[sound of Crickets]
This weekend up to two thousand people from around the country - and maybe even the world - are expected to arrive for the auction at the Dingman Estate in Kensington...
if they can find it.
[more crickets]
The property is well off the beaten path, past some farms, and through some woods, at the end of a dirt road.
"Las Vegas inside a building." Signs and antique cars from the Dingman collection. (Shannon Mullen, NHPR)
Just inside the front gate, the goods are housed in and around a building that looks like an airplane hangar.
On the auction block - one of the largest known collections of antique Ford V8 cars and trucks in the world.
And some 2500 vintage tin, porcelain and neon signs, amassing what's also believed to be the largest privately held collection in North America.
(sound of flipping switch; neon sign hums)
That hum is what it sounds like to put more than two hundred neon signs in one building and turn them on at the same time.
As for what it looks like?
"This is Las Vegas inside a building, that's the best way to describe it."
Steve Wright is supervising the set-up of the cars and signs for RM Auctions, the Canada-based firm that's handling the sale.
Wright: "The variety of signs is staggering... dunn's pizza, drugs, motel, carburetor repairs, rooms, mid-city hotel, grain belt beer, Florida power, signal gas, Schlitz..."
"This Buster Brown Shoes sign is one of dozens of neon signs being auctioned. (Shannon Mullen, NHPR)
The signs cover each of the building's 32 foot high walls, and dozens more hang from the ceiling.
There's everything from Sherwin Williams paint and Borden's ice cream to Grain Belt beer and Buster Brown shoes.
Wright: "Everybody that comes in, just, 'oh I remember Buster Brown shoes.' I don't remember, must be before my time, but a lot of people like that sign so I think those are going to do well."
Another sign he thinks will sell high was salvaged from the original Thunderbird Motel in Miami, Oklahoma.
It's 13 feet wide, 8 feet tall, with an estimated value of 15 to 20-thousand dollars.
Its bright blue and pink neon once welcomed weary motorists on Route 66, the historic highway that linked the Midwest and the Pacific Coast.
Wright: "It's believed that most of the signs Mr. Dingman bought were from Route 66... it's nostalgia... it's a genre, an era."
It's awesome to see so many in one place.
All those glowing symbols of the optimism and freedom that Route 66 came to represent.
These signs advertise old-fashioned drugstores and soda fountains, things that no longer exist.
Then there are signs for things like Champion sparkplugs and Goodrich tires, car stuff for the car people.
Wright: "We have a large Ford oval, done with two colors of neon, (dimensions) it's got a nice red border to it and white Ford writing in the center, which to a Ford guy that's a highly sought-after for his garage, definitely."
The man who owns all this is a Ford guy.
In fact Michael Dingman was director of the company for 21 years.
He's been collecting the signs for about four years.
Over the past decade, he's also been buying up antique Ford cars and trucks.
He has 96 altogether, and that many cars can take up a lot of space- too much, in fact.
The collection's curator says Dingman had to either build a bigger place to keep it, or downsize.
"I think by culling out the collection, if you may, it's going to allow us to properly display the cars and have a nice collection."
Jim Wilson restored cars and fixed Fords for 30 years before he took charge of caring for this collection 7 years ago.
He says he's happy that after this weekend he'll have more room to display it.
Wilson: "On one side of the coin, it's been difficult managing the cars and displaying them prop because we've got them all squeezed in, like eggs in a crate, you can't look at 'em all. On the other side of it, this is one of the finest collections of Ford vehicles in the world and I really hate to see that go, they're such beautiful cars and I've been a part of that."
[sound of an idling tow truck]
"1934 Ford Roadster pickup. Less than 100 of these were made, and few survive today. (Shannon Mullen, NHPR)
All afternoon, tow trucks have been going back and forth between the auction site and building that houses the collection, ferrying the cars that will go on the block this weekend.
Wilson's lined them all up in a long row, parked on the diagonal with their grills gleaming.
His favorite is the bright red, 1934 Open-Cab, Ford Roadster Pick-up, what he calls an original working man's truck.
(horn beeps)
Wilson says Ford made fewer than 100 of these, and there's only a handful left because they were run into the ground by orchard farmers who used the trucks as a mobile picking stands.
This one is valued at up to 150-thousand dollars.
Another expected big seller is the 1940 Lincoln Zephyr that the New York Yankees gave to Babe Ruth.
The winning bidder on this one also gets one of the Babe's old bats.
A lot of the cars look like they're straight out of an old Gangster movie.
Farther down the line are the woodies.
(door opens) "This is a 1940 Ford Wagon. Has a wooden body... these were used a lot of times by lodges and hotels to pick up patrons at train stations, people would come up to the mountains in New Hampshire, or upstate New York or wherever, and the hotel would have several of these vehicles they'd pick people up in bring them to hotel for their stay."
[truck sound]
One of the oldest items in the auction is a 1928 Ford fire truck with all the bells and whistles in working order.
(fire siren, ding ding)
"Everybody should have a firetruck."
There are some more modern cars up for sale too.
Some of the highlights: a 1957 T-bird with only 312 miles on it, and a 385 horsepower, 2000 Mustang, one of only 250 ever built, 36 miles on the odometer.
The cars and trucks in this collection span almost the entire era of American automobile manufacturing, an industry that's somewhat's fallen from grace in the past few decades.
"Antique cars up for auction recall the heyday of American roadsters. (Shannon Mullen, NHPR)
Again, collection curator Jim Wilson.
"There was a time when the quality of American cars was relatively speaking unsurpassed, and with the rise of Japanese and European cars, it's gone by the wayside a bit. So I do see that. It's a little upsetting for an American guy that likes old cars, likes American cars in general."
But Wilson takes comfort in the notion that a lot of people still celebrate these cars, and the era they came from.
"I've had people sold us cars who have cried, And I'd assure them the car was going to good home. I think most of people who will be purchasing these cars will feel the same way about them. That's a good thing."
Hundreds of people have paid the 150 dollar fee to register for the auction.
If they can't make it all the way to Kensington, it'll also be carried live on eBay.
For NHPR News, I'm Shannon Mullen.
