16 MAY 25-31, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | lonely heir. It’s the only place on the planet preserving the memory of cheap, mostly un- remarkable cars that nonetheless meant so much to hundreds of thousands of working Americans over the course of seventy years. Rambler Ranch is also the repository of reams of love letters between Terry Gale and Greg Kissinger, expressed in boxes of title paperwork. Kissinger didn’t love cars, but he loved buying them for Gale, who loved showing them off. Starting in 1993, local car-enthusiast clubs would ask to come out to Elizabeth to picnic and see the collection. Senior groups and other clubs followed, and soon Rambler Ranch had a stream of folks making appointments to visit. These visitors allowed Kissinger to cast off some of the social anxieties that had kept him homebound since his stroke. He’d light up as he enjoyed a rare opportunity to spend time with new people, on his own terms, without fear or judgment. In that way, Gale could give Kissinger priceless gifts of his own. The two wed at Rambler Ranch and were married, happily, until Kissinger passed away unexpectedly in 2016. His name graces a tombstone at the nearby Elizabeth Cem- etery, intertwined with an identical heart intended for Terry W. Gale. “In Love 25 Years,” the stone reads, just in front of a bench for gravesite visitors — likely Gale, and perhaps only Gale. Five minutes away, a plaque on the door of the Rambler Ranch gift shop proclaims that “The Rambler Ranch is dedicated to the memory of Greg Kissinger.” While Rambler Ranch is necessarily this couple’s story, it’s not just that. As Gale walks by car after car, he’ll rattle off specs: engine sizes and trim levels and horsepower and how hard his on-hand mechanic worked to restore these cars to this level of glory. But Gale is just as quick to tell you that this cherry AMC came from a friendless old man living alone in Governor’s Park who called Gale after garage-parking the thing for eighteen years. They negotiated a deal, and the old-timer asked if Gale would go to dinner with him, since he never had anybody to eat with. “It meant so much to him,” he says through an ear-to-ear grin. Then there’s the time Gale put on a fun- draiser for Elizabeth’s high school march- ing band, raffl ing off a ride in either his Rolls-Royce or his Jeep Grand Wagoneer limousine, one of only sixty ever produced. As luck would have it, the winner’s dad had worked in the factory where the car was built. “When I backed into the driveway at her parents’ house, her dad came out and started to cry that we picked him up in the Jeep,” Gale remembers, still grinning. Or Gale will talk about Mrs. Sandberg, an octogenarian he befriended when he was ten years old. To commemorate their friendship, she gave him an electric clock that now sits proudly in the ’60s house exhibit at Rambler Ranch. “I’ve been packing that thing around since I was fourteen years old,” Gale says. Before it became an exhibit, the house was home to Jerry and Donna, an Elizabeth couple he became close with because Jerry had once worked at AMC. Gale put them up in the place for thirteen years after they “fell on hard times,” he recalls. The Nash building displays memorabilia promoting the music career of a “little old lady named Bessie,” who sang at the fi rst auto shows at Denver’s Civic Center Park in an outfi t called the Greenwood Revelers. She drove a 1952 Cadillac, and Gale “took care of her for ten years,” he says. John and Eva, brother-and-sister immi- grants from Yugoslavia he met while working at Kmart, never owned a car — so Gale would run errands for them, and eventually ended up looking after them for eighteen years. When they passed away, they left him their home; some of their belongings line the diner exhibit. Hearing about these people’s lives, you begin to realize that Rambler Ranch isn’t just some rich hobbyist’s tax write-off mas- querading as a car collection. From Gale’s father and that 1954 Ambassador to, yes, Mitt Romney’s mom’s station wagon, this is a collection of people’s stories assembled by someone who not only cares to hear them, but wants to share them. “Cars were part of the family,” Gale says. “When I fi nd a car in a junkyard, I just think that the day somebody bought that car, they were probably so excited. So when I get it, I’m excited, just to know that somebody loved that car, that it was special.” Even these cars. “I just want to save some- thing that not everyone else is saving,” Gale says. “Growing up as the underdog, I will always support the underdog. I’m very much a caregiver.” As you hop in your own car and drive away from Rambler Ranch, you realize that only this particular underdog could have put together this particular collection — and that if it didn’t exist here, nothing remotely like it would exist anywhere. And suddenly, instead of just wishing that you’d come into some great fortune someday, you almost wonder if you’re enough of an un- derdog to make it mean something if you did. Rambler Ranch, 36370 Forest Trail in Elizabeth, will open for its thirtieth year on May 27. Schedule a visit at ramblerranch. com or drop in from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays through October 1. Vroom Service continued from page 14 EVAN SEMÓN Rambler Ranch represents a lifetime of work and a love story for Greg Kissinger, who passed away in 2016, and Terry Gale, who’s committed to saving vehicles that would otherwise have ended up in a junkyard — and telling their stories. 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