Vinnie and Hollis Mendes in the 1955 MG TF 1500.
Cape May, NJ is a lovely little town located at the southernmost tip of the state. It’s been a summer tourist destination ever since the mid-1700s, mostly noted for its hospitality and quaint Victorian architecture. It’s also on the Intercoastal Waterway which runs all the way from Bar Harbor, Maine to Brownsville, Texas, so I’ve been there by boat as many times as I’ve been there by car.
Years ago, I inherited a classic 1955 MG TF Roadster from the original owner, so I was suddenly an old car buff and as such, joined the MG T club. Back in 1992 the club decided to hold their annual meeting, with a car show and rally at The Inn of Cape May. The show was a four-day event running from Thursday through Sunday.
The hotel itself was a beautiful example of Victorian architecture, with wrap-around verandas on all three floors just across the road from the Atlantic Ocean. It dates from the mid-1800s, but has an underground parking garage, so the old cars would be protected from inclement weather, and if it rained, we could even hold the car show and swap meet in the garage, safely protected from the rain.
OOPS! Nobody planned on Tropical Storm Danielle, who was making her way leisurely up the coast. She had been downgraded from a hurricane but still had a high-pressure system that packed plenty of punch, mostly in the form of heavy downpours and record high tides. Most everyone who planned to attend decided to chance it and came. After all, how high could the tides be? Having lived on the Jersey shore most of my life, I knew exactly how high, but I also knew there was a lot of high ground on Cape May, and the town had been there for over 200 years and the hotel over a hundred. Upon arriving, some of the participants must have been disconcerted by seeing the recently erected wall of sandbags between the hotel and the ocean.
The planning committee made arrangements with the high school to use their parking lot in case of ultra-high tide, so twice each day a procession of old cars made their way up the hill through the monsoon to the high school, much to the chagrin of the car owners whose “babies” had not seen a drop of rain in the last 50 years. The armed guard who had been hired to watch over the cars also got soaked!
It rained like mad both Thursday and Friday, and Saturday dawned wet and cloudy, but by noontime it had turned into a bright sunshiny day, and the rest of the weekend went on as scheduled. The club had made arrangements with the Coast Guard to use their enormous parking lot for the car show and rally. This consisted of a bunch of challenges such as driving around a group of cones while the passenger speared potatoes off the ground with a broomstick, (the fastest time and most potatoes wins.) There was also one where you hit the brakes and tried to coast up to a finish line without accelerating, steering or breaking again. Finally, there was an obstacle course which you had to navigate with the driver wearing a bag over his head and the passenger directing him where to go. I can imagine if there was ever an accident, how the report and insurance claim would read: “Cause of accident: Driver had bag over his head.”
I think the most amusing thing about the whole rally is that the parking lot was about two inches deep with rainwater. Now it’s a fact of life, just like British governments leak secrets, British cars leak oil! Here you had fifty antique cars going “drip, drip, drip” for a couple of hours in the same pool of water. Although the total volume of oil was miniscule, it was enough to cause a rainbow sheen over several acres of parking lot. Theoretically this is classed as an “Oil Spill.” Fortunately, most of the Coast Guard personnel were out at sea due to Danielle, and those left behind were too busy to notice, much less report us to the EPA.
Meanwhile, two of my best friends had retired and decided to cruise the Caribbean for a couple of years. They had a Benneteau 36 and after six months of preparation, had departed the north Jersey shore a couple of days earlier. I took the chance that they might have put into Cape May to ride out Danielle and after the rally I started canvassing all the marinas to track them down. Finally, I got to a marina where they had just cast off about a half hour before. They still had to traverse the Cape May Canal, so I hopped in the MG and sped over to the western end, taking an American flag and a whistle that happened to be in the “boot” of the car, I went out to the end of the breakwater. Sure enough, about 15 minutes later they hove into view out in the middle of the canal. I started waving the flag and making all the noise I could and finally they changed course and approached the breakwater. We chatted for a while then I wished them Bon Voyage, and they headed south on their grand adventure.
Of all the rallies I’ve attended, this was by far the most memorable. Where else could you brave a tropical storm, attend an antique car rally, witness an oil spill and wish old friends “Bon Voyage” at one time?
Photo: by Vinnie Mendes, II
