By Roger Rael
TRINIDAD, Colo. — There are car shows where people come to count trophies, compare paint jobs and argue over who has the cleanest ride.
Then there are car shows where none of that is really the point.
On Sept. 27, Dennis Montano wants the chrome polished, the oldies playing and the cars lined up, but the people he really wants watching are the men and women looking out from a Trinidad nursing home.
Because sometimes a ’69 Impala is more than a car.
Sometimes it is 1969 again.
Sometimes an old Oldsmobile rolling into a parking lot can bring back a first date, a high school dance, a Sunday drive or the car Dad swore nobody was allowed to touch.
And sometimes putting a smile on somebody’s face is worth more than any trophy you could haul home.
Montano, of Trinidad, said his connection to cars goes back to childhood.
“I just have the love and the feel for old bomb cars and the lowrider cars,” Montano said, adding that his appreciation stretches across cars, trucks, and motorcycles.
Life eventually did what life does. Family came along. Responsibilities piled up. The cars moved a little farther down the priority list.
Then three little girls changed everything.
Montano and his wife took in their granddaughters, Hardy, Naya and Noah, during a difficult period in the girls’ lives. He remembers them being sad and depressed, and Grandpa went looking for something that might bring a little sunshine back.
He found it underneath hoods, behind steering wheels, and surrounded by chrome.
Montano began taking the girls to major car shows in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and around the region.
Before long, the granddaughters were no longer simply tagging along.
They were tugging on Grandpa’s shirt.
“When are you going to make your car shows, Grandpa?”
That was about all it took.
Montano said he began organizing shows in part because he wanted to “bring some sunshine” back into their lives.
And the bug bit him again.
Hard.
Today, Montano organizes shows under the name Getting United Car Shows, an appropriate name for a culture that, at its best, has become less about neighborhoods, boundaries and rivalries and more about families, craftsmanship and passing something on to the next generation.
He has spent years reaching out to car owners from Pueblo, Alamosa, La Junta and communities across New Mexico, trying to build something that crosses the state line instead of stopping at it.
That brings us to Sept. 27.
Montano said staff from a Trinidad nursing home approached him about putting together a car show for its residents.
His answer ultimately came down to one thing: the elderly residents.
“They asked me to put one on for the elderly down here in the community,” Montano said. “I thought it would be a good idea just to go put some smiles and sunshine back to their lives.”
The cars, he said, may be some of the same makes and models residents remember from their younger years.
That is where this little Sunday car show suddenly becomes something much bigger.
Aging has a way of shrinking a person’s world.
The car keys disappear. Friends disappear. Familiar places change. Independence can become something remembered instead of something practiced.
But memory is a stubborn thing.
Fire up the right engine, put the right song through
