The Body Man Who Put Me Behind the Wheel

My dad, John H. Davis, had his share of problems, and most of them involved alcohol enhancing his Vietnam War PTSD. But there was one thing the man could do exceptionally well. He could take a wrecked automobile and make it look like nothing had ever happened to it.

Dad was a body man, and from everything I've heard, he was a damn good one.

I only know of two legitimate places he worked. One was Avanti in South Bend, Indiana, and the other was a place called Brad's Shop.

Now, Dad wasn't exactly what you'd call a model employee.

He drank heavily on the weekends, which meant Monday mornings were pretty much out of the question. He simply wouldn't show up for work.

Most employers would have fired somebody for that. But apparently, Dad was so talented that companies were willing to put up with it.

They knew he might not be there on Monday, but when he did show up, he could work miracles with a damaged car.

It takes a special kind of talent to be that unreliable and still have people willing to employ you.

Avanti: South Bend's Hand-Built Sports Car

One of the more interesting things about Dad's working life was his time at Avanti.

For anyone unfamiliar with the name, Avanti wasn't just another automobile manufacturer. It was part of South Bend's automotive history.

The original Studebaker Avanti was introduced in 1962. It was a futuristic-looking luxury sports car designed by a team led by famous industrial designer Raymond Loewy.

Unlike most American cars of the time, which were made with steel bodies, the Avanti had a fiberglass body. It had a long, distinctive front end, no traditional grille, and styling that looked like something from the future.

When Studebaker ended automobile production in South Bend in December 1963, the Avanti might have disappeared altogether.

But two South Bend businessmen, Nate Altman and Leo Newman, purchased the rights and equipment to continue producing the car. By 1965, Avanti Motor Corporation was building the Avanti II in South Bend.

These weren't ordinary assembly-line automobiles rolling out by the thousands every day. Avantis were produced in relatively small numbers, with considerable handwork involved in building and finishing them.

And that's where someone like my dad came in.

Working on fiberglass required a different set of skills from traditional steel bodywork. You couldn't just grab a hammer and pound out a dent. Damaged fiberglass needed to be repaired, shaped, sanded, and finished until the surface looked right.

It took patience, a steady hand, and an eye for detail.

Dad apparently had all three.

I don't know exactly how many Avantis he worked on or which models passed through his hands. I wish I did. But knowing that my father worked as a body man for a company producing these unusual, hand-built sports cars tells me something about his abilities.

It's also a little ironic.

The man had the patience to spend hours making a damaged automobile look perfect, but apparently couldn't find the discipline to stay sober long enough to make it to work on Monday.

That was Dad.

The Sports Car Held Together With Newspaper

There's another story about Dad's bodywork that has been verified, and it's probably one of the best examples of both his talent and his questionable judgment.

A customer brought in a fiberglass sports car that had suffered quite a bit of damage.

The guy didn't want to spend much money repairing it because his plan was to turn around and sell it.

He also wanted the repairs to be difficult to detect.

Apparently, the customer was concerned about somebody using a magnet to discover where body filler had been used. Some older body repairs involved metal screening or mesh behind the filler, and I suppose that's what he was worried about.

Of course, there's a pretty obvious flaw in that thinking. The car was fiberglass to begin with, so a magnet wasn't going to tell you much about the original body panels anyway.

But the customer wanted a cheap repair that looked good.

And Dad delivered.

His solution?

Newspaper, Bondo, and paint.

That's right. Newspaper.

Dad used newspaper as part of the backing for the damaged areas, applied body filler over it, shaped everything, and painted the car.

From what I've been told, the finished product looked amazing.

You couldn't tell the car had been damaged.

Now, I have absolutely no idea how long that repair lasted.

I can only imagine what happened after a few good rainstorms, moisture getting into the repair, and the normal vibrations of driving down the road.

Somewhere out there, somebody may have bought a beautiful sports car that was partially held together by yesterday's newspaper.

I sure hope the guy didn't take it through a car wash.

I'm not telling that story because I think it was a proper way to repair a vehicle. It certainly wasn't.

But it does show how resourceful Dad could be.

Give him some damaged fiberglass, a little body filler, a can of paint, and apparently a copy of the South Bend Tribune, and he could make a wrecked sports car look brand-new.

Whether it stayed that way was somebody else's problem.

Brad's Shop and the Day Everything Changed

The other place I know Dad worked was Brad's Shop.

And of all the memories connected to his working life, there's one from his time there that I'll never forget.

I was about six years old, living in the projects in Mishawaka, Indiana.

One day, Dad showed up in a bobtail cabover semi.

For anybody unfamiliar with trucks, a bobtail is a semi tractor without a trailer attached. A cabover is one of those older-style trucks with a flat front, where the driver sits directly above the engine instead of behind a long hood.

To a six-year-old kid, that truck was enormous.

I don't remember what make or model it was. I don't even remember the color.

What I remember is that my dad showed up driving it.

And for some reason, he decided we were going grocery shopping.

In the semi.

Dad loaded my mom and me into that cabover, and off we went.

Now, there's something important you need to understand about my father.

He didn't have a driver's license.

His drinking and multiple DUIs had taken care of that.

Back then, Indiana also had chauffeur's licensing requirements for certain commercial driving. Dad didn't have the proper license to be driving that truck, either, as far as I know.

But that apparently wasn't going to stop him from taking his family to the grocery store.

Looking back, the whole thing was ridiculous.

Here's a man who couldn't legally drive a passenger car, taking his wife and six-year-old son grocery shopping in a semi tractor.

I don't know what he would have told a police officer if he'd gotten pulled over.

Maybe he figured nobody would question a guy driving a truck that big.

Whatever his reasoning, it didn't matter to me.

I wasn't thinking about DUIs, chauffeur's licenses, insurance, or what would happen if the police stopped us.

I was six years old, riding in a big truck with my dad.

And it was one of the greatest things I'd ever experienced.

 A Dream That Never Went Away

I couldn't tell you what groceries we bought that day. I couldn't tell you where we parked or what route Dad took through town.

But I remember riding in that cabover.

I was six years old, and from that day forward, I wanted to be a truck driver.

Not a body man like Dad. Not a mechanic. A truck driver.

And that's exactly what I became.

As I write this, I've been driving trucks for 22 years.

I doubt Dad ever realized what he'd done that day. To him, it was probably just another trip to the grocery store in a truck he had no business driving.

To me, it was the beginning of a career.

Not bad for a grocery run.