Another Classic Corvette Story
My father Ed Schwenker had a few Standard Oil stations back in the 1960's. Around the 1972-1973 time frame when there was an oil embargo, he decided to get out of that business. He went to work at our local GM Dealer, Hawkeye Motor Co. in Burlington, Iowa as a salesman and later as a sales manager. At that time, I was attending Apollo School as a freshman. The school was a mere two blocks from the dealership. I recall the "buzz" surrounding the release of the 1978 Corvette Indy Pace Car. Each dealership was to get one. I couldn't wait for it to show up and after it did, there were many days when I made my way after school the two blocks to the showroom where the pace car sat. It was a spectacular vehicle. I immediately set my sights towards convincing my Dad that we needed to own that car.
As fate would have it, my Dad beat down my advances, and some other lucky soul ended up with that two-tone beauty, but my love of Corvettes was born back in the Spring of 1978. I immediately started grabbing every new model year corvette promotional brochure at the dealership when they came out and I would read it cover to cover and dream about the day when I would own my own. I even unfolded them to the poster side and pinned them up on my bedroom wall. Yes….I had cars on the wall of my bedroom, but I also had room for Farrah Fawcett. OK…I just dated myself! Anyway, it was at this time that I began to ask my folks each birthday for, you guessed it a Corvette! Each birthday would come, and of course not wanting to disappoint, I always got a Corvette. A Corvette model to put together or a Corvette hot wheels car. I think my Dad took particular joy in pulling-my- chain with these Corvettes on my birthday.
Source: Thom Shepard