Hallock Windshield History - As Clear As Glass

In one sense I stumbled into an easy gig: Pat Ganahl already researched the history and wrote his account in the November 1990 issue of Rod & Custom. But what makes the job easy also makes it really challenging: Ganahl made it pretty hard to come up with new information.

But the leads started bearing fruit. The late Dick Courtney took it upon himself to document Hallock's windshields. In fact Ganahl referenced a great deal of his information, specifically his correspondence with Duke's younger brother, Jud. Then we got a real gem: Courtney's list of people who owned the windshields that Duke Hallock produced. We can't vouch for its total accuracy but this list sure sets the records straighter. Considering this downsized format we can't tell the full account here, however, we will in an upcoming issue of the full-sized publication. For now, though, we'll explain how dozens of frames exist from the three originally cast.

Though Bean's engine sported... 

   

  read full caption

Though Bean's engine sported a plank head it still had two Winfield SR carburetors on a homemade log manifold, an adapted ignition, and a split exhaust manifold.

Casting a Star

Only which frame of the two is the question. Both Courtney and Ganahl noted they were made for Johnny Collins and Dick Stuelke. Earlier our pal Bernie Couch speculated that the frame on his pal Johnny Bean's car came from that 1936 batch, not from a batch Ed Adams cast later as Ganahl had it. Courtney's list removed all doubt: according to it, Bean bought his car from Stuelke.

We were willing to believe that Bean's windshield started as one of the two cast in 1936 but we're just not sure it started as Stuelke's. On the 11th hour-literally the day before publishing-we found his son, Rich. He confirmed that his dad raced a roadster that bore a unique windshield. He also mentioned that his dad graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1941. Here's the thing: Santa Barbaran Bob Joehnck told me that he built a car before the war with parts from a car that belonged to a college student. If that student was Stuelke-and odds are it was-his frame couldn't have belonged to Bean. We know where that car was during that time frame.

Instead Bean's car-at least its windshield-likely belonged to John Collins. Whatever the case, 1939 plates on Bean's car prove that his windshield existed before the war, and given the times it's unlikely anyone but Hallock made it.

It was during Tobin's ownership that the legend that Duke Hallock cast the windshields at Fullerton Union High School took flight. The story is partly true. Courtney, who corresponded with Jud and compiled the lists, cast his own frame at Fullerton High using Tobin's as a pattern. His classmate Frank Currie-as in Currie Enterprises-helped. "We made that windshield in 1946," Currie remembers. "We broke up Liberty engines and took the brass out of the bearings. They're probably worth a fortune now," he laments.

Remember the car that Dick Courtney built with the windshield he and Currie patterned off the Tobin/Bean car in 1946? Well almost as if on a parallel track with Tobin, Courtney updated his car to a Deuce frame and V-8 power. Even more eerily, Courtney sold his car about the same time Tobin did.

Dick Roseberry ended up with the car in 1959. In 1962 he traded the roadster for a '55 Nomad. Reportedly, the following owner destroyed the car in a crash. "I went out looking for it but nobody knows what happened to it," he says. Thus ends the story of the first windshield cast from the Bean/Tobin frame-at least for now.

Richard Campos kept the Bean/Tobin roadster but it all but disappeared for the decades it spent in storage and at shops. One of those shops belonged to Dave Williams, of Williams Lowbuck Tools. "That must've been around 1975, 1976, or 1977," he reckons.

Campos sold the frame to Dennis Webb who let Rob Miller use it as a pattern to cast more frames in the '90s. In fact, the majority of reproduction frames owe their existence to Miller's production runs: he recalled reproducing about 15 frames in total, all from aluminum. Larry Gheno said he produced three more bronze frames from the Bean windshield during the same time.

In the meantime Courtney built two more roadsters in the likeness of the one he built in the '40s, the last one with a Miller reproduction frame. Joe Scanlin bought that car and sold it to Kirk F. White who in turn sold it to Ross Myers.

Richard Campos finally finished the Stuelke/Bean/Tobin car, only its body and presumably the '32 frame it picked up in Tobin's care remain. He painted the new version red, powered it with a blown Chevy, and bolted wide billet wheels to it. It now wears a Fiat windshield.

By our very unofficial tally, at least one of Duke Hallock's original windshields and 25 of its copies exist: one 1946, half a dozen more in the late '70s, and another 18 in the '90s. That doesn't include the unknown number cast in the late '40s by Lee Grey or the others cast recently by Steve Sellers, but that's a significant number nonetheless.

We love to think there's more information waiting to be unearthed. Going by what we've learned, we'll likely dig it up. This particular chapter may be done but this story is far from over.