A fleet of classic cars falls to the auctioneer’s hammer

Kids play on a rusty classic car Saturday at an estate sale in Brush Prairie. The barn fresh, as folks call it, was an auction of 20-some vintage vehicles collected by the late Bob Dempsey. (Isolde Raftery/The Columbian)

Wes Downing of Amboy bought a plow seat for $100 at the classic car sale in Brush Prairie Saturday. He plans to display it in his home.

The road outside the Dempsey home in Brush Prairie was lined with trucks and trailers Saturday. Men stepped out, pulled up their blue jeans and walked along the muddy path to where the Dempsey daughters would auction off their father’s cars.

Twenty-some cars for sale: Studebakers, Packards and Chevys. A barn fresh, people call it. Rusty, wrecked cars that mechanics drool over and dream of turning into a $100,000 gem.

Bob Dempsey died four years ago, and the probate process demanded that his daughters sell the cars. It broke Dianne Dempsey’s heart to do it; her father wouldn’t have wanted it this way, she said.

But maybe, just maybe, Bob Dempsey would have liked the idea of his friends and would-be friends piling onto his 80-acre lot and admiring his collection. He wasn’t a mechanic, Dianne Dempsey said, but he wished someone might fix up his cars. Perhaps, in some roundabout way, this was a dream fulfilled?

Along the white auction tent, young boys tugged at their dad’s sleeves. Graying men in duck-hunting coats sat in fold-out chairs, chuckling at Auctioneer Steve Van Gordon’s rapid-fire banter.

I got $1,750. Sir, what are you asking her? You don’t listen to her all week. I got $2,400. Ma’am, you don’t need to buy diapers. Do I have $2,500? Sir, that’s no money for a man of your stature. $2,400, $2,500. Sold, $2,400.

Dianne Dempsey stood apart, watching quietly as Van Gordon (1991 Oregon State Grand Champion Auctioneer) motored through 40 years of collected vehicles in under an hour.

“These days kids put some graphics on an old-looking Honda and call it good,” Van Gordon said later. When he was young, “hotrods were pretty good-running death traps, muscle cars that the kids these days can’t afford.”

Even auctioneering is a waning art form. Van Gordon used to set up a hundred car auctions a year. Now he does 15. And with money tight as it is, he worked hard to sell the vehicles.

The Dempsey daughters didn’t get as much as they’d hoped. Mary Ellen Wells, the older Dempsey daughter, fumed to the auctioneer that their father had spent $16,000 on a 1937 Packard that went for under $10,000. But Dianne Dempsey said she understands that money is tight for people these days.

Bob Dempsey was no stranger to tough times. He was born in Kansas and moved to Seattle when his family lost their farm in the Great Depression. He joined the Navy during World War II and, in 1950, married his wife, Dorothy.

They moved to Brush Prairie, where they grew a family, a modest alfalfa crop and his car collection. From the front lawn, they had a view of Mount Hood and swaths of farmland; added to that now are empty housing developments.

He sold rope to loggers and fishermen. Several were there Saturday. Wes Downing bought a tractor seat for $100 with plans to sandblast and paint it.

Dianne Dempsey’s eyes misted over as she watched men in coveralls and John Deere hats back onto that front lawn, preparing to load one of her dad’s old Chevys onto the trailer.

“It’s sad,” she said. “Maybe some day I can buy a couple of them back.”

Isolde Raftery: 360-735-4546 or isolde.raftery@columbian.com.