A classic car tells an unusual love story in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. A local restaurant owner and collector of classic cars credits his parents’ 45-year marriage and his existence to a 1958 Chevrolet Impala that brought them together.
Rick Payton is a classic car collector and owner of the Classic Garage restaurant in Eau Claire, according to volumeone.org, a magazine in Eau Claire. Having owned “several hundred vehicles over his lifetime,” he now has a small collection of old Cadillacs, volumeone.org said. The 1958 Chevy Impala he bought sight unseen in December 2017 is now a special part of his collection.
Payton never saw the Chevy Impala that brought his parents together, but he has heard numerous stories about the car from his parents, family members and friends of the family throughout the years, according to volumeone.org. And the stories reveal a unique love story that had an unusual beginning and a long and loving duration.
volumeone.org said that Payton’s mother, Linda Kinder Payton, was at Leonard’s Drive-in Restaurant in Bedford, Indiana, in 1965, “when her ride drew Ed Payton’s attention.” After he “commented on the Impala’s color,” which was “Sienna Gold,” they “went for a cruise together that day, and again on Sunday, then on Monday.” On Wednesday, Ed Payton proposed. They were married, seven days after they met, the magazine said. Two days later, the story said, Ed Payton, who was in the Air Force, returned to Vietnam.
After Ed Payton left, Linda Payton moved into his house “and lived by herself, working two jobs to save for their future,” according to volumeone.org. Ed Payton, the magazine said, “received more pay and had someone to write letters to while he was at war.” When he returned, they “shared their lives until Ed passed away in 2010.”
“I think they liked each other a whole lot,” Payton told volumeone.org. “I think they learned to love each other.”
hunting for a 1958 Chevy Impala
After his mother died in 2017, he told the magazine, he decided to add the 1958 Chevy Impala to his antique car collection. A lot of people helped him, including “connections he had made over years of collecting and showing classic cars,” the story said. And the local newspaper “wrote a story about the car, as did Old Cars Weekly magazine.”
Then on “Sept. 11, his mother’s birthday, in 2017,” he found a “1958 Impala 348 and bought it to restore,” volumeone.org said. It wasn’t the same car as the one his mother drove when she met his father. But a few months later, he found the same car. A friend had learned about a classic automobile that was “an all-original Impala -same year, same color for sale outside of New York City,” the story said, adding that the car had a high price.
“I called him, and I said ,‘Hey look, I know you’re asking a lot for this car, but let’s get real,’ ” Payton said in the article. The owner sold him the car at “the highest number I was willing to pay,” Payton said, adding that he guessed that “since neither of them was happy with the price, it must be a fair deal.”
Since buying the vintage car sight unseen in December 2017, he has driven the car once, “from his driveway to its current home: on display at the Classic Garage” under a “painting of Linda based on a photo of her with the car in 1963,” volumeone.org said.
What’s in store for a classic car that tells an unusual love story? Payton might drive it with his family, “perhaps taking a trip back to Bedford,” where his parents began their love story more than 50 years ago, according to the magazine.
