Rick's Restoration

After this story was written Rick has moved his business to a new location. Information and photos here are historical only.

The third place our foursome visited was Rick's Restoration, the home of the TV show "American Restoration" seen on the History Channel. Rick Dale's team has been able to restore items that, at first, looked as if they should have been sent to the local landfill. Somehow items get brought back to look like new. I especially enjoy watching the clever, engineering work that turns a piece of worthless junk into a valuable collectable item.

When we found Rick's place, it was very clear that we were where we wanted to be. The front of the building is made up to look as if there are several small buildings side-by-side, all of which have family names on them.

When we saw this we knew we were in the right place

This brought back memories

When we went inside, all sorts of projects were visible. Tours are guided and they are free. We were given a few restrictions such as in one area we were not allowed to take photographs. The reason for this rule was that the room contained restored objects that the owners had not seen yet. The items we saw covered a wide spectrum of just plain old-stuff. However, it was stuff that looked brand new that included a kid's pedal car to a vintage vending machine.

As the tour wound through different areas, we saw shops where the actual work is done as well as storage areas where old stuff was stored. Also on view are items that Rick and his team have picked to restore. One item I saw brought back a memory of when I was four years old. My father drove into a service station to buy gasoline. The station had what are now called "visible gas pumps." My dad told the attendant that he wanted 10 gallons. So the man used a hand pump on the side of the gas delivery system to get the gas up into the glass reservoir. When the gasoline reached a line labeled with the number 10, pumping was halted. Then the attendant took a hose with a nozzle from the side if the dispenser. The nozzle was inserted into our car gas filler. The gasoline was then allowed to drain into the gas tank letting gravity do the work.

Rick Dale the restorer

While touring the inside of Rick's place I saw several framed photos on the wall that illustrated that Rick's operation is very much a family affair. I took a photograph of a picture of Rick standing in front of a Coca Cola machine. I felt that this was very symbolic because one of Rick's early projects was to restore a Coke machine that he sold for a nice profit in the beginning stages of his company. To this day Rick's place still does a lot of Coke machine restorations.

If I remember correctly, the American Restoration TV show was a spin-off of one of the History Channel's most popular shows — Pawn Stars. This was brought to mind while roaming outdoors in front of the building. Along with the "small town", subjects of a few projects reside in front of the building. One of those items is a golf cart that was restored and customized to be gifted to the Ol' Man on Pawn Stars. The photo I took of the Ol' Man's golf cart can be seen in the page of photos taken during our time at Rick's place.

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