Oilpressure

I took a couple of days off from this site over the Easter weekend. I already had Good Friday as a holiday from work, and I took off Thursday as well. The plan was to go see a sick friend in Memphis for the day, but I got a text at the last minute telling me that due to a suddenly scheduled surgery – it would not be a good time to come. I certainly understood, but I had already scheduled the day off – so I followed through on a project I had had stuck in the back of my mind for a while now.

I have always loved the look of the “old” garages at IMS. That’s as opposed to the “new” garages that are now almost forty years old (1986). I would be lying if I said I had vivid memories of the old garages as a kid. Remember, I went twenty years, between 1972 and 1992, without attending the Indianapolis 500. When I was there last in 1972, I was thirteen.

The new garages are in rows that run north and south, but the old garages ran east and west. When you walked through the entrance to Gasoline Alley, the white garages with barn doors trimmed in green were on each side of you.

The new garages are much roomier and are built to allow the wider cars of today move through the doors easily. The original garages were built for taller, narrower cars that had skinny tires. The low-slung, rear-engine cars with wide tires would sometimes barely fit through the doors of the old garages. While the 1986 garages were built of institutional looking concrete, and had not a whole lot of personality; they are far more practical than the old green and white garages of the past. While they were cramped and dirty, the old garages had a ton of character. And oh, if those walls could talk – just imagine the stories they could tell.

Although the old garages are long gone, their spirit lives on. Many fans have created green and white replicas of them with their home garages. About fifteen years ago, the IMS Museum converted an old closet into something replicating the look and feel of the old garages, and they usually have a vintage car in there to complete the effect.

We have an old storage barn in our backyard. I have no idea how old it is, but I’m guessing it’s from the 80s or early 90s. I can tell it has been re-painted at least once over the years. It is very sturdy and dry on the inside, but the exterior is in bad shape some of the cross-timbers on the front have rotted and fallen off, and critters have made several meals out of the bottom edges of the structure. It may have been sound on the inside, but it had become an eyesore on the outside.

For a while, I had it in my mind that whenever I got around to fixing up the old barn – I would paint it in a style somewhat reminiscent of the old garages, if you could use your imagination. I just hoped it didn’t fall down before I got around to fixing it.

When my trip to Memphis fell through, the weather forecast for Thursday through Saturday was too good to pass up. Thursday morning, I got a bucket of soap and water and scrubbed off all of the vegetation that had affixed itself to the side of the building, before the photos were taken. It actually looked worse just before I took the pictures. Then I got my measurements and headed to Home Depot to buy lumber. I borrowed my neighbor’s circular saw to make my cuts to the lumber.

Thursday night, I took Susan with me to buy the paint, since she has a much better eye for just the right color than I do. After we decided on the right color, we waited for the paint guy to get to us. I lost patience and went to find brushes, rollers, etc. While I was gone, Susan talked to him. I had planned to get just regular basic paint. After all, this wasn’t our house – it was an old barn that needed fixing up. But when the guy asked what quality she wanted, she ordered Ultra Premium. We bought two gallons of white and one gallon of green. With a couple of brushes, a roller and a pan – I left the store after spending almost triple in paint and supplies, than I had planned on.

Friday, I put one coat of white on the building and painted all of my new trim pieces green. Saturday, I put on the second coat of white and the second coat of green on the trim. Late Saturday afternoon, I affixed all of the new trim pieces to the building; including adding a border at the bottom for looks, strength and to cover the jagged edges where the animals had devoured it. I took a break on Easter Sunday. After all, it was Easter – but I also wanted to watch the Tennessee-Purdue basketball game. I wish I hadn’t.

I did some touch-up work on the paint after work throughout the week, and am now ready to present the finished product.

No, I don’t have the cross-pieces like the bottom parts of the doors on the old garages, nor did I install even a fake window like the vintage garages had. But if you use your imagination, you can at least see a similar theme between the updated barn and the IMS garages that stood until after the 1985 race. The old barn needed some love and a facelift anyway, why not pay homage to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the process? It was more productive than being a slug and watching basketball for another four days.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on April 5, 2024 at 4:04 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.