Thursday, Dec. 5, 2025

Well, this evening was our community Christmas Parade, and it was quite the production — as it usually is. I’ve spent the last week plus working to decorate my 55 Chevy wagon in its Christmas finery — which included a pile of presents on top of the Chevy, and a Christmas tree sticking out the rear hatch.

The tree, which was a six-footer set me back $40 at the local thrift shop. I had Christmas lights left over from decorating my 1956 Plymouth Belvedere a few years back.

Bad luck myst have followed me with the lights (and the lit wreath from the Plymouth I also reused). Just like several years ago when they were on the Plymouth, the lights all went out — in a spot ironically close to where they died several years ago.

The problem in both instances turns out the inverter quit due to a “low voltage” error. On my new 1000 watt inverter, the error code was E-1. Whatever the error code, the error was just the same — no Christmas lights on my car.

It sucked.

I had lights on the tree sticking out the rear hatch, wrapped around the presents on the roof, lights on my wreath strapped to the grill, and the LED sign on the roof wishing everyone “Merry Christmas from the Nelson County Gazette.

No one got to see any of it. Damn!

But the parade was great anyway, and we got a lot of positive comments about the car. I stopped for gas at Kroger and had several people roll by just to compliment the car and its decorations. While the inverter dying was a pain in the ass, the parade was still a lot of fun!

I can’t say it was all my handiwork — my wife was a huge, huge help, and if not for her I probably wouldn’t have gotten it done in time.

By today, I only had a couple of things to complete — I had to place the LED sign on top in front of the packages, and finish attaching the wreath to the front. I had to make sure we had enough extension cords too.

Just a few minutes before we lined up for the parade, I went under the hood and switch the inverter on. The lights began working as they should. That didn’t last too long, however. As we moved position, once we stopped I reset the inverter. The lights came up. But it didn’t last long.

Rather than try to reset the inverter again, we just left the lights off. We considered plugging only certain sets of lights on, but when i checked the voltmeter, it showed the battery at slightly less than 12 volts.

I don’t know the inverter’s low voltage cutoff point, but I suspect its when the battery drops to under 12 volts.

Ironically, this was the first time since I’ve owned the Chevy that I’ve had it out driving in darkness for any length of time. When driving in daylight, the voltmeter always reads above 12 volts; tonight, it never rose above 12 volts.

Here’s what the Chevy looked like earlier today with the sign in place.

HOW WE MOUNTED THE PRESENTS.

The platform on top of the Chevy is 4×4 feet luan, 1/4 inch thick. The wood is attached to the two roof-mounted bars, which both are mounted on rubber feet. Unfortunately the hooks I bought to secure the bars to the roof did not work as planned.

Using the existing nuts and bolts that once held the adjustable straps and hooks to each end of the bars, I used those bolts to secure the wood platform to the bars. How did we mount the presents to the platform, you ask?? We wrapped the presents, then arranged them to our liking on the 4×4 platform. After we had them arranged,, I cut holes in the wrapping paper to expose the cardboard. I liberally applied hot glue to the bottom of each box on the first layer,, and secured them to the platform. As we stacked the boxes, we cut holes in the wrapping paper to expose cardboard mating surfaces. Again we used hot glue to glue the boxes together, layer by layer. In the end, the boxes were a fairly solid unit.

I have an elastic cargo net I planned to place over the top of the whole mess, but realized we didn’t need it. I had purchased a couple dozen bungee straps, and we used the best ones to hold down the bars. The front bar was secured to each side view mirror; the straps on the rear bar were tied to the lift gate hinges. At this point, the platform was secure.

I was concerned however about the boxes staying together during the trip to town at 30-35 mph. We ran bungee cords front-to-back and side-to-side over the pile of packages to prevent the wind from blowing the box stack apart.

In the end, everything rode perfectly on the road to town — and back to home as well. The battery voltage stayed below 12 volts, and I was concerned that the voltage might drop to the point that the car would no longer run. I watched it closely but never saw it drop further.

Kenny Downs’ mini-Peterbilt truck was behind me. The staging area — Bardstown High School — was rather chaotic, but in the end they got us lined up. Kecia Copeland was one of the many volunteers working hard as was Bill Sheckles and of course, Wilma Sorrell.

NEXT UP? Tomorrow is the funeral and visitation for Jim Boles, the guy who did all the social media posts for the Whiskey City Cruisers. He did much more than just social media, he had several cars, and his wife Bonnie gave him a lot of support too. He did of cancer after only learning the diagnosis 3 months ago.

He turned over his social media/photography duties to Steve Campbell. Steve has already said he won’t be taking photos of every vehicle that shows up at Whiskey City events, but I think NOT taking the pics is a big mistake. Guys and their families love to see their cars on social media. I’m going to try to help Steve next season.