By STEVE VISSER
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
December 12, 2005
Photo by Jason Getz
Ken Smith doesn't deal in cars or junk, but he does have quite a few vehicles in his Snellville garage. Ask just how many and he has to stop for a moment to think.
"Let's see," he said. "There are two 'parts cars,' my 1973 Olds, my 1984 Olds and my 1974 Colt, and there is a space for my girlfriend's Jeep."
And that's just in his upper garage, the smaller one. Beneath it is a second, 5,000-square-foot garage housing Smith's automotive passions: a '74 yellow Colt; a '69 Chevy pickup he uses to tow the Colt to car shows; and a '60 Chevy Sedan Delivery, a windowless station wagon that for a short time served as Smith's home when, as a teenager, he was exiled from his father's house.
Then there are the Hillmans - eight of them. Two are fully restored, four are kept for parts, and two are works in progress. The Hillmans, products of a British carmaker that ceased production in 1971, form the backdrop for a father-son story that Smith enjoys retelling.
Smith, a 54-year-old engineer, prides himself in not giving up on his cars. He rebuilds and restores them and still has almost every car he has owned. "It comes from my father, who raised me to believe that you just don't throw a car away," Smith said. "If a car blows an engine, you don't junk the car, you rebuild the engine".
Along the way, the cars have spawned tales.
Smith has tried to tell some of his stories in a work of fiction. The tale taps into his relationship with his father, who was part of a clandestine unit in World War II, but Smith is such a car buff that he had to incorporate every car he's owned into the 533-page book, "Mission Octagon."
Smith grew up learning carpentry and mechanics from his father, a career Air Force first sergeant. Although Smith's older brother, Tom, proved less than mechanically inclined, Smith bonded with his father by overhauling engines.
"My dad was really good at that stuff," Smith said. "He could do almost anything you wanted on a car. He could rebuild engines, sew upholstery, do body work. We had a good relationship."
Then a Hillman Husky came between them.
By age 17, Smith had acquired three working Hillmans - an estate wagon, the Husky and a Minx convertible - as well as an assortment of parts cars. The way Smith tells the story, he came home from a date one evening to find his brother loading up the Husky. His sibling had borrowed the car to elope and was moving out.
"When I went into the kitchen, my mom told me my dad wanted to talk to me in the garage, where he was working on my convertible," Smith said. "My dad said, 'Look, you're going to give your Husky to your brother as a wedding present.' I wasn't happy about it, and I told my father exactly what I thought of him. That led to a shoving match."
That led to Smith's father booting his son out of the house. "He told me until I apologized for shoving him and being a disrespectful son that I would leave this house forever, 'and you leave with the clothes on your back,' " Smith said. "It was three years before I saw him again."
Smith slept in the 1960 Chevy he kept at a gas station where he worked. It wasn't long before he stashed the car at a friend's trailer, enlisted in the U.S. Army and served a tour in Vietnam.
Later, while working at a Savannah gas station, getting in bar brawls and wondering what he was going to do with his life, he looked up to see his father. His dad suggested they make amends.
Smith assumed reconciliation would mean he could recover the two Hillmans he had left at home. But when he checked the garage, they were gone. "When my mom asked me what I was looking for in the garage, I just said, 'Memories.'"
Smith assumed his father had sold the cars, but he decided to put his anger behind him. By the time his father died in 1974, the two had attended Savannah State College together. Smith earned his engineering degree; his father earned one in industrial arts so he could he teach high school shop.
They never spoke of the Hillmans again.
A few years after his father's death, Smith was living in New York and working for IBM when he got a letter from one of his father's war buddies. The man said he had an inheritance for Smith but he couldn't disclose it until Smith visited the man's farm in Georgia.
Several months later, Smith walked into a barn and saw the two Hillmans he had owned as a teenager and a third Hillman loaded with spare parts.
"My dad left a note on the steering wheel that said, 'I stashed these cars here in 1969 because I knew one day you would want them,' " Smith said. "My first thought was, 'You got the last word in again.'"
What happened to the Hillman Husky his brother took that started the whole fight? Smith understands it developed engine trouble shortly after his brother persuaded his parents to give it to him.
"He sold it for $25," Smith said. "I was really mad. Even today, when I mention that Hillman Husky, he still turns red."