BLOOMINGTON − When Jim Bob Davis died this past February, the longtime Ellettsville Fire Department chief left behind a 1965 Ford Fairlane Sports Coupe he was midway through restoring.
For two years before his death, Davis and a friend discussed tackling the project together. “He said he really needed to get it finished and I told him I’d get the back corner of my garage cleared out,” Tracy Taylor said.
“He’d asked me to help him get it put back together. I went up and helped him put a battery in it. It wasn’t but two weeks later his health got real bad.”
The Fairlane’s powerful 289 V8 engine had been tuned and the car started right up. It had a fresh paint job from Bill Schaad’s shop. Chrome trim pieces were ready to be reaffixed. Everything needed to replace interior parts and upholstery − from seat covers to carpet panels to door handles − had been purchased and stowed in the trunk.
“It’s all there,” Taylor told me on a recent rainy day as we stood somber next to the car. “After he passed, his son came to me and said I should get that car.” They agreed to barter Taylor’s mechanic’s skills for the old Ford.
He’s got the Fairlane in his pole barn garage, parked in that back corner. I went out to take some pictures, and he had driven it out onto the lawn parked with some other classic cars he owns.
As steady rain fell, people driving by slowed to get a better look. The car soon went back into the garage.
Davis had owned a 1965 Fairlane either before he joined the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam or after his return to Ellettsville when his service ended. Taylor isn’t sure which. “I just know he had a desire in his heart to get one like it someday. And he did.”
The town had a party for Davis in 2013 when he retired after 42 years working for the fire department. We talked that day about how our careers had crossed paths so many times at fires scenes and accident sites. Sometimes we sat together in the back row at town council meetings and got an occasional glare from the clerk because were being too loud.
I wrote a story for the paper when Davis retired 13 years ago. “When cold weather sets in, look for him at his pole barn, restoring a 1965 Corvair” (oops – it’s a Fairlane) “he has been working on for years,” it said.
“It’s going to get done,” he vowed.
Tracy Tayor will make sure of it.
My Favorite Ride driving off into the sunset
After four decades as a reporter at The Herald-Times in Bloomington, I am moving on to a new job as the rural community reporter for Free Press Indiana News. This means My Favorite Ride, which I have written just about every week for the past 25 years, is at the end of the road.
The column’s popularity, wide appeal and wonderful readers leave me humbled and smiling. And yep, crying.
It’s been one hell of a ride. Thanks for coming along with me.
Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: My Favorite Ride | The 1965 Ford Fairlane that belonged to Jim Bob Davis
Reporting by Laura Lane, The Herald-Times / The Herald-Times
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