TALES OF 40 YEARS # 38 – THE KENNY CAPERS

For most of the 30 years I was on the OLD CARS WEEKLY staff I had to work with (and deal with) Ken Buttolph. Ken was fun to work with, but frustrating, too. We nicknamed him the "Leisure Editor" because everything was a game to him. Last week I was bringing some of my treasures from home to my Gunner's Great Garage restoration shop and I grabbed one of several Moto Awards I won back in the '80s from the Automotive Journalists Conferences at the Imperial Palace. I think I won two of these writing awards, but I only have one of them. The awards were made by mounting a beautiful and functional reproduction of an old car motometer (radiator mounted temperature gauge) on a wooden base. At one time I had both awards on a shelf at work. One day I came in and there was one award that was intact, but the other was missing the motometer. It seems that Ken had liberated the top of the award to use it on Chet's Model T. At that moment I could have killed our leisure editor, but he was sure a hard guy to stay mad at. So, the bottom line is that I only have one Moto Award left. It's a good thing Ken doesn't live in Hollywood or there might be a few Rolls-Royce driving around with Ocars on their radiators.