Iowa truck looks like Tow Mater from ‘Cars’
Joe Romeo of Des Moines has a serious antiques fetish. He loves collecting old stuff, but his plans for the treasures don’t always work out.
“My wife threw out some of the beautiful antiques I had in my front room one day while I was at work and bought a chair and a couch,” he said. He hasn’t forgotten the incident, but that’s another story.
Romeo, 64, is a conductor for the Union Pacific Railroad. He runs from Clinton to western Iowa, hauling everything from consumer goods to mail, chemicals and electronics. He’s got more than 40 years in with the railroad, and for a good part of that time, he regularly admired a rusty 1941 Dodge tow truck he could see parked behind a tidy auto repair shop in Scranton.
Last fall, on an eastbound run from Missouri Valley to Clinton, his train stopped in Scranton to wait for a westbound train to clear.
“That day, I was finally able to stop, after years of wanting to talk with whoever ran the old auto repair shop there that sat just north of our main line tracks,” Romeo said. “Visible only from our tracks were many older antique cars and trucks, hidden for years, neatly placed around a well-maintained acreage of out-buildings and a mechanic shop.”
He inquired about the tow truck, and the repair-shop guy told him his uncle parked the truck and left it there in 1961. Romeo thought it would fit right in at the old Texaco gas station he had bought about five years ago at Southeast Sixth Street and Scott Avenue in Des Moines. He already had acquired two 1930s gas pumps, and he wanted to make the station a nostalgic replica of its former self.
“I knew this tow truck would be an awesome addition to that endeavor,” Romeo said.
He bought the truck for $600.
“The guys on the railroad were kind of mad at me,” Romeo said. “One guy said, ‘I’ve been wanting to get that truck for years.’ We were the only ones who could see it.”
So Romeo had his purchase hauled to Des Moines on a flatbed tow truck and parked it at his gas station in early June.
Now, Romeo’s son, Geno, said his father should have known what was coming next, on account of what happened when a niece of Joe’s wife visited a few years ago.
“My dad drives an old beat-up 1970 truck,” Geno said. “My dad just loves that truck for some reason.”
So every time the niece, who was maybe 2 at the time, saw Joe’s pickup, she said, “Tow Mater,” thinking that vehicle looked like the lovable tow-truck character in the Disney Pixar film, “Cars.”
“Still, when he bought this tow truck, he was clueless about putting two and two together,” Geno said.
That quickly changed.
“It’s not quite the same truck as Mater,” said Geno, who’s in on such cultural tidbits because of his kids, Nicco, 9, and Talia, 6. “The actual Mater truck is like a ’57 Chevy. But this one is old, and it’s a tow truck and it looks kind of like it.”
Especially when Geno, owner of Associated Construction Services Inc., arranged to have his painting foreman make cardboard eyes and teeth to affix to the truck. “Just for kicks; just for Dad to see,” Geno said.
But little kids noticed the truck, too.
“They love it. They really think that’s Mater,” said Tanya Tigner, 34, of Norwalk.
Tigner’s husband, Brian, 35, said their son, Dominic, 4, shouted for him to stop the first time they drove by Romeo’s Mater.
“He is crazy about that character,” Brian Tigner said. “Now that Joe’s made it available there, we have to stop by and say hello at least once a week.”
They aren’t alone. Tony Melia, 55, lives in the neighborhood. He went down to the old gas station to see what the fuss was about and why so many people were stopping there.
“I see all these cars pulling in, and they’re taking pictures,” Melia said. “So I’m asking them about it, and they’re saying it’s about this movie ‘Cars.’
“This kept on happening and happening. Once I saw two schoolteachers and a bunch of kids. They were so cute – there were about 20 of them holding hands – and they came to look at the car. They were all saying ‘Maynard’ or whatever the name is.”
Yes, Joe Romeo loves antiques. He bought a dilapidated old gas station with the idea of transforming it into a nostalgic site, where he could work on cars and his son could have an office for his business.
“Joe does a lot in the neighborhood,” Brian Tigner said. “He fixes up old properties. It doesn’t generate a dime for him. At the end of the day, the old gas station is all just to look at.”
For his efforts, Romeo now has a dilemma.
“The kids say, ‘Don’t you do anything to that tow truck.’ I was going to fix it up, but they don’t want me to. It’s like it would be harming it,” he said.
Romeo can’t believe that after riding the rails for all those years, all the time pining for an old truck along the way, now he can’t even refurbish it.
“I was going to make it really nice,” he said.
Maybe a couple years down the road he can still shine it up, Geno said. But for right now, Joe’s grandkids win.
“They love it,” Geno said. “They know that Papa owns Tow Mater.”
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/
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