A part of Roger Manning just never grew up.
The 57 year old may have put his life of racing cars and chasing
girls while growing up in San Mateo long behind him, but a piece of
the old days stays with him. And all you have to do to see it is
ring his doorbell and ask to see his garage.
”
It’s kind of a step back in time,
”
he said.
A part of Roger Manning just never grew up.
The 57 year old may have put his life of racing cars and chasing girls while growing up in San Mateo long behind him, but a piece of the old days stays with him. And all you have to do to see it is ring his doorbell and ask to see his garage.
“It’s kind of a step back in time,” he said.
Manning’s three-car garage is a virtual museum of the classic 1950s – an era of a revolution of cars, music and ideas for the younger generation. And it shows through in Manning’s astounding collection, which includes everything from vintage signs and to restored gas pumps to an old cola bottle machine.
“You have to cram so much into a small space,” Manning said. “People say, ‘It’s just a three-car garage, how much stuff can you fit in there?’ ”
That’s a question that has yet to be answered, as Manning has been working on his collection for two decades and it is still growing.
“It’s hard to tell. I never put a number on it.” he said. “It goes on and on. It’s a never-ending project.”
And while Manning has restored and put together many of the items that make his garage eye candy for anyone looking for an instant trip back to the good ol’ days, many of the items in his collection come from the countless visitors that stop by his home to get a look.
“A lot of stuff in the garage has been given to me,” he said. “People say, ‘I have something neat that will look good in here,’ and they bring it the next day. There’s so many people in town who have contributed to this,”
While Manning thinks of his collection of nostalgic items is more of a sick hobby of his than anything else, his garage naturally has attracted passersby and neighbors, who then returned with friends, who then returned with their friends, and … well … you get the idea.
“If the door’s open, they stop,” Manning said. “On the weekends, they’re always stopping. It’s a constant, really. We even had two Gilroy police officers take a break in my garage. They stopped in front of the house and I thought, ‘what did I do this time … is the music too loud?’ And they just asked if they could spend their 15-minute break in the garage.”
And Manning, who has spent the last 20 years donating time as a pyro chef at the Garlic Festival since moving to Gilroy in 1981, plays a perfect host. He loves to let anyone interested see his collection and happily greets anyone with a firm handshake and calls them ‘my friend.’
Also in Manning’s collection is what almost appears to be a shrine devoted to James Dean, who died in a car accident 48 years ago Tuesday in Cholame, Calif.
But, according to Manning, the James Dean collection happened more by chance than anything else.
“I was never rally a James Dean fan, but I came across the sign in Atascadero” said Manning, who was 9 years old when the idol died in a car accident. “The sign had been thrown away.”
It was then owned by a man working at a salvage yard there.
“He kept it because it reminded him of his father,” Manning said.
Manning bought the sign from the man at the salvage company 18 years ago, and from there the items just started appearing.
Other James Dean items, which were given to him by people who saw the sign up in the garage, include an original newspaper of the Paso Robles Press on Oct. 3, 1955, which reported the car accident, and the official coroner’s report from the accident.
“It’s 75-pages of every detail from the time he left L.A. to when he was buried,” Manning said. “You hear a lot of stories, like he drove off a cliff or hit a tree, but if you read this, you learn a lot about where he died and how he died.”
While Manning doesn’t really mind the corner filled with James Dean items, he said so many people were giving him James Dean stuff that he had to stop taking it.
“I finally said, ‘That’s enough James Dean.’ ”
Manning also likes to open up the garage doors on the weekends while he works on a 1956 Ford Thunderbird he’s restoring to look just like the one Suzanne Summers drove in the film, “American Graffiti,” and spends much of his time either working or just taking a break in his garage.
“Every day when I get home I come out here and make a bowl of popcorn and have a beer, and then I go from there,” he said. “It’s a good place to relax.”
Manning also uses the garage to house his late father’s old work truck, a 1948 Chevrolet that he used when he was a foreman at a saw mill in San Mateo.
“It was back when they still had saw mills in San Mateo,” he joked.
The truck was used as a prop by the Beach Boys for a concert in 1991.
“We brought the cars in and they hung out with us for four or five hours,” Manning remembers. “Those guys lived pretty high on the hog with all the food they had laid out. It was a nice day.”
Manning’s love of cars, which he said was his favorite memory of growing up in the era, started when he used to spend time with his uncle in Berlingame when he was just 6 years old.
“I used to hang out at his old gas station as a kid,” he said. “I grew up as a kid around hot rods, and it just never got out of me.
“I had a 1964 Ramcharger, which was like way too much horsepower for a 17-year-old kid,” Manning remembered of his days growing up in San Mateo. “We used to do a lot of drag racing on the deserted highways. I still get together with the guys still in the Bay Area. They come down as a group and spend the day in Gilroy.”
However, Manning never really started collecting items associated with the 1950s until he received just one item as a gift back in 1979.
“It started with a gumball machine,” he said. “It was given to my from an old friend, and he said, ‘That old gumball machine looks good out here (in the garage).’ ”
That gumball machine still sits in the corner of the garage, but it now has a crack in the glass from an earthquake.
When Manning moved to Gilroy from San Mateo when his company, California Packaging Centers, moved to Gilroy from South San Francisco, he said he knew he didn’t want to leave.
“After moving here, we kind of fell in love with the town,” he said.
Unfortunately, his company, where he had worked at for 37-years, didn’t cooperate.
The company moved to Paso Robles, and Manning made a long commute to work until last year, when the company moved to Los Angeles.
Manning, who was then director of operations and plant manager, thought his days in Gilroy were over – until Don Christopher, who had befriended Manning years earlier, offered him a job at Christopher Ranch and the opportunity to stay in Gilroy.
“I kind of owe him a lot,” Manning said. “Don came to my rescue.”
Now Manning spends his days learning a whole new trade out at the ranch.
“It’s like a whole new thing for me,” he said. “I’m just starting over again. The quality of the people made that transition a doable thing. They took me and made me feel welcome.”
Meanwhile, Manning was happy not only because he could stay in Gilroy, but because he didn’t have to take down the hundreds of items up in his garage.
“It was pretty close to all having to come down,” he said.
Instead, Manning has more plans for his collection. He just finished putting in a black-and-white tile floor as a trim around the edge of the garage, and he said he is planning to create a mural inside the garage to create for of a theme from “American Graffiti.”
“I’ve got a lot more planned … a lot more detail,” he said.
And while Manning can do whatever he wants with his collection in the garage, he said the only reason it’s possible to do it is because of his wife.
“You have to have a pretty understanding wife when you do something like this,” he said. “It’s the key to the whole thing.”
But while she quietly lets Manning do what he wants in the garage, there’s even limits to her patience.
“She stays inside (most of the time). She puts up with it,” he said, and then pointed at the door leading from the garage into the house. “But the collection stops at that door.”
For more information about Roger Manning’s collection, he can be reached at 842-6317.
