Moseying Along in Auto Reverse

By DIANNE KLEIN

June 11, 1991 12 AM PT

“I’m a Chevrolet man by heart,” Fred says, folding his arms across his chest, thinking about what he’s just said, eyeing his everyday truck, a ’41 Chevy pickup, black.

It’s a little cool outside, overcast. Fred’s got a wool shirt on under his coveralls, which are smeared with grease. He’s a skinny guy, baseball cap, gray whiskers. Wonderful laugh.

The laugh seems to rattle his bones. Makes his shoulders jump up and down. Why is that, Fred?

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Don’t know. Maybe it was when I worked at that place in Tulsa. The Chevies didn’t give as much trouble as the Ts, and I switched over to the Chevies.”

Fred asks if I had any trouble finding this place, which is on one of those cut-up streets in Fullerton, behind a bunch of cement-block buildings and a few chain-link fences, off of some alley.

“It’s kind of hard to find,” he’d told me over the phone. “But once you get here, it’s worth it.”

No trouble at all, Fred.

Fact is I’m early. Fred Upshaw said he’s here six days a week, 8:30 to 4:30, working on cars. Only certain types of cars. The ones built to last, according to Fred.

Fred Upshaw rarely takes a wrench to anything turned out after 1928.

And not that he’s especially proud of this, but Fred’s got more work than he can handle. He’s about a year behind schedule. His customers, from all over the country, wait. Engines needing to be rebuilt add to the chaos spread across the cement floors.

Fred does good work.

John William Frederick Upshaw--that’s what it says on his birth certificate--has worked on cars most of his life, ever since he was about 11 years old, back in farm country, Missouri.

Fred’s 85 now, married to Clarise for what is it? 52 years.

“We still making it,” Fred says, then his shoulders start jumping up and down a while. The laugh comes with a great flash of teeth.

Clarise and Fred never did have any kids. Fred doesn’t know exactly why. Wanted some, but he says they just never produced.

No dogs, cats or birds either. Just cars. At home in Anaheim, Fred’s got a ’26 Whippet roadster, a ’50 Model T roadster, a ’25 Chevrolet roadster, a ’48 Diamond T pickup and a ’48 Willys Jeepster touring car.

The black 1924 Model T roadster here at the shop is the one Fred runs every year in a 500-mile race in Montana. Next month, he and Clarise are heading to Nashville with the Chevrolet Club of America, founded 30 years ago this July 7 in the shop Fred used to have in Los Angeles.

Fred and Clarise get around.

“When we was younger, we’d go dancing,” Fred says. “We drank up on a little tequila and have a ball. I don’t smoke or drink anymore. . . . I hope to be around to 100 years old. I’m as good as I was in 1950. Most of it is my wife’s cooking. She says, ‘Eat this! Don’t eat that!’ That gal lives in the damn kitchen.”

And you live in the damn garage?

“Yeah,” Fred says, whooping it up good. “Guess that about right.”

Fred’s father, who worked for the Rock Island Railroad, started him tinkering on a Model T Ford way back when even though, being a steam engine mechanic himself, the old man didn’t much like gas engines.

“When I finished the second year of high school,” Fred says, waving a wrench to illustrate his point, “I went home and said, ‘Dad, I know what I want to do. I ain’t going to school no more.’ So he said, ‘You not going back to school no more, then your bedroom’s already rented.’ ”

Fred got a job at the local Ford garage. Most of the farmers had Model T’s.

“I paid my mother $3 a week for room and board,” Fred says. “The old man was pretty strict.”

Then Fred decided to go West.

“This was 1923,” he says. “And I told my dad, ‘I’m going West.’ That’s what I told him, ‘I’m going West.’ ”

Because a little bit of the West had come to Fred first.

“I remember it was on a Saturday and I went into work and there was a car in the driveway and it was a Chevrolet and that was unusual--to stop at a Ford garage,” Fred says. “The guy asks can I fix the car. So I do. The valves was burned off. . . . So when it was done, I think it was $8 for labor and $3 for parts; I can’t remember the exact amount.

“And the guy--he was a coffee salesman out of Pasadena--he says he can’t believe it. He says where he was from, out in Pasadena, this labor would be $22 and I think $10 or $11 for parts. He couldn’t get over the difference.

“I thought right then, ‘That’s where I need to be.’ ”

So Fred left, driving a 1924 Model T. His first stop was Tulsa, where he ended up staying eight or nine years. Got a mechanic’s job on his second day there--in a Shell Co. garage painted bright yellow--after adding two years to his age. He was really 17 1/2.

“I thought, ‘Boy, what a jumpin’ town this is!’ ” Fred says.

Pasadena was next, then home to Missouri to marry Clarise, who is 78 now. Clarise had finished high school and was working in a bank.

“Now she know if it’s going to rain in Oregon, or snow in Montana--you know, her rheumatism,” Fred says. “But she’s pretty good.”

Fred and Clarise lived in Los Angeles for 32 years and since 1963, they’ve been out here.

Fred thinks he’s pretty much told me the story of his life, except he keeps thinking of more things to say.

Wouldn’t own a foreign car. “I had a Jag one time. 1954. It was a good car, nothing wrong with it, but I just didn’t like it. Wasn’t American-made.”

Detroit is getting a bum rap. “From my experience in cars--now, I don’t work on the new ones--I’ve never seen a bad Chevrolet. I’ve seen a lot that screwed up by somebody who didn’t know how to work on them, though.”

Simple is better. “I wouldn’t own one of these new cars. I see too much wrong with them. Too much to go wrong.”

Cars are pretty neat. “Well, one thing, in my early days, having a car, you was a step and a half a been a foot, you know what I mean?”

Uh. Is that a Missouri expression, Fred?

“Yeah, it must be,” Fred says. Then those shoulders of his start jumping up and down again.