The Tommy Letis Pickup Truck Story
1959 to 2011
A true story about Tommy Letis and his 1956 Ford Pickup
And how Tommy became a legend
Written 03/2011 and Re-written 05/29/2016
Howard Yasgar
This is a true story of how I met my best friend Tommy Letis, and it is a friendship that has now lasted more than 56 years.
This story took place starting in late 1958.
It was when I was living in Westville Connecticut, and attending New Haven College.
I was also working part time in the evenings at a Gulf gas station located on Derby Avenue in New Haven.
My parents were concerned that I didn’t have decent and reliable transportation to attend college, so my father suggested that we just go to the local Chevrolet agency in New Haven, and buy a car.
At Cooley Chevrolet, the sales manager asked who was going to be using the car and I said I was going to be using it for college.
He said, “If it is for college, why not get an Impala convertible it was only a few hundred dollars more than a regular model”, well I just loved the idea, and my father just shrugged his shoulders which the sales manager assumed meant it was OK.
As the salesman was writing everything up, he said, “You are here just at the right time. Chevrolet is offering several promotional options.
He explained that Chevrolet was experimenting with putting Corvette 4 speed transmissions in the bigger passenger cars to see how it worked out. He said that if I wanted one Chevrolet would throw it in at no charge, so of course I wanted one.
Also he said Chevrolet was trying to stimulate sales of their 348 cubic inch engines.
They had introduced it into the passenger car line, but the public’s reaction wasn’t as good as they had expected, so to make the engine more powerful, they were experimenting with using 3 carburetors, and they called it a Tri-power package. The salesman said he would include it in the car if we wanted.
Then he said, “Any 1959 cars that came with those options automatically came with Chevrolet’s new newly designed positraction differential.”
What we actually received from Chevrolet, was a 1959 Chevrolet, Impala Convertible, that was a factory made muscle car.
I thought it was an absolutely beautiful car, and to this day I don’t fully understand how we ended up with what was apparently some kind of Chevrolet experimental model.
It was a jet black convertible with a red interior, and it had a 348 cubic inch engine with the Tri power package (three carburetors). It also had an experimental four speed Corvette transmission installed, and it had a non-slip positraction differential and dual exhaust.
It was absolutely a factory made hotrod and it sounded and ran like one.
Consequently anywhere I went, as soon as I stopped for a red light, someone always pulled up and wanted to race me, and I usually I accommodated them.
At the time, in 1959 organized drag racing and street drag racing were fairly common activities.
There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic on the roads in those days and whenever we wanted to race, everyone simply would head up to the Connecticut Turnpike and race.
Back then, one of the common hangouts for the hot rod race crowd was Jimmy’s Restaurant located at Savin Rock amusement park at West Haven Connecticut.
Jimmy’s was an indoor and outdoor restaurant specializing in split hot dogs, they were cooked on a flat top stove. Jimmy’s also had fried clams, soft shell crabs and lobster rolls.
But best of all Jimmy’s had a huge parking lot, with room to park hundreds of cars.
So every evening lots of cars would come and they parked in long rows.
The back rows were sort of reserved for the guys with hot rods, and that’s where I parked most evenings.
Parking at Jimmy’s was like a big social event, everyone would walk up to the take out windows where Sal, the hot dog chef, would have a hundred hotdogs, warming on the flat top.
As everyone watched, he would cook them, split them and put them on a roll fast as lightening.
Also, working behind Sal, was the owner Jimmy himself, he was handling the French fries, sodas and the fried clams.
Everyone would come up to the big take windows, stand in the line and order.
Both Sal and Jimmy knew all of us regulars, and they always joked around with us as they assembled our plates of hotdogs, and fries.
Every so often, in the evenings, a shiny black 1956 Ford pickup truck would appear.
The truck would drive slowly between the long rows of parked cars.
Its driver would rev up the trucks engine and making the trucks exhaust roar. Then occasionally the driver would pop the clutch, making the front of the pickup jerk up in the air.
Making the front end of that pick up jump like that was quite a maneuver back in 1969. Most car and truck engines at the time just didn’t have the horsepower to do it.
No one at Jimmy’s had any idea of who owned that pickup truck, but the rumors were always circulating, hot and heavy.
Some people said the pickup truck had an experimental engine in it, and the hood was locked with a chain so no one could see it.
It was said that the pickup was always looking for someone to race, and it was said that they had never lost a race.
I watched as the pickup drove up and down the rows of cars in the parking lot, I could see that there were two people riding in the cab, but their windows were up, and I had no idea as to who they were.
Every evening we all waited, hoping to see that pickup in a race.
Then, several weeks passed and the black 56 Ford pickup truck didn’t show up anymore.
Its absence became a topic of conversation among every one.
Then one day the truck appeared again at Jimmy’s, but something was very different, there was no revving of the engine and no popping of the clutch, it just drove in between a few rows of parked cars, and then it just drove off and disappeared.
After a few weeks the truck was all but forgotten about.
One summer evening, I was parked in the rear row of Jimmies parking lot. It was a nice warm evening and I had the convertible top down.
I was sitting in the passenger side seat, the engine was running and the air conditioning was on
I was waiting for some friends to show up.
I had hardly noticed him, but there was someone standing near my driver’s side door. I looked over and saw a fellow studying the interior of the car.
He looked to be about 5 foot 6 inches tall, with sandy blond hair, and a friendly cherubic face.
He had on a flannel long sleeve work shirt and green work pants and he was twirling a stubby small cigar in his mouth.
He took the cigar from his mouth and with a friendly smile and kind of a chuckle he said, “How does it go”, she goes OK, I replied.
“How’s that four speed Corvette transmission working out, he asked”, OK, I replied, (It really wasn’t good, it had the wrong gear ratio for a heavy car). He said, “Does your 348 cubic inch engine have the 3 carburetors, the tri-power?”. “ Yes it does”, I replied,
He went on “Does that engine have any punch?” he asked.
Yes I replied but not as much punch as I would like.
He said, “I had heard that Chevrolet was building these factory hot rods, but I never really saw one up close until now.
His face was smiling, and he said “I want you to know I think it’s really a sharp looking car,”
That was the defining moment when I knew that I liked this guy.
Now, still to this day I still don’t know why I did it, but I asked him if he wanted to take the car for a drive, I had never offered that to anyone before.
But that was when the magic happened, it was exactly how I first met Tommy Letis.
Tommy then introduced himself, as he got in the car and he took it for a spin up on the Connecticut turnpike.
When we returned to the back row of Jimmies parking lot, I asked Tommy what kind of car he was driving, and he said, “I’m just driving a pickup truck,” and he pointed across the street.
I looked across the street where the shiny black 1956 Ford pickup truck was parked in the shadows.
We walked across the street and we got into Tommy’s truck, he then drove cautiously up to the Connecticut turnpike.
Once we were there, Tommy stepped on the gas.
I was startled, it was like I was in a jet aircraft, I was thrown back in the pickup trucks seat, and it took my breath away. I had never experienced a force like that before.
Tommy then backed off the gas, and the truck slowed down to the turnpike speed limit, and all I could say was, Wow.
Then Tommy said, I’m sorry, but I can't really open it up, as I’m having a little problem with the Connecticut State Police right now, and they have their eye out for me.
I thought, my goodness, he wasn’t even opened to full speed and he had already accelerated faster than I had ever seen before.
By the time we returned to Jimmies parking lot, I think I could say Tommy and I were good friends.
I gave Tommy the directions to come visit me at the Gulf gas station on Derby Avenue, where I was working part time in the evenings.
Tommy promised that he would come and visit me, and he did.
He came every night that I worked, just to talk and keep me company.
As Tommy and I became friends, he eventually came to my home and met my father and mother, and I also started going to his house.
But I became jealous of the way Tommy lived. His home life was like nothing I had ever seen before, he lived with his mom and Dad and his brother and grandfather.
They lived on what was formerly an egg farm located on rural Hunt Lane in Foxon Connecticut.
The chicken were gone and the coops were now all falling apart but behind his house there was a large barn, and that’s where Tommy parked the pickup truck inside, and it was where he worked on his ten wheeler dump truck.
Tommy and I were similar in age, but Tommy already had his own business and he was earning in a week more than what I earned in a year.
While I was still in school, Tommy was earning real money.
Wherever we went, Tommy always carried a roll of cash in his pocket and it appeared to me that he could afford to do just about anything he wanted to do, and that was something I couldn’t do.
One day, Tommy asked me to go with him to a Ford truck agency, and I watched him order a brand new dump truck for $26,000.00. That was a whole lot of money back in 1959, and Tommy walked out of that agency like buying that new dump truck, was nothing out of the ordinary.
I started spending more time at the Tommy’s home, watching and trying to help as he worked on his dump truck in the barn.
For me, just being at Tommy’s home was always a learning experience. His grandfather, was an old time craftsman from Germany. He taught me how to boil and bend wood to make sleigh runners, something I will never forget.
So you could say, I liked hanging around Tommy’s house, and the best part was that Tommy’s father George treated me as if I were one of the family.
In the summer evenings, Tommy and I would always go out riding in his Ford pickup truck.
Tommy was constantly looking for cars to race.
He would drive to all the popular hang outs, places like hamburger and hotdog joints, where all the guys with the souped up cars hung out.
Tommy, had a simple routine, he would drive right into the restaurant parking lots, and start revving up the pickup trucks engine, that always got everyone's attention pretty fast.
Then Tommy would roll down his window and offer to race anyone. But usually there were no takers, because like at Jimmy’s the pickup trucks reputation preceded it.
But you never knew what was going to happen, and Tommy always seemed to eventually find someone new that thought they could beat him.
But inevitably they all always lost, Tommy’s pickup would pull away from them just like they were standing still.
Tommy would always start each race from a rolling start, and no one seemed to mind it.
Sometimes a competitor would get the jump on Tommy, but still he would quickly pass by them like they weren't even moving.
After watching Tommy win so many races like that, I would roll down the passenger side window as we raced and I would wave goodbye to the competitors as Tommy pulled away from them.
It was just an amazing sight to see and feel, as the truck accelerated.
I could look out the rear window and see the competitor falling way behind us. It was a special feeling to be in that truck with Tommy, it was just like we were in a rocket ship.
On some evenings my cousin Allen, came along with us and even with the extra weight of having three of us sitting in the truck’s cab, Tommy would still beat the all the competitors.
I recently discussed this story with my cousin Allen, and he remembered some of the humorous confrontations we had with the police.
In a way it was unfortunate, but as the reputation of Tommy’s pickup truck grew, the State and local police would recognize him wherever he went.
Now, my trying to pry the whole story out of Tommy, as to how the truck came to be, was no easy task, but I questioned him constantly about it.
I did it mostly because I was just curious.
But once I heard the story, I felt that the reason Tommy didn’t like to talk about it, was because the story had ended up with lots of hard feelings between him and one of his very good friends.
Tommy said that it all began in 1956, when he bought a brand new 1956 Ford pickup truck.
At that time, Tommy, had a good friend that lived nearby, his name was Billy Quick.
Billy was not only Tommy’s good friend but he was also a very good mechanic.
After driving the pickup truck for a couple of years, Tommy got the idea that he wanted to soup the truck up.
He had decided that he wanted to make that 6 cylinder Ford truck into a “Street hot rod”.
Building street rods and custom cars was all the rage in 1958.
Tommy knew that the local junk yards were starting to get in late model wrecked cars that had powerful V8 overhead valve engines in them.
So Tommy told Billy Quick that he decided to pull the small 6 cylinder Ford engine out of the truck and replace it with a high powered V8 engine. He thought it would be a lot more fun to drive than a Ford with a six cylinder engine.
So they started calling around to all the junkyards to see what was available.
Eventually they located an auto wrecker that had just gotten in a wrecked 1957 Pontiac with a V8 overhead valve engine.
The only problem was, at the time, Pontiac V8 engines were not considered worthy of building up into racing engines, and very few companies sold any parts to soup them up.
Both Tommy and Billy took that as a challenge, and Tommy bought the 1957 Pontiac V8 Engine. Then they did everything they could to soup it up.
They bored the engines cylinders out, and they located special racing pistons.
Then they shaved down and they ported and relieved the cylinder heads, and then they had the entire engine completely balanced by a speed shop.
Tommy called up the “Howard Camshaft Company” who, at the time, were the leading manufacturers of automotive racing camshafts.
He told them that he wanted them to design the most radical, experimental camshaft that they could come up with for his Pontiac engine, and cost was no object.
So the Howard Camshaft Company did design a special camshaft for Tommy’s engine, and it cost him close to $400.00, which at the time was a lot of money.
Once they installed the new racing camshaft, the engine ran so crazy that all the studs that held the valve rockers into the cylinder heads pulled out.
So to solve the problem, Billy Quick drove in oversize rocker studs, hitting them into the engine with a 10 lb. sledge hammer.
Once the engine was completed, they then had to design a special adapter to bolt the engine to the 1956 Fords three speed manual transmission.
Tommy said that the transmission they used was originally designed for the Ford six cylinder engine so using it turned out to be a wise move as the low gear ratio combined with the big V8 engine was what made the truck literally jump off the ground.
They eventually got the engine to fit in the truck, and surprisingly enough, it started up and it ran.
However that racing camshaft they installed made the engines RPM difficult to control.
Billy played around with the engine’s carburetor and he finally determined that they were just not getting enough fuel into the engine.
They installed a high volume Stewart Warner electric fuel pump, and this allowed them to actually drive the truck, on the street.
To try it out, Billy got behind the steering wheel, and that's when they found out that they had somehow accidentally built a rocket ship.
After that, Tommy and Billy started to make the rounds of all the hamburger and hotdog joints, and taking on anyone that wanted to race them.
While doing this, they eventually ended up driving through Jimmy’s Restaurant parking lot where I used to see them
Tommy told me that he liked to let Billy Quick do all of the driving.
One evening they were on the Connecticut Turnpike racing another car.
As Tommy’s pickup pulled away from the competitor, they noticed a State Police Trooper was right behind them.
The Connecticut Trooper was trying his best, but he couldn’t catch up with the pickup truck.
Billy Quick, was determined to escape the police
Tommy said Billy took off down an exit ramp at over 110 miles per hour.
Tommy said he thought that at that speed, they could never negotiate the turn in the ramp and he was bracing himself for a horrible crash.
But somehow the truck stuck to the road and they eluded the police.
Billy then slowed down and kept to dark city streets, until they got to Tommy's home and the truck was safely hidden in the barn.
That evening the police came calling.
It seems they had taken Tommy's license tag number.
They asked if Tommy had been driving the truck that night, and he said no. (That was true, Billy Quick was driving).
The police asked to see the truck, it was in the barn and the radiator was still hot and smoking so Tommy was arrested.
Now, being arrested was no concern to Tommy. But possibly losing his driver’s license was a big concern.
He knew that if he was ever convicted he would lose his license and lose his dump truck business.
So at the Police station, Tommy said he was not driving the truck, he said that it was Billy Quick.
Billy Quick, when arrested said that it was Tommy that was driving.
I don't exactly know what happened at that point as Tommy never seem to want to talk about it, but he didn't lose his license and he never spoke to Billy Quick again.
That was the whole story behind that black 1956 Ford Pickup truck, that is, until I met Tommy at Jimmy’s Restaurant.
After a year or so of street my racing with Tommy, he began to get antsy about wanting to make the truck go faster.
Tommy said that he wanted to be able to race the truck from a standing start, rather than a rolling start.
Personally, I didn’t think the pickup needed to be any faster, but Tommy kept asking me what I thought he should do.
Finally, the only suggestion I had for Tommy was to lock up the differential on the truck.
This would make both rear tires turn at the same time and give the truck more traction on the take off.
If we locked up the trucks differential, Tommy would be able to race from a standing start, which is what he always wanted to do.
But I warned Tommy, by locking the differential, there were some sacrifices that had to be made, because now both rear tires now turned at the same speed, and this would make going around corners difficult and put a lot of stress on all the gears in the differential.
“Let’s do it, Tommy said, who gives a shit about turning corners”.
So that night we jacked up the truck in the barn and I slid under and opened up the rear differential case, and with an electric arc welding machine I carefully welded the spider gears together.
Now both rear tires turned together at the same time.
As soon as I was done, Tommy was anxious to try it out, so we tried to push the truck out of the barn by hand, but by locking the differential, making the turn out of the barn was now almost impossible.
However once we were on solid pavement, Tommy, tried spinning the rear wheels from a standing start and they grabbed the ground perfectly.
That pickup truck didn’t lose even one moment on the take off, it now had one hundred percent perfect traction, and Tommy could now race from a standing start.
Tommy said he loved it, he said the truck was perfect.
But every time we took a corner, the truck would make loud chirping noises that were coming from the locked rear tires. It bothered me, but Tommy said he could care less about hearing the chirping noise coming from the tires as we turned corners.
The fact that Tommy could now race from a standing start, was what he always wanted, and I had to agree with him that there was no question that the truck was now much faster on the takeoff then before.
For the next several weeks, we continued going out in the evenings looking for anyone to race, and the truck performed absolutely perfectly.
One evening, we were driving by the Yale Bowl in New Haven We stopped at a red light, and all of a sudden a black 1957 Chevrolet coupe pulled up next to us.
Before the light turned green, the driver let out his clutch, making the 1957 Chevy lurch forward. Then he punched it again, making the front end of that Chevy lift.
The red light changed to green, and Tommy let out the clutch.
The truck lurched forward and we heard a loudest noise from the rear differential.
It was awful, the truck stopped dead in the street.
The power from the engine was no longer turning the rear wheels.
We both knew immediately what happened, the rear differential had destroyed itself, all the teeth on the gears were gone.
So as we got out of the truck, that black 1957 Chevy backed up to us, and he rolled down his window asking. “Do you guys need a lift?”
We did need a lift and he drove us all the way to Tommy's house, in Foxon.
Once there we got in my 1959 Chevy, and with a tow chain we pulled the truck home and into the barn.
After that, things were changing, and also our lives were changing, we were both getting older.
So the truck just sat there.
Tommy and I started an auto wrecking business, and then all of a sudden, girls were becoming interesting to us.
So for a while, Tommy and I double dated.
Whenever I brought up the topic of the 1956 Ford pickup truck, Tommy would always say, “Sure we can get it running again”, but we never did.
That truck just sat in the barn in Foxon, and it seems like we never had the time anymore to get around to working on it.
Eventually Tommy got married, and he built a new house across the street from his father’s house,
I left for the Army, and then in 1963, I also got married, and moved to Florida.
Tommy and I sort of lost touch.
But then in 1969 I called Tommy from Miami, I told him I had gotten involved with a friend and we were removing the railroad from Haiti.
I needed Tommy’s advice regarding an old Mack truck my friend was rebuilding in Haiti.
We ended our conversation with me asking him about the 1956 Ford pickup truck, and Tommy said it was still sitting there in the barn.
Again around 2001, I got the idea to call Tommy up again, and this time when I called he was really surprised to hear from me.
Tommy said was delighted for me to have found him again. He said he was always thinking about going to Haiti to look for me.
Somehow he had gotten the idea I lived there.
I told Tommy we lived in Miami and were renovating a place in the Florida Keys.
Tommy said that he and his girlfriend Sandy were in Florida every year for NASCAR races in Daytona where she also owned a condo.
Tommy said they always came to Miami, and to the Keys to visit friends.
So they promised to come visit us, and the following year they did.
Tommy, said he was still in the dump truck business, but had expanded into sewer and cellar excavating as well, and now with Sandy's help they had also gotten into the home construction business.
As expected, we talked about the 1956 black pickup truck.
I could see that Tommy got wistful every time the conversation came up, and it was now hard to get him to talk about it. It appears that somewhere down the line he needed more room in the barn and he sold the pickup truck, but now he regretted doing it.
Sandy told me that sometime in 2009, she located the original 1956 Ford pickup trucks registration papers, so they went to a junkyard that had a computer system that traces registrations, but it turned out to be a dead end.
Sandy said that Tommy told her that if they could ever find the present owner, Tommy would buy the truck back.
Then just by chance, at a car show in Essex Connecticut, they bumped into a fellow, who said that he knew a guy in “Deep River Connecticut” that collected black 1956 Ford pickup trucks.
So off, to Deep River Connecticut, Tommy and Sandy went.
They eventually found the house with two 1956 black Mercury (Canadian Ford) pickup trucks, that were parked in a garage, and there was a black Ford pickup truck parked in front of the house.
Tommy looked into the window of the pickup truck in front of the house, and laying inside, were the two inner door panels, from his original 1956 Ford Truck. Tommy recognized them immediately, but as no one was home, they could only leave a note.
That evening they received a call from the trucks owner.
Yes he said he had once owned Tommy’s pickup truck, but he gave it to his brother who lived in Vermont, and he thinks his brother junked it.
As of March 2011, Sandy says that Tommy thinks the truck may still be in Vermont, and if I know Sandy and Tommy we haven't heard the end of this story yet.
In May of 2016, I received a call from Sandy, It appears that they had just attended a car show at a local Dairy Queen, and a fellow there recognized Tommy.
He said, “Aren’t you the guy that had that fast 1956 Ford pickup truck back in 1959”. Tommy said, “Yes”.
The fellow said, “Man, you are a legend around here, can I stand next to you?”.
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