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Tail Lights: John Walczak Publisher: The Crittenden Automotive Library Byline: Bill Crittenden Date: 1 March 2023 |
 John's 2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo Intimidator Edition. |
If you found The Crittenden Automotive Library through Google or social media you probably don't know the name John Walczak, but he's the reason this website is here.
He passed away at the age of 73 last Wednesday.
John was my father-in-law. There were a few years at the end where we didn't see each other much as I was avoiding conflict, but one area where we got along fabulously well was the preservation of automotive history. He lived through a lot more of it than I had, and taught me so much about the years I had missed.
In case you hadn't read the story elsewhere, the short version is that one of John's hobbies was being a model car builder & dealer and CarsAndRacingStuff.com was originally registered to be an online store where I would help him sell model kits, die cast, and collector cards. While waiting for him to get some sort of inventory together, I started posting Chicago Auto Show photos and writing a few articles. When the idea of selling online was officially abandoned, the random collection of information I'd been building became The Crittenden Automotive Library and that became the focus of the site going forward.
I'd already been applying my background and interest in preserving & organizing information on private security (my occupation at the time) and scrapbooking (my wife's hobby), so when I began to learn HTML it really wasn't to create this site. This all wasn't an immediately obvious thing to me.
Sure, I had previously gone to tech school and learned to work on cars. I had an interest in them. But I had a general interest in all things mechanical, so if he had been a gun collector or an aviation enthusiast, this would be a very different website. In John I had inspiration and a mentor. Trying to expand his sales reach was the spark that started all of this. Then when the site's focus shifted I had someone who could show me which cars (real and scale) were worth going out of my way to take pictures of. Someone who could introduce me to interesting people and get me through the doors into some interesting places. A lot of the site's exclusive racing photography comes from him or events he took me to.
Last week we were able to watch his last Daytona 500 together. It was the longest we'd spent together in at least half a decade. He could barely speak, and I wasn't going to take advantage of that. So we just watched the race. I commented to my wife that the designers seem to have the forward number thing figured out and the cars looked good. John fell asleep afterward. I went home.
And now that he's passed, none of our old differences matter anymore. All of the negativity is gone. I miss when our biggest disagreement was Earnhardt vs. Elliott. Early morning Sunday breakfasts in Belvedere. Spending a half hour moving boxes and two hours talking about cars that started with an obscure model we found in one of the boxes.
That's not to say I regret the distance we had the past few years. It was there for a reason. It's just that now that those reasons are gone I'm not going to hold on to old grudges.
I've added a dedication to the home page, "The Crittenden Automotive Library is dedicated to John Walczak and all of the amateur automotive historians who have preserved & shared what they have."
629.2
The Dewey Decimal System's designation for automobiles falls within the 629.2 range. This section is about Library Owner Bill Crittenden's personal collection of books, magazines, and miscellaneous papers, much of which is available for reference if it's not directly available on CarsAndRacingStuff.com.
It may only be in a base model 2017 Kia Soul, but sometimes going for a drive with music or podcasts is a great way to gain some perspective. So I've been out a bit, and I discovered there's a giant Savers thrift store a few blocks from the Half Price Books in Bloomingdale. I hit a double jackpot with a good haul from both stores this past Sunday.
This big bundle of books has some interesting finds in it, and I think Trucking is the theme of this month's most obscure titles. But more so than that, one of the things I've been thinking about while driving around is redoing the Reference Desk.
Instead of being a list of books I own, I'm thinking of creating a sort of bibliography of all the books I can find, with icons & links for books that have entries in The Crittenden Automotive Library or ones that I have access to either physically or digitally with a link to the Reference Desk page.
That way, even if I don't have it, there's at least a record of something existing and maybe it can be found somewhere else.
The problem is, I don't like the major bibliography formats. Alphabetical order by author works great when you're citing an author and a reader wants to find more about that inline citation. But a list of books on a topic should be organized very differently and include different details.
So that's another project that'll be started soon, maybe after a few more backroads drives to work out the details in my head.
History Beyond the Bumpers
The Crittenden Automotive Library includes information from all aspects of automotive transportation and competition. This section highlights interesting topics related to automobiles other than vehicles themselves.
Of course John is part of the inspiration behind having so many Topic Pages for people in the Library.
The quote I have on the bottom of the main People Index page is “Men and women, all over the world, right down the centuries, come and go. Some leave nothing behind, not even their names. It would seem that they never existed at all.” It's by Nelson Mandela, from his book Conversations with Myself, published in 2010.
The only real form of immortality is to be remembered in history after you're gone. It's said that Alexander the Great went to India seeking literal immortality, only to find the figurative kind through his military exploits in getting there.
Press release authors, photographers, pit crew, truck drivers, engineers, no matter how small or fleeting the contribution to automotive history, they get a Topic Page. You can find your family name in the People Index and see possible relations to others who have contributed.
And hopefully, maybe, I can build something that can last long after I'm gone and keep my name & John's remembered in automotive history.
Mile Markers
Online Collection: Aside from a few token articles for a 0.07% increase, nothing got posted this month. That's not to say I haven't been busy, just that it's all been family time and offline work.
Offline Physical Collection: Between the trip Sunday and all the things going on at home, I'm surrounded with stacks of books & magazines that haven't been indexed. So by default the biggest increase was in programs with a 4.44% increase thanks to a couple of Brickyard 400 programs I found at Goodwill, including the inaugural! Lots more to come in the months ahead, though.
Offline Digital Collection: It's been a great month for podcasts, a 2.41% increase thanks to a great episode of Citation Needed and a conversation from Why Is This Happening that prompted a search of that show's archives. Sometimes the other people preserving automotive media miss the single episodes on automotive topics from other shows, because there are so many and we all listen to different things, so I'm happy to have stumbled across these.
About The Crittenden Automotive Library
The Crittenden Automotive Library @ CarsAndRacingStuff.com, based in Woodstock, Illinois, is an online collection of information relating to not only cars, trucks, and motorcycles, but also the roads they drive on, the races they compete in, cultural works based on them, government regulation of them, and the people who design, build, and drive them. We are dedicated to the preservation and free distribution of information relating to all types of cars and road-going vehicles for those seeking the greater understanding of these very important elements of modern society, how automobiles have affected how people live around the world, or for the general study of automotive history and anthropology. In addition to the historical knowledge, we preserve current events for future generations.
The Library currently consists of over 868,000 pages of books, periodicals, and documents, over 54,700 individual articles, more than 18 days of video & 24 days of audio, more than 36,100 photographs & other images, and offline reference materials including 861 book volumes, over 1,200 magazines, and thousands of advertising brochures & documents.