Moving on from Worthington

After taking care of business in my mom’s home town and after having lunch at the Route 67 diner on Main street, I took off for Speedway, Indiana. My cousin Larry once lived there just a few blocks from the Start/finish line of the Indianapolis 500, you could see the tower from his backyard. Larry was an important person in my life growing up.

Larry was one of the three sons of my Aunt Kathryn, he was the youngest. I have mentioned them in my stories before. His nephew was Mike who inherited his Trans Am in my writings. As I mentioned before, my Aunt lived with us, so Larry would come to she his mother, go fishing and just enjoy Florida.

He always had cool cars, and I always looked forward to his visit’s. One of the earlier ones was a bright red 62 or 63 Chevy Impala two door with three on the tree. Can’t remember if was an SS model but it was very similar to the pictures I have posted with this story. I love being able to do that! When Larry visited along with fishing he liked to work on his car or putter around our house. So as I said his car had “three on the tree”, it’s what they called the shifter which was mounted on the steering column. Well, that wasn’t cool, so Larry moved it from the column and mounted on the floor like they are now. Pretty impressive task for a 7 or 8 year old to watch. Larry ended up going to Thailand during the war with the Air Force. He worked on the electronics on B-52 bombers, I was more impressed. He would come home from Thailand and stay with us. I remembered when he gave me a field jacket, a lightweight green jacket with big pockets a bit big, except I didn’t care. I wore it a lot and eventually I added patches to it, it was the 70’s and it was cool. More about that jacket later.

One day after working in a B-52, he was climbing down and slipped and dislocated his shoulder, an injury that bothered him the rest of his life. He came back from the Air Force, Larry bought a brand new MGB in British racing green. Actually bought it at Firkins downtown Bradenton. He had brought back a new stereo with a CASSETTE player, that you could record on! He installed it himself and I looked up higher and higher at him. Then it got better, he said we were going to go see the Florida Gators play football in Gainesville, in the MGB that was British racing green had a Stereo with a Cassette player that recorded and ride the whole way with the top down! Oh it was October 1970 I was 13, I believe and it was a little cold but I didn’t care. I took my first college football game pictures that day, in black and white at the Swamp. Larry had many cool cars over the years, a red 442, a International harvester Scout, and the Trans Am he willed to his nephew Mike. Mike has really taken the job of keeping Larry’s love for cars to the next level by fixing up his beloved car and entering it in local car shows and winning. I needed to go talk to Larry.

Larry is interred at Crown Hill Cemetery just north of Speedway in the veterans memorial section there. I stopped in to say hi and leave some flowers. As I have mentioned before Larry meant a lot to me over the years. He taught me to tell time, both military and regular old time. He helped me with my Go Cart, we fished and just spent time at the kitchen table talking. So when Larry wasn’t doing well and had entered Hospice, I knew I had to go see him. I spent a week staying at his house in Speedway and spending the day with him. We talked about the old days and I showed him pictures and of course talked about his cars, his face lit up during that subject. I had to go home so I left reluctantly, knowing this would be the last time I would see him. We hugged, and he said I was his best friend and we cried ( while he said that I knew his best friend was an old Air force buddy Bill, but I would take it). A week or so later he was gone. I went back for his funeral and again stayed at his house, but this time I slept on the couch next to his favorite chair where the beautiful wooden box engraved with his name held his ashes. Yup, Larry and I spent one more night together in his house, just me and him so much like those nights in the kitchen.

I have added some pictures of the cars(or very similar ) and the memories of my Best friend Larry Burch.