- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(bright music) Coming up next "Off 90": Join us as we check out the Eddie Cochran Car Show and Music Festival in Albert Lea.

Travel to Byron to learn about a dying art form.

And visit the Preston Veterans Home.

It's all just ahead "Off 90."

(bright music) (bright music) (upbeat music) - I'm Stephanie Kibler, executive director of the History Center of Freeborn County, and we are hosting the Eddie Cochran Car Show and Music Festival today.

(upbeat music continues) The car show has been around for about 40 years.

There were some hit and miss years, so we're not exactly sure of the total number or the accurate number of years for the show.

It originated, I believe, with the Old Car Club, which is a car club here in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and has gifted to us at the History Center about probably 10 years ago.

And we, after this year now, will be gifting it off to another car club who will be working with us to facilitate the show and make it a little more spectacular.

(lively music) - I'm John Schipper with SICK Racing Customs.

My company builds race cars and everything.

We've been heavily involved in the Eddie Cochran Car Show over the years.

And we have been approached from the committee that runs the car show, asking us if we would like to just run the car show.

I gladly accepted, and the reason I did is 'cause I believe in this car show and I really want to help make this car show a bigger and better show, make it more of a car show, music festival, honor Eddie Cochran.

And that's my intention.

(lively music continues) We build and supply the trophies for this car show.

They're all homemade trophies outta old car parts.

I got a gentleman that runs around to junkyards and finds parts and we build these very unique, awesome trophies.

So if you get a chance to look at 'em, I think that's what really draws the crowd here, is the trophies are very unique and people like that.

That looks really cool when it's in your shop or garage and you're like, "Whoa, what is that?

Where'd that come from?"

"Eddie Cochran."

(lively rock music) - Eddie Cochran was born and lived in Albert Lea until the age of 12.

He is an internationally recognized rock star that is beloved here, not just in Albert Lea, but the UK and across the US, Bell Gardens, California.

And so we wanted to celebrate his beginnings here.

The songs that people are familiar with might be "Summertime Blues," "C'mon Everybody."

So some great music.

He is recognized by some major music players like Paul McCartney and John Lennon, said they never would have met had it not been for Eddie Cochran.

So we just wanted to celebrate that piece of history here in Albert Lea.

Eddie's era was the '50s.

And so the car show started with 1950s vehicles and then has blossomed into what it is today.

Everything from cars up to motorcycles this year.

And the music, we wanted to highlight a wide range of genres because he was so eclectic with his music.

He is considered the grandfather of punk, which most people don't know.

And he's done country, he had done some really innovative things with the keyboards and utilizing, synthesizing sound equipment.

So we just felt he really deserved to have that recognition and that the music should reflect that wide range.

♪ And I told your mama that you'd be in by 10 ♪ - My favorite thing about this car show, this specific car show, is you have a variety of cars.

We do promote it to be a classic car show because we like that era, but this show is open to all makes, models, years, everything.

And also next year, we're gonna really push a motorcycle class.

Vintage bikes, custom paint, all kinds of nice looking bikes.

So we're gonna really push that.

There's gonna be a lot of trophies next year for the bike class.

The thing I really like about that people ask about this, I like about this show is the variety of things that are here.

So, the food vendors.

We got food vendors, we got music.

♪ Little Susie wake up ♪ ♪ The movie wasn't so hot ♪ ♪ It didn't have much of a plot ♪ - [John] It's not a one day thing, just so people understand that.

Friday night, which was last night, we have a cruise in.

So it's kind of like a pre-party.

So people can come in and start to experience the Eddie Cochran era and hang out.

And then on Saturday is the big show.

So on Saturday night, we have music at the gazebo down the street.

So, lots going on just for this show.

It's not just a car show.

- One of the best things I think about this car show are the people you meet.

And so there's two gentlemen, and one is here today.

His name is Jack.

And he met a girl from Albert Lea before he left for Vietnam.

And he tells us wonderful stories about his three weeks with this lovely lady.

The other one, there's a gentleman, and I don't know his name.

He pulled out a picture at its pocket last year and he had a very pretty young woman standing in front of the car that he brought to the show.

And it's the girl he married, and she had recently passed away.

Those kinds of things make this show so unique and so heartwarming, and we talk about these people that we meet and their stories throughout the year.

We look forward to seeing them when they show up.

- My name is Jack Adams.

I'm from Jordan, Minnesota.

And this is probably my first car show of the year and my most favorite.

This particular car here I bought in '98.

I got it from a friend of mine.

And I really had no love, I guess, for a Corvette, but the price was right.

And I also had to put some money into it.

And it's just a hobby and it's kinda my bucket list.

And I have a ball, you know?

And when somebody comes up to me and says, "Man, this is a nice car."

Hey, I've just won any trophy that you can think of right there.

That's what I like.

I love to show it off.

I love to drive it.

This one here is a 1971 and exactly the same as a 1970.

There was a strike down in St. Louis.

This is where this car was built back in 1970.

UAW went down for three months, so what they had to do was squeeze '71 into the line.

And of course at that time, President Nixon's administration had come up with the lower compression in the engines to save fuel.

At that time, we were running out, or whatever the case was.

And so this air got lowered in compression.

But the only difference between this and a 1970 are the screws in the front grill, and that's it.

Otherwise, they're the same, except for the horsepower.

'70 was powerful.

That was the last of our muscle cars.

But this one here to me is still a muscle car.

(bright music) - Anybody that's watching this, I hope you look at it and remember this.

Because next year, 2026, we are gonna have a lot going on, a lot... music.

We're gonna honor a lot of things that people like traditions with car shows.

Paper ballots, I know guys like that.

We try to do the QR code 'cause it makes it easier for us to count.

But paper ballots, it is.

We'll do it.

So, any other questions or anything, I'm here to answer.

So, if you go to SICK Racing Car Club on Facebook, you can PM me, you can message me.

I'm happy to answer all kinds of questions.

Or you can email me, John.

It's J-O-H-N@schipps, S-C-H-I-P-P-S, john@schipps.com.

Just fire off an email and I'll be glad to answer questions.

(lively music) (bright music) - The first time I tried this was around the age of two on my father's lap.

And I was holding a small flat piece of glass in my hand up to the wheel, and that was my first memory of it, on my dad's lap.

Hi, my name's Carl Miller and I'm a third generation of a Swedish glass cutter and engraver here in Byron, Minnesota.

I was about four or five years old and I was up in Minneapolis, St. Paul.

My great-uncle Gustav Carlson was still alive, and we went to visit them, me and my brothers and sisters.

So I was in the family room of my great-uncle's house and my dad was speaking, sitting on the couch talking to my great-uncle.

And he had all kinds of glassware inside his place and antiques.

And I stood in front of my great-uncle and they were talking.

And I remember my great-uncle holding this glass bowl in his hand and he reaches down and he touches me right here and says, "Someday, you do this," with that bowl.

And I'm four or five years old and I remember kind of going like that.

But I remember him saying that to me, touching me right here, tapping me a bit and smiling and say, "Someday, maybe you do this," jokingly.

And here I am.

(laughs) Little did I know my great-uncle who immigrated from Sweden had a factory in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

There was lots of glass cutters back then.

The Great Depression wiped him out and it was started to die out, that the brilliant cut glass.

And the engravers is just, it takes six years of apprenticeship before you'll be able to go out and start cutting glass for some place, like Steubens Glasswork in New York or Waterford Crystal in Ireland or Orrefors Glassworks in Sweden.

Some of these places.

It takes six years of apprenticeship just to learn the skill on this.

It takes so much time and patience.

So, yeah, it's taken me years.

When my dad died in '87, I took all of his stuff and I built this machine, and that's when I really started making something out of it.

I used to do painting, and I put my paint brushes down and these are my paint brushes.

My grinding wheels are my paint brushes.

And now I'm retired and I'm in this art gallery that has given me the purpose to do this.

Most of what I do, I cut and saw on a wing and a prayer, really.

I just cut it and, you know, if someone likes it, you buy it.

If not... All the artists are just a wing and a prayer.

It's nice to get a commission job once in a while.

That's what this vase is, right here.

Someone sees it and you hope you get something like that.

Yeah, something of the artists get commissioned work.

There was somebody from Washington DC that was walked by the art gallery and saw the capitol building and a cutting of Old Ironsides that I had done on a vase that's down there.

I did it for the fun of it.

And the next thing I know, he is wondering if I would be willing to commission piece for Admiral Christopher Grady.

He's the joint chiefs of staff.

And so I wound up doing the Old Ironsides.

It's a battleship.

It's the oldest battleship in the world, right?

Still active.

So I did Old Ironsides, which is the USS Constitution on one side.

On the other side, I did the capitol building, He graduated Notre Dame, so I had to put the clover leaf and Notre Dame on it.

His nickname is Old Salt, so I engraved that on the bottom of this bowl and got "God and Country" on underneath the capitol and his name, Admiral Christopher Grady.

And we wound up shipping it to the Pentagon.

That was already, maybe it's been a year already.

Close to it.

The Mayo Clinic commissioned me to do a piece for the king of the United Arab Emirates.

So that went there.

A piece for Ronald Reagan.

We took that down to St. Mary's and gave it to the Secret Service.

It was a platter of the capitol building.

And so, yeah, there's a piece that we gave to Ronald Reagan.

It's in the Reagan Museum, I guess, from what I heard.

That's my passion.

It's my passion.

I've done so many things.

This is all I wanna do.

This is a real passion, to create.

I'm a creator.

These are my tombstones.

I look at Roman glassware that are from 2,000, 3,000 year old pictures of Roman glass.

And someone can wonder, you know, that's pretty cool.

In 3,000 years, maybe someone can see what I've done and read my name.

What more is there?

They're my tombstones.

Do you want quantity or quality?

I can't compete with sand blasters that wanna sandblast their artwork onto glass, or the other types of machines that could do it 10 times faster than me.

I have to draw everything on.

I can't mass produce.

If you want mass production, then that's what's killed this, what I do for a living.

That doesn't have the same meaning.

They have laser engravers that could do a perfect image of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

I'm gonna make it perfectly imperfect by hand-cutting it, like the ancient Egyptians would do it.

I don't wanna do more than one.

One of a kind, and I can't do it exactly ever the same way again no matter how hard I try.

So I like the one of a kind pieces.

I don't wanna...

I don't wanna mass produce.

These art galleries and craft shows I started with, I would have old ladies walk up to me and say, "So that's how it's done."

Or I'd have little kids walk up.

It was all ages that were like, "Wow."

They'd look at what's on my table and then look at this and wonder, "You're doing this with that?"

That was fun.

No matter if I look, observe what I'm doing, I'm looking at a form of something.

If I look at a star, it's a form of something.

If I look at an atom, it's a form of something.

If I look down at the very simplest, very tiniest thing inside you, it's a form of something.

Maybe that's your...

The meaning of life.

You are and always will be something because scientists at the very fundamental level are left with a form.

And there's no other explanation.

I don't care.

Okay, it's an atom, but it's a form.

And when you get down to the very tiniest answer, all you're left with is a form of something.

If I create, and if I say, "I guarantee you in the year 4025 somebody's gonna hold a piece in their hand I did and read my name and wonder."

What if I said that that's really gonna happen because I just made it so?

Right?

Why do we create things for some future that doesn't exist?

Well, what the heck more is there?

That's meaning.

So that's why I do it.

It isn't even about motivation.

You better be dedicated and you better find a passion.

If you don't have any passion for what you're doing, what are you doing it for?

You wanna be the best you can be?

I do.

(bright music) ♪ In a bar in Toledo across from the depot ♪ ♪ On a barstool she took off her ring ♪ ♪ I thought I'd get closer so I walked on over ♪ ♪ I sat down and asked her her name ♪ ♪ When the drinks finally hit her she said I'm no quitter ♪ ♪ But I finally quit livin' on dreams ♪ ♪ I'm hungry for laughter and here ever after ♪ ♪ I'm after whatever the other life brings ♪ ♪ In the mirror I saw him ♪ - Actually it happened, I suppose, during World War II.

I had any number of uncles, particularly a lot of relatives, but mostly my mother's and father's brothers were in the service.

And those in the Navy fascinated me.

I was always fascinated with the ships and... - Well, my brothers were in the service.

And my one brother went through the Philippines when they had, that was a bad deal over there.

And I had two brothers that were in the Second World War.

So it just kinda, they talked about the army and I thought that was where I should go.

- Well, I guess what inspired me was I was outta work, and military doesn't fire people.

So... - I served in the Korean War from 1950 to '52.

As a radio operator, we received...

I was not on the front lines.

I was detached service.

I would receive Morse code and other messages from the front lines and relay 'em to headquarters.

- My name is Ron Scheevel and I grew up in the Preston area here.

I've been here my entire life and I live on the farm seven miles southwest here, out toward Greenleafton Minnesota.

And graduated from Preston High School here in 1964.

And short time after that, received a draft notice and entered the army in 1966.

And 1966 and '67, I spent in the Republic of Vietnam.

(staff and veteran laughing) - [Staff] All right, next one.

Fictional characters, one word.

- [Veteran] Fictional characters.

- One word.

- One word.

- [Staff] Wow, fictional.

- [Veteran] Monster.

- [Staff] You wanna start with an M?

- [Veteran] How about a B?

- [Staff] A B.

- Oh.

- Good job.

- [Veteran] Ice.

- Bar.

- Nope.

- [Veteran] But ice (indistinct).

- [Staff] No, there was no E at the end, so- - Yeah, no E. No N. - Ice (indistinct).

- Ice what?

(veteran laughs) - A.

- An A, yes.

- [Veteran] Oh.

I was saying July 4th, but it wasn't me.

- [Veteran] Lucky, I got the A's in there.

- [Staff] Pat, what letter are you thinking?

- C. - A C. No, C. (student faintly speaking and laughing) - T. - A T. ♪ But he started shakin' his big heart was breakin' ♪ ♪ And he turned to the woman and said ♪ ♪ You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille ♪ ♪ With four hungry children and crops in the field ♪ ♪ I've had some bad times lived through some sad times ♪ ♪ But this time the hurtin' won't heal ♪ ♪ You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille ♪ - Ron Scheevel.

I am currently commander of the Preston VFW Post 6893.

As far as my relationship to the veterans' home, I was co-chairman with a good friend of mine, Don Gilner, of Preston also.

And he and I were co-chairs of the Veterans Home Committee that was formed here in about 2015 when the first meetings started.

And we had monthly meetings and the committee was made up of volunteer citizens of the area, which as we were.

We were volunteers for our positions.

We weren't elected or anything like that, including the city administrator at the time and our EDA director, Preston Banker, and many other citizens.

And also, quite a number of other Preston veterans were on this.

Anywhere from 10 to 15 member volunteer committee that actually started the process back in about 2015.

- Oh, there's a lot of veterans that end up not having a home or a place to live, live on the street.

And we can get some of them boys off the street and into facility like this.

It's...

It's very important.

- And I suppose being one of the first ones, we had a chance to help to initiate some programs or policies, how it would go for the later ones.

- After my wife passed, I tried to maintain my own home, but I realized I couldn't do it.

And come to find out my middle son had put my name in here for a resident without my knowing it, before it was even built.

- My family, none of my family live around here except my wife.

She's in North Carolina right now with our oldest daughter, and, you know, needs some care herself and it'd be impossible to give.

And so it means an awful lot to be able to be somewhere in familiar surroundings and receiving the type of care that's going to become more and more necessary as the years go.

I'm just about at the age of 90 and it's not gonna get easier.

- You know, like I say, we had such overwhelming support all the way from a young man over near little village over toward Greenleafton that sold eggs for $2 a dozen to get the two to one match.

The fundraising of course is always a challenge on any project of this magnitude.

And as far as the village was involved from the beginning in donating the land that which this building is sitting on.

♪ The words that he told her ♪ ♪ Kept comin' back time after time ♪ ♪ You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille ♪ ♪ With four hungry children and crops in the field ♪ ♪ And I've had some bad times lived through some sad times ♪ ♪ But this time the hurtin' won't heal ♪ ♪ You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille ♪ ♪ You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille ♪ - [Skip] Whoo!

- Nice.

(veterans laughing) - [Volunteer] Wow.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.