2016 Souheastern Meet Report and Pictures
By Bill Cox
NewBern North Carolina is a charming historic town located at the confluence of the Trent and the Neuse Rivers. It is full of restaurants, cafes and shops along the picturesque waterfront shared with a fabulous convention center and several hotels with great views of the rivers and marinas. We’ve always enjoyed visiting the town at any time but particularly during an AACA National event.
On Saturday August the 13th, we pulled into the parking lot of the convention center to join more than a hundred other judges for the kick off breakfast before the AACA Southeastern Fall Meet. At 7:30, it was already steamy with temperatures into the 80’s and enough humidity to wash your car with. We wondered how we would make it through the day.
The convention Center was the perfect place to hold our breakfast, hand out awards to some very dedicated and deserving judges from across the country, and get all the marching orders for the day’s activities. We had a very good breakfast and were sent off to our choice of CJE sessions (continuing judge’s education) before the judging started at 11:00.
One of the great things about downtown NewBern is the mature landscape all around the city. The show field was basically several streets in the heart of the historic district and a couple of adjacent parking areas. A few were not so lucky, but I was on the main street and the shade provided just enough coverage from the sun to make the time spent judging cars tolerable. We were also fortunate to have enough judges so that no team had an impossible number of cars to get through in a reasonable time. I believe we spent about an hour judging the Model A’s.
You could feel the excitement early as we walked from the convention center through the streets to the show cars. There were already crowds of people in the streets who had come to see the antique cars as the event was highly anticipated by the folks of NewBern and the surrounding county. A Grand National Meet was held here in 2010 and many of the shop owners we talked to remembered that event as having a positive effect on the business activity of the weekend. Today’s Meet certainly held up to everyone’s expectations as there were lots of spectators here to see over 300 cars, trucks and motorcycles. We were treated to some really cool mini cars, some fine classics and a car that runs in water and one that runs on water!
In the middle of the day, Riley Reiner and the Triangle Chapter treated everyone to the take-a-part-t. I saw Riley before the event and asked him if he was going to beat his record of the fastest time putting the T back together. He rolled his eyes and said that he had his senior group with him today, and experience was one thing, but the heat and our age would likely slow them down. Still entertaining though and going a little slower helped everyone see how the parts went together… they drove off into the sun to the applause of an appreciative crowd!
Marshal Van Winkle was the show chairman, just as he was back in 2010. I caught him sitting on the running board of his Model T during the day with a pile of empty water bottles next to the car. He was worn slap out, hot and sweaty and he looked like a drunken sailor… but wait… he always looks like a drunken sailor! He and the folks in the First Capital Chapter did an awesome job making this meet a well-attended and well organized show that was a huge success. They brought pride to the North Carolina Region and certainly to the First Capital Chapter and the town of NewBern. We all have Marshall and all the folks in the Chapter to thank for providing us with such a successful event that brought lots of AACA folks from all around the country to the coast of North Carolina.
If you didn’t make it to NewBern for the show, here are a bunch of pictures I was able to grab after the judging. I hope you enjoy them and I also hope it sparks a little interest in getting out to the next AACA event, whether it’s one of our North Carolina Meets or a National event somewhere close enough for you to visit.
Meanwhile, Happy Motoring…Bill
