Savannah
So this is my first hearse. What to say...
It has been 7 years since I last had her and I have pretty much missed her every day since, she was my first hearse and I sold her under duress and regretted it ever since. Below are screen shots from the first time I ever saw her on a test drive from Evergreen Mortuary.
How I got her back was that basically I have one of the best friends you could ever imagine.
A few months back One Way Jay, Amy and I were driving to Arizona in his 1997 Suburban Hearse for a Roll'n Dead Barbeque when mother nature, once again, decided to assfuck us and place a deer in the right hand lane where we were driving. Long story short, we swerved, we hit the soft gravel, we spun, and the hearse flipped two times in the air before burying the drivers side about 3 feet in the median.
Needless to say the hearse was trashed, but One Way was fully insured and the insurance company paid him the full blue book price of a 1997 Suburban which was $5000 more than he bought it for. About a month later he comes up to me at the club all smug telling me he just bought 2 new hearses but would not tell me which one the second hearse was. I kind of forgot about it until One way and Jeff showed up and handed me the keys and told me she was mine again.
That is the kind of thing that you NEVER expect in your lifetime to happen, but I was really completely shocked beyond reason when I found out my friend had bought me my first hearse back. That is just pretty much the best gift that I have ever gotten. Thank you One Way.
Thanks also to Jeff for selling her, I know that she meant a lot to him, and it means a lot to me that he let her go to me. Thanks Jeff.
The beginning...
When I first wanted a hearse I was looking for something rusty and scary, I wanted a beast. I was not even aware that the cars could be sexy and classy. I thought of them in the Hollywood horror movie respect. The second the funeral director opened the door I was amazed at how shiny it was and how it seemed to have a deeper reflection within the black paint.
He let me take it on a test drive and video tape the whole thing. I drove it at maybe 15 MPH the whole way up to the on site cemetery because it was the biggest car I had ever driven and I was terrified of wrecking it. When I got back the director, Ron, asked me up to his office.
My first look at the hearse
Ron was actually really great because up to that point I had run into a lot of funeral directors who were anything but amicable. I would call funeral homes or go in person, and the general reaction was as though I had just asked if I could put my thumb up their butts as opposed to asking where I could find a used hearse. Acerbic assholes was a designation I gave to many of those people. I had one mortuary tell me their hearse was for sale, then when I got there, drove it, pulled out my cash and said "I'll take it" the owner pretended that he had just magically lost the title in the interem. Not mentioning any names of the jerks in question
PARKER FUNERAL HOME!!!
But you know who you are.
At any rate, Ron was VERY friendly. "Well, here is the thing: I need a new hearse, we have run this one for decades now and it is starting not to look so professional and we are going to get a new one anyway. I cannot go as low as you would probably like, but I would like to see the car with someone like you, so can you do $1,600?"
"Ohhhhh, yes!" I answered.
A short while later she was mine.
I was in a financial bind and had to sell her. Although I hated to, I cannot say that I regret it because it led me to become friends with DHA Co-Founder and now president Jeff Brown. Had I not sold the car, the Denver Hearse Association woudl have never even existed because Jeff was the guy who shared my interest and fueled my consuming thoughts of one day having an assload of hearse drivers in one place in Colorado.
Much later she was involved in an automobile accident that shifted the frame and ruined the front clip. I am going to have a lot of work to do to her, but luckily Jeff kept the engine in top mechanical shape and she runs like no other. Mostly it a question of cosmetics.
The first thing I thought when I saw all these doors opened at the same time was "Jesus! That is big enough to drive my current car through!"
This is all the body work done by One Way in secret.
The back view.
All the parts are currently sitting inside the car, but it is complete. Right now I have a lot of putting back together to do.
Drivers side fender.
Out in font of hearse house.