If you happen to be rolling through Glendale one fine day, you might consider taking a quick turn to the east onto 300 North, aka Glendale Bench Road, for a gander at an amazing array of aging, yet carefully arranged, classic American cars: around 130 of them.
Left to right, photos by Jerry Melrose:
Glendale’s Bill Spencer entertains visitors (l-r) Claude Gassier, Cendrine Chaudron and Noa Dubout from Toulouse, France, alongside the GMC pick-up featured in a magazine spread from a widely circulated popular German publication. It’s Claude’s fourth time around the premise! Claude came to the American West for the first time in 2012. Now retired from his job as a salesman in automobile transportation, his passion for cars and motorcycles drew his eye to all the old cars as he was passing by. Cendrine is a ‘tattoo artiste’ and Noa, 16, is a first-year high school student.
Bill Spencer, who turns 83 on July 30, displaying the opening pages of a story featured in a 2022 article in a popular German magazine.
You may even encounter some fascinated awe-struck Europeans along the way. This seldom ‘for sale’ collection is owned and curated by one Bill Spencer. It all began on a corner where his dad had a service station while the family raised corn rising up the slopes above their house. Bill brought his first vehicle to the property as a member of the Town Council Board in times back in 1962-63 when cars were often stacked for flood control. He’s bought others along the way since.
Curiously enough, and initially quite surprising to him, his backyard is a famous Top 10 tourist manual attraction in some quarters across the pond. “I’ve had a lot of Germans phone saying, ‘I’m in the barber shop and I see you pictured on the TV’ and things like that. Its world known! When it’s known, I don’t know. I’ve had people from Hungary here yesterday, the whole yard [was] full. And so, it’s like that about every day there’ll be one or two. And that’s why I go to a place off [the property] where I can go to get some work done.” Adding with a grinning laugh, “ Well, you gotta’ eat!”
Then, the sheep rancher admits his true attitude concerning the temporary inconvenience. “So, I mean, it’s a good deal. You get the good people, and it makes you feel good to think that there’s good everywhere if you look for it. And so, they like it here. The kids have had a lemonade stand here before. It gives you a lot of friends!”
In that open-hearted spirit of friendship, while greeting his frequent foreign guests, along with sharing water and interesting tidbits of local cultural history he includes an offer to accept a copy of The Book of Mormon. As a young man he was unable to conduct an LDS mission to perhaps another country; however, these days, as one visiting church official was returning to Salt Lake City said that Bill ministers to more people who are just passing through than he did during his own entire mission!