Nadrofsky? What the heck is that?
It’s a surname, actually, and it was emblazoned on the side of a panel truck my Dad owned when we were kids. I hadn’t thought of it in years until my memory was sparked on Saturday.
Derek and I rode our bikes to the Zurich Bean Festival. Every little town has its claim to fame and for Zurich, it’s beans! They make vats of them – or rather, converted refrigerators full of them. The beans are baked or boiled or heated and cooked in some fashion in fridges laid on their backs and converted into cookers. Those beans (in a sauce of tomatoes and likely sugar or molasses and, of course, love) are heaped into coolers and then spooned into bowls for a couple of bucks each.
The festival also includes a classic car meet and we wandered among the beautiful vehicles, running into several people we knew. There was a pause in the proceedings when I stopped and said aloud: “Nadrofsky”. It was the sight of an old panel truck that did it. When I was a kid my Dad bought a similar vehicle from the owner of a crane company whose surname was Nadrofsky. It was emblazoned on the side and to my little kid brain, Nadrofsky was the vehicle’s name! We just always called it that. It never occured to me that it had a make and model year of manufacture…until yesterday, anyway. However my attempts to find out what it actually was didn’t quite work out. My brother is younger than me and doesn’t remember what it was (we were LITTLE kids!) and Dad’s not a car guy so he doesn’t recall either. But I think it looked something like this one my brother found only with NADROFSKY painted on the side.
Keep in mind that my track record for vehicle recognition is quite poor. I looked at a pick-up and proclaimed it to be “just like” one Derek had owned and sold last year. However the one at the show had a step-side, a shorter box and, frankly, the only thing it had in common with Derek’s old truck was its category: truck! Oh, and it was also dark blue.
Anyway, the old Nadrofsky is a nice memory. I don’t really remember riding in it but I remember it being around at some point in my childhood and even if I tried, I could never forget its name.
There is also no photographic evidence of my Dad’s most famous vehicle – the Rolls Canardly. You’ve never heard of a Rolls Canardly? It’s a car that rolls down a hill and canardly make it up the next!! Har-dee-har-har!