I joined the KFOCI in 1988 and went to my first swap meet, The Pate Swap Meet, in Cresson, TX. in April of '99 along with John Hewlett. John told me about John Parker and we looked him up. There he was with his lovely wife, June, and we had a long visit and I learned a lot from him. He came to the Pate every year while it was in Cresson but I believe he stopped coming when the swap meet moved to the Texas Motor Speedway in 1998. I remember meeting one of his proteges. He had bought a 1949 Kaiser from John, as I remember, and they drove it from California to Texas and that boy told me how John drove that Kaiser, balls to the wall if you know what I mean. Also the boy that owned the car then had strapped a surf board to the top of that Kaiser. The first time I saw it was while some of us were heading into Ft Worth for dinner one night and out of the blue came this Kaiser with a surf board on top coming up behind me and passed me like we were standing still. So of course we looked him up when we got back and got his story about the engine that had a cracked block and Mr. Parker had built that engine for him, the boy, and put it in. It was quite a story at the time. And we always looked for John and his wife at the Pate Swap Meet every year.
