’51 HUDSON STILL AHEAD OF ITS TIME AN APPRECIATION OF MY FRIEND LOWELL RAY GARRETT
Some folks are born laid back. Some get calmer with age. Some never do settle down and act right. Lowell Ray Garrett was born mellow, with a wrench in his hand and just started fixing things on the farm before he could walk. Laid back was here but nobody knew the term in 1936.
His home near Poplar Grove is where his cars rest, waiting for new engines, a paint job or reupholstery. The original ’49 Chevy two-ton truck that he hauled scrap metal on when he was sixteen and still at North Harford High School is there.
“I hauled to the yards in Baltimore and brought back a load of gravel for the farm on the return trip,” he said. “At one time or other I probably had 75 junked cars that I was working with or hauling away.”
Raised on a farm, Lowell and his older brother Bill did all the chores while their dad worked at the proving ground. In 1954, his senior year in high school, he drove a school bus and was well on his way to becoming an excellent mechanic. Even with this natural gift, Lowell wanted to work away from the farm near Prospect on Route 136. “I tried to get work at Martin’s (Glenn L. Martin Co.) and Bendix, but they didn’t want anything to do with me because I had diabetes. As soon as I told them that, they said, in so many words, they didn’t need me.”
“Bobby Gallion and I went to apply and Bobby was hired and wound up in California. I wound up back on the farm, so I just made the best of It.” he acknowledges.
After the farm was sold in 1961 Lowell went to work for Harford County and then for 20 years he made things purr at Plaza Ford. All during this time he worked with his brother, Bill, building a hugely successful Harley-Davidson dealership nearby. Now retired from active work and managing his diabetes with double shots of Lente and U-80 ‘cocktails a day, he is content with his cars, especially the 51 Hudson two-door sedan he is about to put a 308 cubic inch Hornet engine in. “ It will give it more power and make it a little snappy.”
His first vehicles were trucks, naturally, and then came a 1951 Chevrolet four-door sedan. “ Then I got interested in Hudson’s. They were low down, streamlined, and different and there weren’t a lot of them. There were two Hudson dealerships in the county then. One in Darlington and one in Poplar Grove, operated by Jennings Scarborough, at the corner of Routes l and 136, where Harford Tire stands today.
The ’51 Hudson looks like it’s been chopped and channeled, but that’s the way it was designed originally. In 1951 the engineers at Hudson All Steel Monobilt Body were seeing smooth, flowing lines, uncluttered by chrome and steel. The machines they made were downright sexy and they still have an erotic look today.
The windows are like slits in beady eyes, all around the car, and the fender skirts log in at just 4-inches high, that’s how low the wheel wells come down around the tires. Inside there is plenty of head room, even though the appearance outside is one of ‘low slung comfort.”
A glove box big enough to hold a briefcase beckons beneath a maroon leather covered dashboard. The speedometer goes to 110, possibly to 120. “ I’ve only had it up to 80, I guess,” Lowell admits. “ I was lucky, years ago never had an accident, so I quit the fast stuff.”
Fast stuff indeed. His hard work and talent netted him a brand new 1957 Corvette, 283 cubic inch, 4:11 positraction rear, 270 horsepower, three speed that I got to ride in as a kid who had never seen such a car. One night as we rode back into Bel Air on Rockspring road, Lowell downshifted from third to second without using the clutch. Then he took it down to first gear, still no clutch, just using the Rpm’s and tapping the accelerator. I have never before or since experienced such a maneuver. He was just a good driver, who knew everything the car was doing all the time.
Back to the ’51. Currently a 232 cu. In. six cylinder, with a single barrel carburetor powers it. He drives it on weekends to the Spready Oak restaurant where he has breakfast. Originally it was a sort of metallic gray and maroon, and that’s where he hopes to take her back.
Managing a life-long disease, Lowell looks back on growing up in Harford County pensively. “ The thing I’m most proud of is that I could take something that someone didn’t want ‘ cause it wouldn’t run, and I could do something with it and turn it into something that did run, and looked good. Then it was something someone did want.
Modest to a fault, soft spoken and thoughtful, the direct honesty and openness of this county homegrown is refreshing. On the farm, as a kid with a gift, it was him and his brother who had to fix machinery when it broke and there was a field to mow or corn to harvest. “ I mean, if you were doing a job and something broke, you didn’t call anybody, you had to figure out yourself what had to be done to finish the job.”
“I lived by the adage, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. I can’t remember all the things I did that turned out so good, but they did.”
To a great friend and neighbor whom always brought a smile and laugh to my mornings at the station...Rest in peace my friend. Yes there is coffee in Heaven...
