My grandpa, Russ Crumrine was a huge inspiration in my life. A lot of the way I think is attributed to looking up to my grandpa my whole life. He passed away in early 2014 at the age of 92 years old. Note: All pictures are original and here is a quick video introduction. (30 Second Video)
Earlier Years
He lived his whole life in a small town in Northern Indiana. He was an auto mechanic by trade and had his own business, The Crumrine Garage where he worked full time from 1945 to 1995. I don't have all the pictures of him growing up since I'm in Arizona and a lot of the stuff we have is back home but I wanted to put together what I do have and do an update on down the road. The following pictures are of some of his hobbies when he was younger.
This is a picture of his high school baseball team in 1938. He is in the top row next to the coach. He also played basketball in high school. I really enjoyed the stories he used to tell about playing sports back then.
Grandpa used to tell me that he would smoke a pipe and cigars but one day he realized he was smoking too many cigars so he just threw them all out and quit cold turkey. The ability to just do things and not just talk about doing things defined the way my grandpa lived his life. This picture was taken when he was 21 years old in 1942.
This was my grandpa and grandma on their 4 Cylinder Indian motorcycle. This picture is from 1943.
In the 1950's my grandpa built a sprint car powered by a Ranger aircraft engine. Having the engine in the rear like that was unheard of at the time. He was the only one on the track with this setup. He used to tell me stories about the races and several of the fatal accidents he witnessed. It is clear that these machines weren't going to protect you enough if something went wrong.
This picture was taken in 1962 on Islamorada, Florida Keys. These were relics from an old Spanish ship wreck. My grandpa started SCUBA diving when that was very new and would dive in the stone quarries in Indiana, ship wrecks in the great lakes, ship wrecks off the Florida Keys, sink holes and springs in Florida, and he also dove in some caves. He would tell me stories about the dives all the time. One story that stood out is a time when he was in a sink whole in Florida and he had a double tank setup that was brand new. He was 100 feet under the water and suddenly he couldn't take another breath. One tank was out and there was some rubber piece that wasn't allowing the air to come out of the second tank. He looked up and the surface just looked like a small round circle of light. He had to free ascend to the surface on that last breath he got from the first tank. He said that since the pressure was decreasing on the way up he actually exhaled the entire way up. He said his lungs would have burst if he didn't.
This picture was also taken in the early 1960's. This was a "One Arm Bandit" Slot machine that he found at the bottom of a stone quarry.
This was a painting that my grandpa painted. He said that he was looking for art with SCUBA divers in it but he couldn't find any so he started painting! He was never scared to try new things!
The Custom Sports Car
My grandpa built this custom sports car out of a 1950 Chevy 4 door sedan that he got out of the junk yard. He also built the custom UFO trailer he would pull behind it as well. Him and my grandma used to drive all over the United States and go to car shows. She passed away in 1998. In 2004 my grandpa and my mom took one of the last long road trips that the car went on. They went out to Moab, Utah to a car show. The car has gone over 200,000 miles and was never trailered.
He always had vanity license plates for the car. In this picture you can see it was "IMAUFO." When I would ride in the car with him everyone from the other lanes would turn their head and look to see what the car was. They couldn't identify it because it is the only one like it in the world!
These are three of the custom plates that were on the car previously.
This picture was taken in 2004 as well when he had the Latham supercharger on the car. Over the years the paint job and the engine setup changed. The car had a 1963 Mopar 383 with modifications in it. It had the Crumrine direct port custom-designed and made intake manifold and the Crumrine "Pour Man Webber" carburation.
Here is a closeup of the Latham Supercharger setup.
This setup was the custom "Crumrine" manifold setup. This was the final configuration of the car.
These pictures were taken in 2006. My grandpa was always into flight as well and this was us out before and after flying my ultralight aircraft. For some reason I didn't have any pictures of us together but I'm pretty sure there are some back in Indiana. Anything motorized my grandpa was into and flying was something he really enjoyed. (Note: I know these pictures say 2012 but that was because they were pictures of pictures that my mom took in 2012 and then she sent me some copies to Arizona)
Disaster struck in 2011 when the roof of my grandpa's mechanics garage caved in under the weight of the heavy snow and ice. This was the garage where he kept the custom sports car and UFO Trailer.
Luckily the roof didn't crush the custom and the UFO trailer you can see in the right side of the picture as well.
The garage that had been there since 1919 was eventually going to have to be torn down.
Everything was prepared for auction. It was a very sad situation to have the tools that had been used for more than 50 years sold off. When I was a little kid I would ride my bike from my grandparents house to the garage where my grandpa was working on cars and tell him lunch was ready. Even the smell of the garage was a good memory. Soon after the garage roof collapsed my mom fell down trying to clean up stuff there at the garage and shattered her tibial plateau. So the auction didn't happen for almost a year after the roof collapsed. That injury has caused my mom a lot of issues and ultimately she had her knee replaced.
My grandpa talked to people he had talked to for years at the auction. The garage was a place a lot of guys would come visit and talk to my grandpa about cars and motorcycles.
The auction was a sad situation for everyone. I ended up selling my snowmobiles which are pictured in the lower right corner of the flyer at the auction. The simple reality was that I live in Arizona and the snowmobiles were just sitting in the barn in Indiana. My grandpa would drive over to my parents house every Sunday and we would often times work on snowmobiles, motorcycles, and four wheelers.
The auction brought in a lot of people who remembered the garage in the community. Ultimately the garage was torn down and it is now just a flat parking lot.
Conclusion
The lucky thing was that the custom sports car and UFO trailer didn't get smashed. The garage having to be torn down was sad but it could have been way worse if the car would have been damaged. About a year before my grandpa died he said something to the effect that we should sell the custom sports car to see how much money we could get out of it. I told him, "Grandpa, we won't ever sell that car."
It upsets me that the car is being stored in the barn right now. It is just sitting when it was made to be driven cross country.
Putting this post together has been far more emotionally taxing that I could have imagined. At first I thought it would be cool to post some stuff about the car because there isn't much of a digital record of it. But then I also had other photos of my grandpa when he was younger. It really brought back a lot of memories but it also hit me hard because I miss him so much. He was always nice to everyone and always finished things he started. I always admired him for that and have always wanted to be like him.
I figure now his memory can live on through this blockchain. Thank you for viewing my post.