A Very Special Present
By Jon Stalnaker
AKA The Studebaker Dude
(Since this is a Christmas edition of the Sapulpa Times, I will continue my regular series of stories next week. This is a true story of my favorite Christmas present. Merry Christmas, Enjoy)
I’m a pretty good photographer, not great, but good enough to be able to recognize proper composition when I see it. I took a bunch of pictures of my Studebaker truck when I first got it painted and there was one picture that was just right. Perfect lighting, great background, and an awesome perspective of the truck. I knew it was a good one and I sent it along with the story of my truck to the Studebaker Drivers Club Magazine. They published my story in April of 2008 and used this particular picture for the inside front cover of the magazine. The magazine cover was a bucket list item that I had pined for long before they even came up with the term “bucket list”. I was so proud of that magazine cover that I must have stared at that picture for hours memorizing every single element of the photograph.
About ten years later, my wife went to the Etsy web site looking for something Studebaker to buy me for Christmas. She found a random “man cave” garage sign of a Studebaker truck and had it made for me. It was a laser cut metal sign with the custom words “Jon’s Garage” cut into it. (See the picture) She was excited because it looked just like my truck, and I had been looking to get something like that for some time. When I opened the present, I stopped cold. I stared at the sign and said nothing for the longest time. Carlene misunderstood my silence and said “you don’t like it?”. I snapped out of it and told her “On the contrary, I love it!” She told me that she was so proud because it looked just like my truck. I replied, it IS my truck. I went to my bookshelf and found the April 2008 issue of the magazine and showed her the picture. I told her, this is what he used, this was my photograph of my truck.
She had a hard time believing it as she had not supplied the picture to the artist. He had already made the sign and only needed to add “Jon’s Garage” to it and mail it to her. I got the artists contact information and I sent him the picture from the magazine and asked him if that was the picture he used. He confirmed that it was, and I asked him where he got that picture. He told me that a lady in Alaska had asked him to do a Studebaker truck sign for her husband and she sent him a picture for reference. He told me that the image she sent was not good enough to use so he searched the internet looking for a picture that would work. Now, every once and a while I have done the internet photo search myself. There are thousands of pictures of Studebaker trucks and usually, if I’m patient enough, I can find a picture of my truck. That’s what he did, and out of the thousands of Studebaker truck pictures on the world wide web, this was the one he chose. And out of the multitude of Studebaker paraphernalia she could have chosen on the internet, she chose this item, from this artist, totally random. I believe the reason I even noticed it was my picture was because I had studied that photograph so much when it was a magazine cover. I recognized it immediately. Needless to say, it is one of my most cherished gifts.
When we moved from California earlier this year, I remember packing it carefully for the movers. We have been here for 10 months now, and it is one of the items that I cannot find. Of all things… I thought it might show up in the many tubs we had used for Christmas stuff. Well, we have been Christmas decorating and still can’t find it. I can still get the sign on Etsy, but it is expensive. I’m going to have to buy another one as this is too fantastic a story to just shrug it off with an “Oh Well”. I have a 3-car garage full of memorabilia on the walls but this particular one needs to be included.
