Superintendents driven to distraction

Combs and his 1970 Camaro, photographed last month. “I just keep tinkering with it,” he says of the car he has owned since 1986.

Some superintendents fish. Others hunt. Most play a little golf, heck, that’s almost unavoidable.

But others invest in classic heavy metal — hot cars that get the blood pumping. Whether spinning wrenches on a classic car refurbishment, or taking hairpin turns on a stock car racetrack, sometimes the only release from a stressful week comes behind the wheel of a sweet ride.

“You’ve got to have something outside of your job or you’ll flip out and go crazy. You can’t just do that 24/7 or you’ll go nuts, ” says Steve Kealy, who has been the superintendent at Glendale CC in Bellevue, Wash., for more than 23 years. “It’s nice to have a hobby to spend some time doing something else totally different from what I do.”
 

Mopar addict

For the past three decades, Kealy has bought, refurbished, sold and collected late 1960s and early 1970s Dodge and Plymouth muscle cars — in the collecting vernacular: Mopars. “I’ve been into Mopars since I was 18-years-old and I’m 54 now. It’s been 36 years and I’ve owned a whole bunch. I’ve owned big and small block Mopars, 6-pack Hemi’s. One of the coolest cars I’ve owned is a 1970 340 Duster with the racing stripes down the sides.”

In the more than 30 years that Kealy’s been, as he calls it, “addicted,” he’s owned 30 cars. Among them a 1970 Challenger TA, a 1970 426 Hemi Challenger in Plum Crazy Purple, and a 1964 Dodge model 330 with a 426 max wedge that he bought, refurbished and sold for $52,000. “I put half of that in my son’s college fund,” he says.

All of them have been street-legal race cars. He buys them, fixes them up and sells them. Right now he has two cars in the garage. His baby is a 1969-and-a-half Dodge Super Bee, 440 6-pack, 4-speed that he’s had since 1993. He’s keeping that one. He even races it a few times a year at drag race tracks. “The Super Bee is all stock. My best time is 12.87 seconds at 108 mph,” he says.

Kealy’s also in the process of refurbishing another 1964 Dodge 330 with a 426 Hemi.

When he’s not building a car, he’s hunting for a new project or hunting down rare parts at swap meets and car shows related to the Mopar subculture.

“Regardless of what kind of car, if it’s a Chevy, or a Ford, Buick or Pontiac, there’s always people who are into that stuff just like I’m always on the lookout for stuff,” Kealy says. “It’s the same addiction that all kinds of people have.”
 

Born to Tinker

“My college roommate is another superintendent and he had a girlfriend with an Alpha Romeo Spider. We used to kid him that the only reason he dated her was to drive her car,” says Randy Long, superintendent for nearly 24 years at Thornblade Club in Greer, S.C.

Now that Randy Long has sold his ‘73 Alpha Romeo, he’s searching for an old Corvette to restore.

He never forgot that car. “I had always wanted one, since my days at Clemson. When I decided to get a car, that was the one I wanted,” Long says.

He did internet searches and found a 1973 Alpha Romeo convertible in Los Angeles. “I wanted to buy from an area that wasn’t prone to rust. I knew I couldn’t repair rust,” he says.

While on vacation in Las Vegas in 2004, he hopped a quick flight to L.A., bought the car and had it shipped home.

For the next two years, he refurbished it. He and a friend stripped it down to bare metal and one Saturday night took the car to the golf course maintenance shop to paint it. He drove the car sideways across a lift table and blocked it up to lift the car off the ground. In one night, he did the base coat and a clear coat, a brilliant red. Then he finished it off with a process called “cut and buff.”

Over the next eight years, Long and his wife Dianne took the car out on Sunday drives through the mountains on the Blueridge Parkway, and joined with country club members on convertible car road trip rallies around the state. All the while, he continued to work on the car, replacing fuel systems and electrical systems.

“With any classic car, there’s always a little tinkering to do. That’s part of the fun,” Long says.

In 2012, he sold the car. “I had too many things going on, too many projects. I wanted the space in my garage so I decided to let somebody else enjoy it,” he says.

Before the Alpha Romeo, Long used to build and refurbish motorcycles. Since he sold the car, he’s been working on a 1947 Cushman two-wheel scooter. But he still misses the Alpha Romeo.

“I’m looking at a picture of it right now on my bulletin board. I miss it. I may possibly do another one. I loved the motorcycles but they’re too dangerous. I’ll finish up the Cushman and set it aside, maybe look into a different car next time. I’d love to have a 1950s Corvette,” he says. “Who knows?”
 

Love at First Sight

Sean McDonough, who has been the superintendent at Broadmoor GC in Seattle since 2004, owns a 1975 Ford F250 Custom Highboy truck in two-tone green. His daughters, four-year-old Eila and six-year-old Hadley, call it ‘The Hulk.’

“It was my wife’s dad’s truck and when I met my wife and saw the truck, I fell in love with her and the truck at the same time,” McDonough says, laughing. In early 2006, his wife, Amber, heard that her father was thinking of selling the truck. She called her father, McDonough says, “and told him I’d be quite upset if he sold the truck.” Rather than sell it to him, his father-in-law gave it to him with the caveat that occasionally he be able to drive it, too. McDonough agreed, got the truck that July and started restoring it that winter.

Sean McDoungh’s 1975 Ford F250 Custom Highboy truck in two-tone green is a hand-me-down that he was happy to have stay in the family.

The truck was in good condition but needed some cosmetic work. McDonough sanded the truck and restored the exterior, engine compartment and interior to the original green color.

The interior upholstery was originally an odd two-tone green and “I thought I’d never find it,” McDonough says. “I went to an upholstery shop in Seattle and a guy throws down this bag, it’s an original Ford bag, an original Ford seat cover for a vintage truck and in it was the color I needed,” he says.

It took three years to finish the restoration and McDonough says he thinks the work he’s done on the truck is also a reflection of the kind of work he does at the golf course. “I think I’m fairly meticulous and this truck is pretty meticulous. That shows on the golf course and in my personal life as well,” McDonough says. “I’m happy that my father-in-law had it originally and that I’m keeping it in the family. I’m proud to have a vintage truck like that. It might be in better shape than I am and we’re the same age!”
 
 

A Need for Speed

Every Thursday night for three years, Scott Scamehorn, CGCS, superintendent at Mountain Lake in Lake Wales, Fla., got together with Ray Cuzzone, landscape director at the club, and Ward Pepperman, who works in golf course fertilizer and chemical sales. The three men ate, drank beer and converted a 1984 Cutlass Supreme into a V-8 Bomber race car. “We thought we might have been able to build the car out of beer cans. That was our little joke for a while,” Scamehorn says.

Cuzzone had built and raced stock cars in the past and talked to Scamehorn about it. “At the time, I was going through a divorce and thought, ‘Why don’t I build a race car?’ so I wasn’t thinking about it so much,” Scamehorn says.

They bought the car in February 2009. When they bought it, the car didn’t even run. They rebuilt it from scratch, as close to what the factory would put in it, no power steering, no power brakes. “It’s meant to go fast in circles, only left around a race track,” Scamehorn says. By May 2012, they were at the Auburndale Speedway with Scamehorn suited up for the car’s first race doing about 80 mph around a quarter-mile racetrack oval.

“I’d never been in a race car before May 2012. I’m zinging around there, doing maybe eight or nine laps of white-knuckle racing. They said I was doing 20-second laps. The other guys were doing 16-second laps. It seemed like I was going so fast,” he says, “but I would have been lapped every fourth lap on my practice.”
 

Camaro crazy

“I’ve been a car man since I was smart enough to realize what different cars were,” says Mike Combs, CGCS at Orchard Hills G&CC in Washougal, Wash., and featured on this month’s cover with his 1970 Chevy Camaro.

Combs’ father bought him and his two siblings cars when they were all young. For Combs, he took his 1979 Chevy LUV truck and did as many upgrades as he could. Then one day in 1986 he was driving by the used car lot in his home state of Montana when he saw the ’70 Camaro.

“I literally hit the brakes and turned around. One of the members of the course I worked at was the salesman. I asked him what it would take to get the Camaro,” Combs recalls. “He told me it’d take the truck and $500.”

Combs’ father, who was the general manager at Buffalo Hill GC in Kalispell, Mont., didn’t like the idea at first. But Combs convinced him to sign the Chevy truck over, and he produced the truck and $500 the next day.

Within two weeks of Combs getting the Camaro, his dad was diagnosed with cancer. He passed away a short time later. “The car became a sentimental thing for me,” he says.

Today Combs owns two Camaros, the ’70 and a 2012 ZL1. He loves to modify his ’70, and it’s in a constant state of flux. The hood is aftermarket, the engine is a used 350 HP with mild RV cam and roller rockers and the seats are from a 2003 Porsche 911.

“The Porsche seats fit the car really well, they’re black leather and they’re retro, they look like they could have come with the car,” he says. “I just keep tinkering with it.”

Combs’ two sons are 17 and 15. He knows that soon, they’ll be asking to take the Camaros out for a drive.

“Do I let them go old school with the ’70 and its upgraded brakes? Or do I let them take out the ZL1, which has a ridiculous 580 hp?” Combs asks. “I’ll probably hand the keys over to the one with the lesser horsepower.”
 

Runs in the Family

When Bob Harper was in the second grade, he brought pieces of the real Batmobile to school for show and tell. Harper’s older brother, Steve, had been a Midwest local legend, something like the “Town Fonzi from Happy Days.” Steve became so proficient at building cars that he eventually went to Hollywood where he worked with George Barris. While there, he worked on iconic vehicles like the Batmobile, the MonkeeMobile for The Monkees, cars for Sonny and Cher and a car for the ultimate cool guy, Steve McQueen.

Bob Harper says his 1969 Pontiac GTO turns a lot of heads wherever he drives it in South Florida. “Everybody wants to talk to you,” he says.

On visits home, Steve shared his passion for cars with his little brother. By the time Bob Harper was in high school, he was addicted to car culture. He customized his own 1969 Pontiac Le Mans, joined a car club and went to car shows. When he accepted a golf scholarship to Florida International University, Harper says it was “painful” to leave the Le Mans behind. He never forgot that car. He’d go to sleep at night and have recurring nightmares about “how I’d lost the Pontiac, that the car was missing. I had that dream for 30 years.”

The longtime Florida superintendent gave into the pull of car culture once again five years ago. He bought a 1969 Pontiac GTO. He revamped the paint job, added redline tires, new suspension and shock absorbers.

Harper was surprised to be interviewed for this story.

“I thought maybe someday I’d be recognized for my golf skills or for being a great superintendent. But to be recognized for my cars, that’s almost better,” Harper says. “When you drive a classic car you get a lot of attention, you get instant credibility. Everybody wants to talk to you. It’s like you’re a curator of a museum of a lot of happy stuff.”

Photos: Leah Nash; Randy Long (alpha romeo); Sean Mcdoungh; Bob Harper