Wayne Mathews showed off his wooden car on Juneteenth.
It paraded with delight and sounded its ooh-gah horn for only the second time since Mathews began serious work on it in 2011. It was also in Atlanta's Christmas parade in 2014.
The car is practically finished. The scavenged wood from which it was built now has a lustrous sheen because Mathews stains and clear-coats it before each public showing.
And now the car has a newly designed front and rear ends, which give it a completed look. Circular headlights have replaced the old square ones. The car is wonderfully titled "4340" and "Leek Creek."
These are the places where the car was born and grew up-4340 is a county road, and Leek Creek is a small creek near the community of Bivins No. 2, which was how the area was known in the heyday of Bivins on state Highway 43.
This is where Mathews lives.
His wooden car idea started two years after he graduated with Atlanta High's class of 1974.
"I first had to decide that I would be able to do it," he said. He asked around for the opinion of others and even tried one other wooden car that didn't work out.
For this one, he found the right automobile, a 1982 six-cylinder Ford F-150 truck. It had to be super-reliable, because once one puts wood around it, using plenty of nails and screws, it's going to be awfully hard to get to the engine or other parts for repair.
Mathews put a window in the center of the hood. He can lean over and look in, but it would be a task to get that hood up if ever the engine needed attention.
It doesn't.
"Only goes about 10 miles a year, and I think it runs better now than it ever has," he said.
Not going is part of the problem for this car. Mathews hasn't let the state decide yet if it's an antique or brand new. It's new to him-he's just built it. So he wonders whether it is new or old.
He hasn't gone through all the steps to have it registered to become street-legal. Some cost would be involved, as well as paperwork. And besides, he doesn't intend to drive it, just to show it occasionally. That means he hauls it to a location around Christmas or Juneteenth and then joins in the parade.
It sort of shows up out of thin air.
"The people love it because who's ever seen something like this before?" Mathews said.
"Some others may not like it, because if they have a $40,000 luxury car, and I put this car made of scrap wood next to theirs and mine draws more attention, well then, they don't like it," he said.
But last year, when Mathews didn't have it in the parade for Juneteenth, some in the community demanded to know why and offered to go get the car for him if he'd just let it parade around.
Spectator appreciation has always been part of the building this car, Mathews admits.
"I used not to work on it for periods of time, and then my neighbors and others would start asking about it and when was I going to finish it. So I'd start getting enthusiasm and begin working on it again," he said.
Mathews is artistic in several ways. He does his own thing and is completely self-taught. The wooden car certainly seems to be an original creation, but for him it has one more lasting reason to exist.
"I just want it to be known that one day I had it on my mind, and then I went and built it-with God's help, because there surely was a lot of nails and screws I put into it," he said.