Terry Gale's museum celebrates cars of the working class.
past signs alternately imploring you to get tickets for theand to “Keep Elizabeth Rural,” whatever that means, your car will kick up plenty of rocks clambering down two different county roads that lead to Rambler Ranch.
“There’s something here for everybody,” Gale promises. “You don’t have to be a car person. By the time people leave here and they see the designs, the colors, the style, they see these as more of a work of art. So it’s kind of almost like going to an art museum, because they’re so unique-looking.” And then, starting in 1970, there was AMC’s ownership of the famed Jeep brand, thought to be the golden years of the American icon. In the late ’80s, AMC designed what would become the Jeep Grand Cherokee, though perhaps it shouldn’t have: Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca wanted the car so badly that he led a buyout of French automaker Renault’s stock in AMC, not long after its head, Georges Besse, was assassinated by French leftists.
And as if it weren't enough to deal with a divorce, two blended families numbering nineteen kids and the literal brick-by-brick reconstruction of his whole town, Gale also held on to a secret: He was gay. Gale took his eyes off the road. He dropped out of high school and moved in with a nearby brother, though his relationship with his sister-in-law was fractious. That same year, he also managed to tell his mother he was gay. She “wasn’t thrilled,” he says, but she still wanted to be part of his life.
As Kissinger gradually recovered his ability to speak, the two became friends, and then a couple. “It just felt natural,” Gale remembers. At the age of 31, Gale retired from his handyman work to spend his days with Kissinger, who needed an attentive, thoughtful, loving partner as he grappled with various health challenges.
Soon after, the couple bought another 160 acres to ward off developers planning a subdivision. “More space meant more buildings and more cars,” Gale says. They moved to the property full-time in 1995 after building a 7,000-square-foot house there — complete with a private theater so that Kissinger, who was “addicted to movies but terrified of being out in public,” could indulge in peace.
In the Nash building, bulbous, pastel, chrome-y exemplars of America’s manic post-war optimism draw you past more fins than you’d find in an aquarium — until you arrive at the decidedly boxier offerings from Nash’s early years. On the way out, you can’t help but linger by the striking 1955 Nash Ambassador Pinin Farina Speciale. Just don’t lean on it: It’s the only one of its kind.
As you take this all in, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking about all the billionaires spending world-changing amounts of money to blast off into space or blast off inanities on whatever social media platform they just bought. What did this all cost, and why would Terry Gale spend it on Lenore Romney’s station wagon, of all things?
While Rambler Ranch is necessarily this couple’s story, it’s not just that. As Gale walks by car after car, he’ll rattle off specs: engine sizes and trim levels and horsepower and how hard his on-hand mechanic worked to restore these cars to this level of glory. John and Eva, brother-and-sister immigrants from Yugoslavia he met while working at Kmart, never owned a car — so Gale would run errands for them, and eventually ended up looking after them for eighteen years. When they passed away, they left him their home; some of their belongings line the diner exhibit.Hearing about these people’s lives, you begin to realize that Rambler Ranch isn’t just some rich hobbyist’s tax write-off masquerading as a car collection.
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