Santa Clara Valley Model T Ford Club

On December 11, we gathered for our annual Holiday and Installation Dinner. It was a little different this year, we did it during the day instead of at night. We took Toys for Tots to the local fire station instead of a nighttime lights tour. We did a buffet instead of a sit-down dinner. We had 4 T’s and an A out daring it to rain, and it threatened and spit but did not seriously rain!!

I think it was a real success. We met at the Hometown Buffet in Santa Clara, and despite a little scheduling problem with our private room, we feasted and installed and got it all done. Now the Hometown Buffet serves breakfast until 11:30, so I don’t know about the rest of the folks, but I started off with breakfast and finished with lunch. Hey, I got my money’s worth. Food was good, it only cost me 9 bucks, and I was stuffed for the day.

After breakfast/brunch/lunch, we installed one new board member and reinstalled the rest of the board who have all agreed to go one more year. Our new board member is Gary Aslanian who has kindly stepped up to take over the Tour Coordinator spot vacated by Nadine Camicia (thank you Nadine for a job well done!) We had a few presentations, officers all received a can of Spam from our number one Spam fan (Bob Beaman), looks like emergency traveling rations to me. And the Beamans received the Meritorious Achievement Award (and trophy) for services rendered to the club, I think I saw Mary shed a tear. Well deserved and thank you, Beamans. Somewhere along the line, a new rubber snake appeared on the head table, now we have two snakes lurking around in the club.

After lunch, we loaded Patti’s truckabout with toys and motored over to the Santa Clara Fire Station to give them to the Toys for Tots program. We witnessed some training exercises (involving a lot of water), got a little tour of the station, and potentially discovered a new meeting place. Missions accomplished, we scattered to the winds and all went home for Mrs. Claus and her bag of tricks. a long winters nap.

Bob Meneely