Wet pavement for cruisers

It was as if the rumbling and dark clouds peeking over the hills west of Coeur d’Alene foretold more than the impending rain.

But Jimmy Dorsey, of Harrison, could not have predicted his tale of unfortunate events: As he looked underneath his 1939 Chevrolet, the front left tire bent awkwardly inward. This story, however, began 20 minutes earlier with the beginning of the Car d’Lane Cruise, the first event during the auto enthusiast weekend in Coeur d’Alene.

The sun hid behind a dark storm just before 6 p.m. Friday as cruise participants stared intently and nervously upward, questioning whether it would rain. Dorsey was ready to roll with his wife, Carol, in the passenger seat of his teal machine.

“It was originally sold at Knudtsen’s,” Jimmy Dorsey said of the car, talking about the Chevy dealer in town that moved to Post Falls several years ago. “I bought it when I lived in Spokane, and I brought it back to Idaho where it belongs.”

Cruising began with droplets of rain gently tapping the Chevy windshield. Some cars pulled over to put tops up.

Then the real storm hit.

The Dorseys watched as umbrellas inverted, fighting their users for freedom into the gusting winds. “Clunk!” the left side of the Chevy sounded.

“What was that?” Carol asked with slight worry in her voice.

The car kept moving, and Dorsey talked a bit more about his pet project. Since 1991 he had been putting finishing touches on the car.

“We think we have everything we want on it now,” Jimmy said.

“There’s always something new he comes up with,” Carol said with a smile.

The Chevy was at the front of the pack, sharing a lane with a purple pickup.

The storm intensified. Spectators abandoned chairs for doorways and bar stools.

“Somebody just up and left their chair and everything,” Jimmy said, pointing to a red folding chair that lay in a gutter. An entire beer garden had been blown away on Indiana Avenue. “Clunk!” the left side of the car thudded again.

“I better pull over and check it out,” Jimmy said, stopping at a Third Street parking lot to assess the situation. The hump driving into the parking lot did the job. “Clunk!” the car cried once more, this time accompanied by squealing and the distinct sound of gnashing metal on metal as Jimmy pulled farther into the lot.

“Yeah, it must be a brake shoe,” he said. Not quite, he found as he stepped from the vehicle. Only 20 minutes into the cruise and the Dorseys were done. The Chevy’s tire sat on the ground at a tilt. Passers-by grimaced at the condition of the ride. “It’s probably the spindle. I won’t know until I get it up off the ground and look at it.”

A tow truck came within a half hour and carefully maneuvered to get the Chevy off the ground without damaging the paint job. By that time the sun had come back, and onlookers continued to cheer for classics, rat rods, muscle cars and quirky rides that passed the lot where the Dorseys were stationed.

“You know what this calls for?” said Al Henning, Dorsey’s friend who owns a mechanic shop in Harrison. “A cocktail.”

Dorsey answered with a simple “yep” as the car was hauled away to be locked up for the night.