By By LYDIA GRIMES – Features writer
On Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005, for the first time in several years, there was a car show in Brewton. Glen Freeman may be new at collecting show cars but he is not new to loving to, as he put it, "messing around with cars."
After returning from a hitch in the U.S. Army, Freeman said that he hung around a group of his friends who spent a lot of time with cars. He learned a lot about how engines operate and how complicated they can be.
They are not the old "hippie" cars of the sixties. These cars have all the hoop-la about them to make a person want to drive away in one of them. They are either put together with original parts, original copies of parts, or fabricated from altogether new parts. It all depends on what category they fit into.
On Saturday morning the car owners gathered behind BankTrust and displayed their vehicles. Not only were they there to show their own cars, but they were also there to see what everyone else had brought. There were street rods, custom jobs, antiques and classics shined and polished to look their best for the public.
This whole show came about because a few individuals wanted to show off their cars and they wanted to see what everyone else had.
The cars were judged according to the condition of the engine or motor, the undercarriage, the interior and the exterior. Each of the four categories could have received as much as 25 points.
Freeman grew up in an era that saw the automobile go from one to a home to several in each driveway. He saw the advent of cars becoming something of a sport rather than a way to travel.
He was born in Haleyville in 1940, the older of two boys in the family. When he was around two years old, the family moved to Jay, Fla., and his father worked as a lineman with the REA. He graduated from Jay High School in 1958 but at that time he was already a seasoned worker.
Container Corporation was rather new to the area, having been built in 1957. Freeman heard there might be the possibility of getting on at the mill and it seemed as if that would be the thing to do. He applied for a job there and was hired by David Lang in 1959. He went to work in the pulp mill and is still there today. He has gone from sweeping the floors to writing computer programs for safety.
In his years at the mill he has seen mergers and the name of the company changed a few times, but basically it is the same as it has always been.
Freeman did have a couple of years from 1963 to 1965 when he was not working at the mill. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and was in a military police unit that was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. Although it was the era of Vietnam, he was never sent there, but he was on duty at the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965.
He was surprised to find that he, unlike some of his Army buddies, wanted to come back to his hometown when he got out of the service. He had no desire to try out greener pastures. He came back to Jay and went back to work at the mill and in 1967 he moved to Brewton. He met Ann from Atmore and they were married in 1968. She brought her son, Scott, to the family and today he is an attorney in Montgomery.
When he is not busy at work, Freeman likes to read, work in the yard and do a little traveling. After working shift work for all these years, he is now on straight days and as he said, "that takes a little getting used to."