Headers Car Club hosts first car show during Summer Celebration in New York Mills

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

While the New York Mills Summer Celebration has ended their festivities with a basketball tournament in recent years, a new finale to the annual event made its debut on the afternoon of Saturday, July 12.

Headers Car Club, comprising of a group of eight locals, recently formed in order to be able to sponsor this year’s car show in the hopes of making it an annual event. 

“We wanted to to put a car show on,” said organizer, Pete Mindermann. “We decided we better have a car club so we formed the club in order to put the car show on. That’s where we started, that way we have a group to make it happen.”

The idea came after the group of friends, many of whom had attended various car shows across the region, wanted to see a concerted and consistent effort put into a show in NY Mills.

“Some of us have gone to car shows for years and we always thought it would be neat to have onE in Mills,” said Mindermann. “I know there have been car shows in the past in Mills and they were nice car shows, but we thought that as a club, we could maybe promote it more and get more people involved in order to get more vehicles in there.”

About 60 vehicles were able to be parked on Main Avenue between Centennial 84 Drive and Park Street. Onlookers crowded around each of the vehicles, listening to the stories behind each one and choosing their favorite. Among the 60 vehicles, a top five award was given out to John & Sheri Snyder, Terry Scheidecker, Jewel Wacker, Bill Rehborg and Carol Windels. The top five award had no particular order as each winner placed equally in the top five bracket.

“There was great diversity,” said Mindermann. “We had a monster truck there, an absolute monster truck. That was a very good attraction for a lot of people, they had never seen a truck that was like 11 feet tall. There was also a car there that was 1,400 horse power, that was on alcohol and he fired it up. It was very loud and very unique.

“There were a lot of customs vehicles, you know the patina type of vehicles,” he continued. “There was one that was a unique truck, he drove it from home, it’s got air conditioning, it’s fully loaded and very unique how the whole front end folds up and out. He can cruise down the road like any other vehicle.”

Mindermann said that one of the best parts of the whole show was listening to the stories about each of the vehicles and learning why the owners decided to bring their car that day. From old to new, patina to restored, and everything in-between, there was a large variety of vehicles to see and learn about.

“Some people spent two or three hours just simply walking though the 60 vehicles and they barely made it through just hearing the stories behind every vehicle, because they brought them there for a reason. To see a Ford Pinto there, somebody brought it there and had a story to tell and until you talk to them, you won’t know,” said Mindermann. “There was the old NY Mills dump truck that was used for the NY Mills dump. I’m not fully aware of what that was, but it started its life as a military vehicles and then it was parked in NY Mills and they would make dump runs with it. It was kind of beat up and ugly and some guy bought it and resurrected it. So it had a good history, there was a cool story behind all of them.”

Mindermann shared stories about souped-up Hondas with turbos, restored convertibles, a variety of GTOs, cars and trucks with heavy patina, his own 1971 Chevy C10 and a Volkswagen Van decked out with the tent attachment and a ‘flower child’ theme.

“The kids absolutely loved that one,” laughed Mindermann. “It had the tent hooked on to the side and the children loved going in and checking that out. That was probably the children’s choice.”

Between 3-6 p.m., Main Avenue in NY Mills was buzzing with people trying to get a look at each of the unique and different vehicles lined up. Mindermann said that there were a lot of spectators there and every park bench around was filled along with those who brought there own to sit and enjoy the show.

“Well, when do you get to see that kind of stuff,” asked Mindermann. “You never do, so it was phenomenal. It was so much fun and obviously, we hope more people come out and enjoy it next year, because it was great to see and for the people that missed it, they really missed out on a good time. If you’re a car enthusiast, or not, some people would come through and say, ‘my grandpa had one of those,’ or ‘we grew up with a truck like that,’ they brought back a lot of memories. It really brought that out in people.”

Another aspect of this car show was the fact that anybody who wanted to show up with their car was invited. While some of the cars were strictly showpieces, many of them were also daily-drivers and are still in use on the highway each week.

“So there’s both sides of this show,” said Mindermann. “Some of these people have put a lot of time, money, and a lot of effort into making them what they are, and some people have simply cleaned them up and got them running and brought them out to share. It doesn’t have to be a shiny multi-million dollar vehicle. There were some vehicles there that were worth upwards of $150,000 and there were some that were worth $500, so there were both sides of the coin there, but people enjoyed both sides.”

Mindermann also said that there were many families that showed up both to participate in the show and to enjoy it as a spectator. Several of the vehicles that won top place were family projects and had lots of family support in the crowd. Folks are already looking forward to next year’s event.

“We’re going to try and keep it the day after Lund Mania again,” said Mindermann. “Thank you to the City of NY Mills for hosting us on this. A prior mayor of NY Mills came through and said it was one of the coolest things he had seen in NY Mills in years and he hopes to get his Camero out and bring it next year. We didn’t have any more room to squeeze and more cars in there. So next year, we’re hoping to simply go north farther and go into the next block and that will take care of it. Hopefully we’ll have more capacity.”