1976: The owner of Graf Ford died, his daughter took over the operation without informing FoMoCo. 1977: FoMoCo found out, cancelled the dealerships franchise, awarded it to the local Chrysler/Plymouth dealer.

June 1977: I stopped by Sac-Cal Motorcraft Distributors on the way to Harrah's swap meet to buy B6Q 4V Holley 'teapot' carbs. Owner knew I bought/sold NOS Ford parts, told me what had happened at Graf Ford, but I was unable to go there until after Harrah's swap meet ended. If I had only known beforehand what was there.

When I did get there, daughter had just removed the large mid-1930's Ford script neon/porcelain signs, beat on them with a hammer, then stuck them into a dumpster. Unbelievable, what the hell was she thinking?

In the "one car" showroom were parts bins with 100's of WWII surplus 1941/48 flatty distributors. Upstairs was a 1957 T-Bird white padded dash that had been there since August 1956!

Graf had every parts catalog, every shop manual since Model T days, well over 200.

There were so many obsolete parts that my 1976 Econoline couldn't possible carry them all, so I called Preston Ledbetter, owner of F100 Parts Unlimited in San Jose (ex Ford partsguy and a pal of mine), told him to bring his flatbed PDQ!

Preston and I bought all the obsolete parts/catalogs/manuals for 200 bucks (her price, we didn't argue!). After loading all the stuff in our two vehicles, I told her I would have paid 5 grand cash for the two neon/porcelain signs she ruined.