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When the owner of Waterford Collision heard a group of volunteers were planning to cruise Woodward Avenue he jumped at the chance to take his baby for a ride.

That was 27 years ago and his baby then was a 1965 Corvette.

“It wasn’t publicized and as big as it is today,” Don Glush of Bloomfield Hills recalled of the first Dream Cruise event organized by Nelson House in 1995.

However, most of the drivers who showed up for that first cruise agreed – reliving those glorious days of steel bumpers, poodle skirts and dancing around a Wurlitzer jukebox at one’s favorite diner – was a dream come true.

And it’s remained a Dream Cruise ever since.

Today, the event attracts more than 1 million visitors and thousands of cruisers driving everything from muscle cars, street rods and other vehicles like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. One year Don’s crew built a car out of a clawfoot bathtub that got the attention of all the papparazzi lining Woodward Avenue.

“I’ve been going since I was about 4-years-old,” said Don’s son, Daniel Glush, a recent graduate of Northwood University, who plans to put his bachelor’s degree in automotive marketing to work in the collision shop his father and his mother, Lisa started in 1991.

Like his father, and his grandfather, Daniel not only has a passion for classic cars but the gears and gizmos that fuel them.

“This is a gravity feed pump,” Don said, while standing next to a 1929 vintage gas pump that he restored to its original luster and one of a few hundred in his collection. During its heyday, gas station attendants had to pump (manually) the gas, at a cost of 15 cents a gallon and no that’s not a typo.

“You can see by this chart, at one time, gas was measured in cents not gallons,” Daniel said, while pointing to another vintage pump in his father’s collection, which has actually become a family collection since Daniel worked to restore several of them including the one he did as a class project while a freshman at Bloomfield Hills High School.

Some fathers take their sons fishing.

Once Daniel showed an interest in refurbishing vintage gas pumps he and his dad would go hunting for parts for their latest project such as the glass globes that topped the pumps used by Texas, Sunoco and Mobilgas.

“It was fun,” Daniel said. “We would compile a list of addresses from Craig’s List and then head out for the day.”

Sometimes they would find what they needed immediately. Other times they would have to dig a little deeper in an old barn, garage or junkpile. On the rare occasion they would also come across unexpected finds like a spider or dead snake.

Over the years, Don’s collection has grown to include a couple hundred vintage gas pumps valued at anywhere from $3,000 to $12,000, some restored and some left as is, for nostalgic reasons and because that’s the newest trend.

“Anyone can restore something but objects are only original once,” Don said. That goes for classic cars or gas pumps.

For more information about this year’s Dream Cruise, which will roll along the famed boulevard Saturday, including a schedule of events and visitor’s guide, visit woodwarddreamcruise.com.

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