Old School Newbie

Hello to all,
I have been using and observing the forums for a couple of months now and I thought I should formally introduce myself to the lounge. My name is Bruce Frye and grew up at the same time and in the same town as Shubee, but we didn’t meet until the early ‘70’s. I had started fixing up my ’61 Sunroof, the main inspiration being the Cal Look issues of Hot VW’s. Being from a small town in the San Gabriel Valley (northwest Orange County) we didn’t have that many hot VW’s around. When he spotted my lowered Bug in town he introduced himself and we have been friends ever since. He took me to a DVB meeting and introduced me to all the members, such as Frenchy, Doug McCain, Cowboy, John Fawley etc. I soon joined and became a regular attendee. That was around 1975, but the exact year and time escapes me. I know that Ron Hussy was in his first term as President, so perhaps Frenchy can chime in if he has the records to show the date (s) he was in office. There is a picture of my car as it was when I joined DVB on Frenchy’s website. It’s under Bug-In photos; I will try to attach it to this post.
As Shubee may have spoke of in the past, we broke off and formed DSK in our area with friends who shared similar interests in becoming more discriminating towards strictly Cal Look cars. I have a lot of fond memories from both clubs but mainly DSK, as I helped form it and we were the underdogs at most rallies after that. We surprised DKP and DVB both with our strong membership showings at their events. I have some photos of the 61SNRF as it was in DSK, I’ll try to attach those too. BTW, nobody called them “Ragtops” back then, and when I picked that “personalized” California license plate number in the ‘70’s, that’s all they could fit was 6 digits, thus the abbreviation.
I have been an auto mechanic since ’74, working at Fiat, Saab, Renault, VW and finally Volvo dealerships. I also worked on VW’s with Vaughn Rolling’s from ’79 to ’85, then took a long absence from the VW hobby from then until HVW’s Drag Day this March. An old friend and charter DSK member invited me to go and I consequently got re-bitten by the Bug! Seeing our old buddy Roger Crawford doing wheelstands and quick ET’s may have something to do with it! My current project is a solid, one owner ’66 which I would like to eventually give the old school Cal Look treatment.
I would also like to thank the moderators, administrators and builders for putting this cool web site up. It is an informative, interesting and at times entertaining mix of our common interests.