Tea Fest Car Show, Tea, South Dakota
In the Upper Plains for 4 to 5 months of the year car people work on, improve, prep and polish their beloved rides. This is because in this part of the country it is too cold to have the vehicles out. We wait until the temp comes up and the sand and ice melt and is cleaned from the streets by Mother Nature’s spring rains.
All the effort that is put in over the winter we get to show case for about 3 to 4 months. There are cars shows and poker runs almost every weekend until school starts in mid to late August. Even with no car shows we take our rides out to stretch their legs and to show off on the street.
I live in the eastern part of South Dakota near the largest city in the state, (175,000 people) Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls is a hub city for 2 other states; it is very close to southwest Minnesota and northwest Iowa.
There are a lot of avid car and motorcycle enthusiasts in the area. Just about every little town has a spring and or summer festival and most have car and motorcycle shows. The little town I live in, Tea, SD has a population of about 4400 and every June there is Tea Pot Days. Part of the festivities is the car show. I was able to attend and get some shots of some beautiful custom vehicles. The show started off with a good number of different types of vehicles, stock, modified and Rat Rods until Mother Nature decided to show some of her strength. A large thunderstorm came through which put an end to the festivities. But not before I had gotten some pictures of some Rat Rods.
The first Rod to talk about is a ‘33’ Dodge Pickup of Phil Van Duyn (pronounced Van Dine). He is resides in Tea, SD with his shop on the west side of our township. Phil tells me he had a pile of parts lying around his shop. Then, seven years ago, he decided to make something out of them so he asked a friend of his at SS Rod Shop in Sioux City, IA to create his rod.
The list of parts to put this beauty together is typical Rat Rod, with many different sources. The engine and transmission are just as Chevy created for their pickups a 350/350 combo connects to a Trans Am rear end. The front is supported by Suburban front axle and brakes controlled by an El Camino column and Vega steering box. The bed is a cut down’49’ topped with old South Dakota license plates and the back closed up with a ‘37’ tail gate. Phil said he had just some ply wood covering the bed and he was not satisfied so he had the plates lying around all from the same county (the first number(s) on SD plates is the county where the vehicle was registered) “62” in this case. The grill is from a SC Case tractor which had to be widened to cover the radiator and then matched to a VW kit car hood. The hood had to be slightly modified at the cowl to lay flat so a bit of torch and hammering put it in its place. He use horse harnesses for the mirror and bed rail supports. The suicide doors only came stock for a few years on Dodge trucks and the it all is sitting on a set of mid to late ‘60’s Pontiac GTO type of rims. To top it all off is a taxi sign Phil found in his shop after the pickup was built and thought it would be a unique touch to Rod.
Story and Photos by Paul Pierce.