (Cue the Pet Shop Boys) "I've got the brains, you've got the brawn-let's make lots of money!" Much to my surprise my partner Bill did quite well in the mechanic/business end of things.
A couple of months after I’d lovingly completed my older TR7 the way I wanted it, a drunk driver doing about 60mph plowed into me on a rainy night near Ohio
State University. I was sitting at a dead stop at a light and he hit me from behind, crushing the back of it all the way to the seats, and slammed me diagonally across the intersection and into a tree… then continued on as if nothing had happened.Fortunately there was a Columbus cop coming the opposite direction and radioed help for me, while he chased him down.
Two mind-boggling things happened that night. I had to be pried out of the car and was amazed to find that I only had a couple of bruises. The second was; take a look at the deck lid in the bottom photo of the wreck. The Camaro crushed the trunk nearly to the seats (the gas tank is behind those very seats by the way) and yet the trunk lid was almost completely untouched and is hanging right where it should have been!!
His insurance company asked if they could surprise me with an offer of something special if I’d settle without litigation. All they'd tell me sight-unseen was that it was a Triumph TR8 convertible...
(Well, it was titled a TR"8" convertible) anyway. I spent a couple of days fantasizing and wondered if it was some freshly painted bondo-covered junker.
The next week Bill called me all in hysterics and ordered me to get down to the shop NOW.
They delivered it to our shop wrapped up like a Christmas present. I signed a document releasing them from further damages and took possession of it. It was in nearly pristine show-car condition except for the top which had been damaged while in storage. I think I nearly fainted on the spot when Bill pointed out that I hadn't noticed that decal over the right tail light, having been distracted by the custom one-of-a-kind tail lights themselves... it says TR9-with a rather cryptic serial number beneath it?!? I researched and could find no mention of a mid or late 70s TR9. (Compare the stock taillights on the brown one above to the ones below-big difference.
My not noticing it is understandable... I had since moved forward and was too busy staring wide-eyed at the front end... and wondering what was underneath it. Problem was I couldn't find...If you're not familiar with Triumphs and you haven't enlarged the photo yet, you may not have noticed some peculiarities unique to this particular car. For one thing there's no hood (bonnet)!?! The guys laughed when I tried to raise a hood that wasn't there. The metal front fenders and bonnet had been replaced with a one-piece fiberglass unit. See that clip on the fender in front of the door? Undo them on both sides and you''ll discover that the car was configured just like a Triumph Spitfire and everything forward of the doors-including the wheel wells-pivots up and forward, hinged on the front bumper! I loved the Spitfires for that very reason because it gives you complete access to any part of the engine from nearly any angle.
I was also distracted by a neat bit of custom "metal shopping." Someone had recessed the door handles into black triangles to make them look like a vent for a mid-engined car.
I took these photos after I'd driven it in the rain down to a shop to have a new top put on it (apparently the poor unsuspecting thing had stuff piled on top of it while it was hiding under its tarp.) The duct tape and immaculate paint had me a little suspicious too, but after I had a few body men look it over, they said "No bondo." While they did that, I tore the back end apart trying to figure out why the backup lights blinked with the turnsignals. (crossed ground wire.)
I was looking at a rare car that had been stored in the back of some Jaguar dealership and forgotten... that only happens in fairy tales and car lover's wet-dreams. I also discovered where the big pop-up headlights used to be, now was replaced by modern rectangular headlights underneath that sank down beneath the bumper until they were turned on; then they'd swing up to just beneath the blackout plastic... using the same motors that used to operate the old headlights. Even I was impressed!
His insurance company had the nerve to call and ask me if I liked it. It was a fight not to gush. Note the custom British vanity plates! Whoever transformed it had dumped the standard little small-block V8 and replaced it with a more modern fuel-injected Buick 3.8 liter V6 "Grand National." That was then connected up to a Borg-Warner 5-speed manual with overdrive transmission, and they'd completed the drive train with a rebuilt Ford 9-inch 12-bolt rear end off of a ’69 Ford Torino.
The rear drive train was so big, it was necessary to install air shocks to jack the back up so that the beefed up drive shaft would clear the interior tunnel. Perched atop the power plant was a new and enthusiastic Holley 4-barrel and Edelbrock intakes. Also along for the ride were Cyclone headers and stainless steel pipes... just to make it sound good.
I believe it was Jay Leno who while stating what he thought of a Porsche he'd just driven said regarding it... "If you have an erection lasting more than four hours, consult your physician."
I knew the feeling.
People unfamiliar with the little British sports convertible were always complimenting me on the European wedge styling. Those at intersections were aghast at how fast I could power away from traffic lights, assuming (wrongly) that there was some dinky little power plant under the hood. It also sported the only pair of British Racing Green fog lamps under the front bumper in the U.S.
I eventually sold my beautiful and untouched brown one to the same collector that just wouldn't let me alone before. His chest all inflated at saving the poor thing from me. Where it is now, I'm not sure... probably some undisclosed location with a guard on it...I had no intention of hiding that beauty under a tarp, but I wasn't going to overdrive it either, so with the proceeds I bought a “daily driver”…
...a midnight blue turbo-
charged fuel injected Cobra Thunderbird.The only thing that gives it away to victims of my lead-foot at intersections, was that little chrome Cobra emblem behind the front wheel well? It's got a gas-guzzling 5-liter Cobra Mustang super motor under that grandfatherly looking hood... that'll press you into your seat-Ho ho ho!! I used to be known for never driving a normal car without a story connected to it.
I loved that car ... The striped brown "Jetfire" was borrowed by a friend who wanted to drive it to a local car show. On the way back it was broadsided by a cab running a stop sign. It died as it lived-having fun being gawked at... Ohhhhh Ahhhhh!
I miss the Cobra T-Bird too. A few years later I had the nerve to use it as a pizza car. I sold it to an assistant manager who promptly blew the engine... alas.
While all of this was going on, a good friend of mine talked me into doing a 24 x 36 portrait of Little Raven, Chief of the Arapahos in pencil and charcoal for his local Bureau of Indian Affairs. It's displayed on the wall behind his desk.Life went on and my partner Bill really started making us some good money and we were gaining a great reputation in the local area… Then his wife sued for divorce, insisted that the business be sold as part of the settlement so she could grab half of his share of what the shop was worth. Bill was devastated and was left with barely two nickels to scrape together.
My money and time was tied up in other ventures, and Jet’sArt Custom Illustrations of course, so I couldn't help him much. I waited until after the divorce was settled and she couldn't take anything else from him, and then signed over my nearly completed yellow TR? to him and my titles to the junkers to sell for what he could get for them, and then arranged for the new buyers of the business to hire him to remodel the shop into an auto parts store in exchange for a small apartment in back where he could live rent free and be employed as a mechanic/salesman/night watchman for them. He has since moved down south somewhere and we lost contact.
I loved that yellow car. I drove it around for about a month before we started transforming it. If anyone knows where it is now, I'd love to see it completed.
Such is life...
This is another example of some artwork I used to do professionally... The image/screen print below is from a nifty screen saver I'd created for
my office help's computers where my image (bottom right) and logo fade in and out of the picture in different places and in different sizes. If you catch "me" with the cursor, it would bring up a game menu (for when I was out of the office and they were bored). It's entitled "The Woods". Click on it to enlarge it-though I should warn you it's designed for a 28 inch wide screen graphics monitor...My art business flourished a few years later, mostly designing custom graphics for CD covers for local bands or graphs and charts that businesses used for inventories etc. In my spare time I worked on a gay spy novel entitled "System 10" and its sequel, "A Ghost of a Chance." It seemed like I'd just finish updating
the 600-page single-spaced manuscript, when technology would lurch ahead faster than I could rewrite it, so the book wound up on the back burner again and again... alas. A publisher friend said it'd only sell if it had a lot of sex and violence in it, and so I reworked it accordingly. Now I'm seriously thinking of taking it back to its original state and selling it as a period piece.In the 1990s a good friend named Brian S. let me hitch a ride in his private "time-share" business jet (that's it on the cover of my manuscript behind the two people shaking hands) for a trip to San Diego. I paid half the fuel and airport fees-it was great. We’d stop to refuel in Las Vegas and I’d have a good time at MGM Grand's blackjack tables.
I've always dabbled in photography, but never-ever seriously. I'd taken one of my Nikons with me on the trip, and had it with me while visiting a friend's small movie studio. As a joke, I was talked into designing the box artwork for a gay X-rated feature that he was producing. To my shock they actually liked my ideas better than their pro's work! They offered me an irregular job whenever I was in town, which eventually became a regular pastime around three times a year.
As I became more experienced, he took me under his wing and taught me videography too. I graduated to much larger and more complicated equipment, none of which I'd be able to explain having-not that it mattered because it all had to stay at the studio in San Diego anyway. I started submitting scripts later and to my shock some were accepted! (Yes, porn has scripts-how do you think they're copyrighted?)
The piece to the right is 48 x 24 and is framed in brass. The lady who was interviewed for this said it was her grandfather and she had an unusual request, considering it'd be displayed in public. He was the local blacksmith and when he posed for the photo many considered it immoral for a man to blatantly display his chest, especially if it was muscular and specifically if it was hairy. Therefore when the plate was developed his undershirt was airbrushed closed to his neck. She asked me if I could draw it open as he was very proud of his physique, having to tote heavy wagon wheels all day... I was happy to do it, and got a bonus hug from her when she saw it.
I began earning some good money-not insanely great money, but it helped me live comfortably and was a factor in my moving into my penthouse and buying some great cars. On one such trip I paid to have my favorite sister flown down to meet me in Las Vegas for some fun at the tables, then afterward we flew back on a commercial airline to her home in Oregon for a great visit.
I recall once offering on a whim to buy her a new refrigerator for Christmas, and it almost came to blows when she wouldn't let me. She's always been very independent and self-reliant. I could see how it'd prick her ego for me to do that, and now I'm sorry I did. I'd always had an open and over-willing wallet when my family was concerned... and despite my current hard times still do.
I've often wondered how my family didn't figure out something was going on, since most of them thought I was only a pizza delivery guy... despite a hefty bank account, a downtown penthouse filled with curios and collectibles, and a fancy car. At one point while touring around Oregon with one of my sisters, I let it slip that I was doing some video work, I don't think she actually understood what I'd meant-in fact she may not have even heard me, but just in the slight case I let it slip again I went out with her and bought a little Sharp camcorder at Sears to explain any further "slip of the tongues" away.
Back then, only two members of my family actually knew about what I was doing on the west coast; my favorite sister and a wonderful aunt. I'd never exactly sworn them to secrecy, after all I'd been disowned by the rest of my folks years ago anyway for being gay. Sometimes I think that they see me as some evil lying perverted homoSEXual who probably has kidnapped and molested every little boy I saw and would rot in hell in eternal damnation. I've mostly shrugged it off figuring if they found out they'd start pointing fingers and self-righteously saying in unison "See, I told you!", which most of them do anyway without provocation.
If certain members of my hypocritical and judgmental family actually knew just how many of their number were gay, they'd spend the next solid month in church, PRAYING that it wasn't some sort of contagious disease, which it nearly is...
...denial runs rampant in my clan-even I'm not immune to it at times.
I figured it was a lost cause after learning that the sister who still lives near Pittsburgh where we all grew up, actually married and raised a family for 18 years and never told her kids that I even existed!
Speaking of relatives, my one regret was that some of my family were going through tough times while I was enjoying myself. My younger brother had been in the navy serving on an aircraft carrier during the Gulf War(s). I was so worried about him, I became addicted to CNN Headline news hoping I wouldn't hear bad news about him.
Before they sent him there, he was stationed somewhere at the naval base in San Diego with his wife and I often wondered what he'd think if he'd seen me all bulked up. He probably wouldn't have recognized me... Hell; I didn't recognize me.
He eventually moved to Seattle and is doing very well for himself.
The 36 x 24 painting below (yes that's a painting) is of a general store in East Liberty Corners.
The owner broke down in tears when she saw her long-gone business. She had only one complaint...She blurted out with a laugh that the sidewalk was never that clean and uncluttered out front.
My older sister in Oregon from my father's first marriage owned a great restaurant in the Willamette National Forest, but it was going under because of local economic bad times, the road through the National Park was often closed and fraught with landslides or downed trees, and her health was failing. I began sending $1,000 checks and Wal-Mart gift cards to them to help make ends meet, without asking for anything in return. I mention this only because later on in my time of need, my father would throw it up in my face.
It’s a sign of the times when you occasionally do something nice for someone, just because it feels good to do it, but then they always suspect that you have an ulterior motive hidden somewhere.
One of my very best friends had moved to Chicago and on one of my visits there he asked for a loan of $40,000 because he’d run into unexpected expenses while opening up a bar in the suburbs. Some real estate magnate was converting a big warehouse into condos, and rather than tear it down, he sold an attached building to Tom. Unexpectedly the building wouldn’t pass inspection without a new roof. It felt good to be able to help him out and even better that I realized I had enough cash socked away that I could do it without too much financial pain.
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