The old saying is "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade", and I finally got around to squeezing! This week I finished up this pretty cool looking 1950's era Victor Topper Half Cab gumball machine, with an added Texaco Fire Chief theme. It's taken me some time to get around to this one, as its history with me goes back 12 years. I found the machine at a long closed junk store about 15 miles from my house in 2014, and it needed some work! As you can see from the photos below one of the main issues was cracked and faded acrylic front. It was also missing a key, and was generally disgusting inside! I started doing a restoration on it and had plans for it to sit on my kitchen counter. Our kitchen counter at the time had a lot of red in it, so it was going to look great - especially with the red, black, and red Jordan Almonds I filled it with! I got nearly four years of use out of it - then disaster struck.
In March 20218, almost exactly eight years from when I am typing this, my town was hit with an insane hail storm. My neighborhood was the hardest hit with softball sized hail coming down at 100-120mph! Mine and my neighbors houses were pummeled with basically cannonballs, and it literately sounded like a war zone outside as we hunkered in our basement! In the end, our home was pummeled with over 40 holes punched through our roof you could stick your fist through, windows shattered, air conditioning systems destroyed, outside vehicles totaled, and worst of all insane amounts of water coming in fast though the Swiss cheesed roof as the hard rains continued coming down!
We had to quickly move out that night, and salvage belongings that night and the next days. Over the next year that house was stripped down to almost all concrete basement, block walls, and the frame as everything else was removed and rebuilt. It really sucked. The process of rebuilding that house took a year as we lived with my in-laws a few miles down the road. Of course, most of our belongings were put into storage, and some things were haphazardly packed as we were in a rush and were working to get things out before water, dampness, and humidity did their worst! Eventually, that house was rebuilt and turned out beautifully, but by that time we decided to build a new larger house closer to the in-laws, which is where we are today.
So we did lose a lot of "stuff" in that freak hail storm, but I did manage to save that gumball machine that was in our kitchen. A few years later around 2020 or 2021, as life had returned to normal, I went to look at the machine which was still in storage and I had found that the bubble wrap had reacted to the paint and clear coat leaving little dots all over the machine. I had hoped that just MAYBE wiping a little naptha over the machine might take the little dots off and we'd be back in business! Unfortunately, that didn't work and it was going to need a complete overhaul. But I put if off for a few more years until now.
The past few weeks I started messing with the old Victor. I disassembled everything and started over by freshly sandblasting and and polishing all the parts. Luckily, since nothing was ever broken on it after the last refurb I didn't have to repair anything. It was pretty much cleaning it up and repainting it. Over the past few years I have made a few variations of Texaco themed Acorn gumball machines and really enjoyed how they came out. I've never done one for myself, so I thought what the heck - Texaco Fire Chief it is! I made some new water-slide decals to go on the machine, and after the paint had cured on the machine I applied the decals. So here we are today, with a good looking machine that has been brought back to life! I know some will not like that fact that I "themed" the machine and scoff when you don't bring it back to it's original look. Well, I have a lot of original machines in my house, and sometimes I just want something fun - and those people that scoff can just not look at it! LOL! I wrote an article about this subject when restoring antiques recently that you can find here.
So here we have it. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade! Who knows what this old machine's story was in the 60 decades before I owned it, but in the past 14 years it has had one heck of a ride as fun machine in the kitchen, to a storm survivor, and for right now a cool piece sitting in my office! Who knows what its future holds!
The machine as I bought it in 2014. Cracked globe and all.
Completely sandblasted - for the FIRST restoration in 2014!
A Texaco Fire Chief themed 1950s Victor Topper Half Cab