ROSCOE, NY — “Just one more car, I promise,” proclaimed the T-shirt sported by Alan Kehrley.

Kehrley was walking along the rows of cars parked on freshly mowed fields at Fireman’s Park during the first annual Roscoe-Rockland Fire Department’s Car Show on Sunday, July 28.

Kehrley and his clan are frequent attendees at local car shows. He owns 16 classic cars plus a few vintage motorcycles, “all drivable and ready to go.”

At the inaugural show, his 1930 Indian Scout motorcycle was displayed in the back of a vintage Chevy pickup. Next to it was another of his old Chevy trucks, this one showing off a classic 1950s Harley-Davidson. 

Of the Indian Scout 101, the 89-year-old Kehrley, a resident of Liberty, said it was purchased in 1949 for 50 bucks when he was 14 years old. “I bought it as a kid, and ran the hell out of it” until 1955, when it was put into storage before the restoration process started in 2007.

At first, the organizers of the “Fightin’ 29” were mostly likely seating buckets—with only a couple of days before the event, only a handful of folks had registered. But as word spread through the car collector community and the day was sunny, a total of 81 vehicles were finally on display before a large crowd.

The main organizers of the show included fire department members Tom Darbee, Niko Niforatos, Steve Hecht and Stephen Hecht, along with Ladies Auxiliary members Emily Niforatos, Heidi Hesse and Paula Austin.

“We wanted to have a car show, and get people out to see some nice cars, utilize the field like it should be used, and get people together,” said Darbee, a 40-year member of the local fire department.

Along the edge of the field, close to the Roscoe-Rockland’s award-winning 1929 International Pumper, nine-year old Russell Olsen of Jeffersonville was making the rounds in a unique contraption made by John Gleason. Gleason put his mechanical talents to work fabricating it with rear wheels off a hand cultivator, a “trailer thing from the late ‘40s” and powered by a 1920s Maytag washing machine engine.

“I’ve always built stuff, ever since I was little, from junk laying out in the woods,” he explained. Perhaps he’s putting Tesla’s Elon Musk on notice that the spirit of backyard American ingenuity is alive and well in the Upper Delaware River Valley.

Jesse Stephenson showed off his 1965 Ford Mustang, a red ‘Stang powered by a 289. He purchased it in rust-free Alabama about 10 years ago.

Asked about his take on car shows, Stephenson replied, “I just like the idea of camaraderie; we’re all at the same kind of level,” he said. He added that he does his own work on all his cars. “When you go to a shop, you don’t know what they’re telling you, right or wrong, left or right.”

A few cars down the line was Butch Burdick’s blue ’65 289 Mustang, a classic he bought in Florida. It reminded him of his second car, also a ’65 ‘Stang.

“Many people tell you stories about their cars when they were young, enjoying the past,” said Burdick. He added that it took him six years to restore the car. “It was a basket case; every panel except the roof has been replaced.”

As Kehrley and his car clan headed off to grab some refreshments and a while before Lilly Kehrley was awarded the trophy for Best 1949 & Earlier for their 1931 Buick Cabriolet, Kehrley said of collecting vintage automobiles, “It keeps you broke and out of trouble.”