Reo to Whippet

John Dudley bought his first antique car at age 14. It's a habit he can't break.

That was many years ago and, trouble is, the cars are outgrowing the buildings in his Roaring Twenties Antique Car Museum in Hood - that's Madison County.

Dudley, a stocky man with close cropped hair, squints through his glasses and comes up with a total: "About 150," he says.

He calls it a car museum, but Dudley's Roaring Twenties - open Sundays or by appointment - is actually a museum of late 19th and early 20th Century Americana.

Just about everything, maybe even a kitchen sink, is in his buildings.

"I have a good wife," he says, "She just puts, up with all this junk."

Dudley has some cars the biggest museums would how the love to have. A stately 1925 Cadillac touring car for example. Hasn't been restored, doesn't need it. Used to belong to city in New York. Possibly the mayor's car.

Right next to it is a red '22 Buick two seat roadster. None of that heavy, overburdened look for the name later became synonymous.

There's a splendid 1929 Hudson coupe with rumble seat and ample picnic hamper over the rear bumper.

And there are Reos and Chandlers, Oaklands and Paiges, Hudsons and Packards and Whippets and many others sure to draw a blank look from anyone under 40. There are prewar and postwar from almost any war.

Besides these obscure memories, Dudley has the survivors, too. Fords and Chryslers and Chevrolets and Buicks and Plymouths.

Dudley knows what made the failures fail, and the survivors survive. He knows the breakthroughs and the innovations on each.

In the world of the automobile the law of the jungle sometimes got reversed: Good cars went under; the not so good got by with good salesmanship.

And he is proud to say just about every one of them could be fired up and driven away. Good cars, in good shape; not just pampered show stoppers.

He stops at the green Hudson, hefts its hood and shows how the owner oiled the valves before taking it on a trip.

"Good for 500 miles," he says of the operation, and talks about how the cars were shipped four to a boxcar, and how they'd sell right off the train - brand new - with an 80 - mile per - hour guarantee. Agree to an in shop tuning for the car and the dealer would guarantee a 90 - mile per - hour performance.

The Smithsonian could come up with a computer that could answer questions about cars and sell tape talks for visitors, but no computer carries around the anecdotal storehouse of auto lore in John Dudley's head.

There's a bright blue and yellow '25 Star taxicab that Dudley got after it had hauled countless citizens of the town of Westminster, Md.

A tiny three wheel electric cart from the turn of the century once transported an old lady in Massachusetts on her errands about town.

A strange sausage shaped oddity, a one of a kind, was too far ahead of its time. "That's the Surlesmobile.

Surles only built that one, and be drove it all around the country" to advertise its features, said Dudley.

"The big manufacturers were all interested in it," he adds, "but not enough to do anything with It. The best he got was a job offer from one of them."

More room in the museum house tractors, stationary power plants, old advertising signs, toys and games, water pumps and washing machines, playing cards and soft drinks, generators and grinders, mannequins and models, radios and rarities of every description.

Out back are more cars. Some are rusting hulks, others useful to trade with other dealers; some are dated for future restoration; some bought for spare parts.

Since his is a one-man effort, Dudley does his own restorations. Simple ones may require only repainting, but others may take a year or more.

This is a busy man. Right now he is trying to get a new roof on the main building.

The museum is clearly a labor of love. Six days a week Dudley is in the landscape gardening business. Most days that means driving to Northern Virginia, where many of his contracts are with large apartment or commercial buildings.

Dudley finds nothing odd about the mix of gardening and antique cars, growing plants and twisting wrenches.

Taking time out to explain the workings of a 1921 player piano to a couple of boys, Dudley, a Pennsylvania native, says the love of plants came from his father.

Dudley also credits his father with making him a perfectionist. His father, Steven Dudley, enjoyed gardening in the old-fashioned English style. "If you're working on an antique car, you have got to do the best work you can. It's the same with gardening. You've got to do your best. It takes a tremendous amount of personal effort."

"My cars are like flowers," said Dudley, "There are all kinds of varieties."

John Dudley, curator, guide and owner of Roaring Twenties Antique Car Museum, tells Timothy Sullivan of Spotsylvania about his 1929 Hudson Super Six coupe - and early "GT" with 90 MPH top speed. Dudley has collected antique cars and household items since he was 14. The museum is in Madison County.