1938 Packard attention-grabber

Omer Lindman was just a young man in 1939 when he bought his dream machine, a 1938 Packard from a car dealer on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. He says one of the reasons he bought it "was to impress the girls."

"Back then not very many people even had cars," recalled the 94-year-old Lindman. "If you had a car, especially a car like the Packard, girls noticed you. They might not have given me the time of day before I had the car, but after ... they noticed."

Lindman bought the car just before he was shipped out to the South Pacific in World War II. He says the thought of that car waiting for him, along with his girlfriend waiting for him, got him through the war alive. He served in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer.

"Not too many of us came home," recalled Lindman.

As soon as he returned home, he took the car, and the girl, Bergit, and they got married. They happily drove off to their honeymoon in Wisconsin in that Packard. Then when their first son, Orin, was born, they drove him home from the hospital in that Packard.

Soon after that, the car was put in storage, as Lindman and his family became busy with the day-to-day chores of earning money to support their growing family. The car followed them to Elgin, Ill., and then to Arkansas.

Saved from fire

It was there the car almost had its end. A fire broke out in the house where the Lindmans lived while they weren't home. Luckily, some construction workers working in the neighborhood saw the blaze and managed to rescue the Packard. The house burned to the ground.

But after years of being kept in the mothballs, Lindman and the Packard moved to Jackson to stay with Lindman's son Kevin. The two decided to finish restoring the car, a project they had started, but not finished, years earlier.

"We set two goals for ourselves," explained Kevin Lindman. "Our first goal was to get that car into shape so that we could all drive to church in it as a family. We did that last Saturday."

He and his father laughed that they decided to drive the car to a Saturday evening service because it seemed to be a low traffic time. They both were a little nervous at the thought of actually putting their dream machine out into traffic.

The second goal they set for themselves was to enter the car in the Jackson Jaycees Classic Auto Show held Thursday at the Jackson City Park.

"We started working on this project years ago, when I was just a kid," said Kevin Lindman. "That was over 30 years ago."

It came as quite a surprise to them both to be working on the same car with Kevin now a man with children of his own. They took the project up again in January, when Omer Lindman moved to Jackson to live with his son's family.

"Really, the car has been kept in pretty good shape," explained Kevin Lindman. "We only had to replace the gas tank, interior, and give it a new top."

They've been able to find the parts they need mostly through the Internet, he said. They found a man in Terre Haute, Ind., who rebuilds and re-manufactures parts for classic automobiles, and he specializes in the Packard.

Family project

It's become a family project.

"I figure my boys will take over the second restoration," laughed Kevin Lindman. Art, 13, and Will, 15, don't mind that thought at all. Working on the car has been a way for the whole family to relive a lot of their grandfather's history. And, as Omer Lindman so aptly noted, the car is still great for picking up girls. The boys have taken note of that fact.

"It caught the girls' attention when I was young," laughed Omer Lindman. "I'm sure it will work for these boys, too!"

Kevin Lindman laughed, also. "Yeah, that's how he got Mom," he said.

Omer Lindman recalls how he bought the Packard for $800, which he notes was a lot of money back then. He had worked hard and saved his money for that dream machine. It was his first new car. Prior to the Packard, he drove a Model A Ford truck. He was in awe of the Packard's power.

"The speedometer went all the way to 100, but I never drove it over 75," he admitted. The Packard had no seat belts, no turn signals, no power brakes, no power steering. None of that was required, or even available, back then. He's had that car for 64 years now, and he says he's very glad that he never traded it in.

"It became like an old dog to me," he said. "I just never could bear to part with it."

Though the Packard has been the Lindman's primary restoration project, the car bug gene has obviously been passed down. Kevin Lindman also has a 1970 Chevelle that he has restored.

"The Chevelle was a high horsepower muscle car," he said, and he had it on display at the Jackson Classic Car Show.

He said both cars get quite a reaction.

"A lot of people notice the Chevelle," he said. "It always gets a second look, but the Packard is the real attention-grabber." A lot of people driving by his house have had to stop to take a closer look at it.

"I guess that's what makes this car so special," Kevin Lindman said. "Not a lot of people have even seen a Packard.

So it's very unusual, but more importantly, it's part of our family history. It's been priceless just to work on it together. Dad supervises, and tells a lot of stories along the way. That has just been great for all of us."