Despite the rainy conditions, Thunder on the Plains powered through to bring car enthusiast together from all over the area.
R.H. Reeves and his group banded together for their annual car events that are held in the third weekend of every August.
Friday kicked off with a meeting at the Best Western where registration started in the evening at about 5:30 p.m. Reeves felt like they had a good registration for the poker run as there were a little over 100 registered. “I think the person that won received about $500 which is a pretty good split,” said Reeves. “Second and third place each earned a dinner for two at local restaurants.” To make it a little better for everybody, everyone moved down around the courthouse square to the Wallace theater for the cruise. The Wallace Theater is cruise central as Reeves calls it. The KLVT radio station set up by the theater and played music from the time that the crew started till about 10 p.m. “Everyone had a good cruise. There were a lot of pretty colored cars and a lot of people on both sides of Avenue H and all around the downtown square on Houston Street, said Reeves.” People had lawn chairs set up and we had a pretty good bunch of spectators all the way down even down almost all the way down to Lobo Lake where they there were cars on the side of the road.” People driving the main roads of Levelland stopped and sat in parking lots on their tailgates and enjoyed watching the cars go by. Reeves feels confident even without knowing the total number of participants that it was a good cruise.
Even though there was a lot of people at the cruise, some individuals didn’t register. To be in the competition to earn an award, the participant must have registered. Reeves feels that there were some enthusiasts that did not care about winning awards. They just wanted to enjoy the cruise and be a part of something great.
“We had local businesses that gave away trophies for cars that they chose for the cruise,” explained Reeves. “You had to register to be eligible to participate and we had stickers they put on their windshield. We got a lot of people that just come and cruised. If they didn’t register, they weren’t interested in trying to win a trophy.
By 8 a.m. Saturday morning, people were lined up outside at the Levelland City Park trying to register for the car show. Due to the weather, Reeves felt that the numbers of cars participating in the event were a bit smaller than normal.
“Some of the classic cars that attend every year are from the immediate Lubbock area and the weather possibly played a role in them deciding not to come in,” said Reeves. “With the rain Thursday night and getting two or three inches in some places and flooding, I think the numbers were affected because of it.”
Although the rain continued through the weekend, Reeves enjoyed his time with the festivities as there was music, vendors and cars lining the park roads.
We had the music blasting, we had food vendors, and everybody had a good time,” said Reeves. It wasn’t until about 11:30 p.m. that it started raining and people all ran for shelter.”
Instead of heading home, spectators made the mad dash back to their vehicles and waiting out the rain for about 30 or 40 minutes. Once the rain had passed, the festivities continued, but the much-awaited burnout contest was canceled because the area was flooded. Usually handing out awards closer to 2:30 p.m., Reeves and his crew decided to speed up the time to combat more rain that was heading for Levelland. His crew picked up ballots by noon and went to work tallying votes. A light rain continued to fall when Reeves and his team handed out awards, but overall, he was pleased with the support and show out for the show and other activities. “We had a good car show for what the weather was and how it affected the numbers a little bit,” said Reeves. “We are excited about having the turnout we had. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I would guess that it was close to 100 cars that were in the show.” After chatting with one guy, Reeves says that he missed registration for the cruise, but he attended anyways and watched all the cars and simply had a great time. Thanks to a committee members wife, Linda Turner made use of some old records she had found by creating the record toss. Reeves said that she was a retired teacher from Sundown and after cleaning out her storage, she came across old records that were in a stack that stood 5’ tall. For the event, people took records and tried to toss them in hula hoops with different point values. A great idea, but Reeves didn’t expect it to be as hard as it was. Something that the group will try to keep doing in the future is a Hot Wheels track for children. Due to the rain, the event was canceled this year. Reeves says that the group could possibly set up a tent and bring back a few small events like the record toss and Hot Wheels track for September Cotton & Crude festival. Being in the festival will allow the group to sell a few more t-shirts and generate extra funds for their donations they usually make. “The proceeds from the car show we kept in the community as much as possible,” explained Reeves. “We have a scholarship at South Plains College through the foundation that we fund, and that money is designated for auto mechanics and auto body.”
In previous years, the foundation has helped Children’s Hope when they were in Levelland. The Lions Club has a perfect attendance bicycle club that is receives donation from Reeves and his group.
The foundation has continued to donate to the Covenant Hospital Foundation which is not Covenant Hospital itself out of Lubbock. With the donations made, the money stays in the Levelland community.
“In the second or third year of donating, the hospital had a project where they were redoing the nursery for newborns babies and our money went into that,” explained Reeves. “Our motto is community first and that is something we continuously try to do when making these donations.”
As a foundation and event, both things are something that Reeves holds dear to himself and seeing people enjoy cars as much as he does is something he will never get over.
“I like seeing people in the community,” said Reeves. “I see people that come every year and now we’re seeing people that I remember and all sudden they’ve got kids or grandkids with them.”
Reeves got to catch up with a family friend that graduated with his son in 2002. Now a father to a 16-year-old they got to participate in the cruise as a father and son in his son’s truck.
“He was a baby when we started this car show and now all of a sudden this these kids got a driver’s license and a cool pickup to show with his dad’s show truck,” explained Reeves. “I really like that part of it and the number of cars, and the popularity of cars has changed in the last 15 years.”
Newer models and less challengers and Camaros are becoming the go-to dream car, but Reeves acknowledged that he’s an older guy that likes the older classic cars.
“I like seeing the change and watching what the younger people are gravitating to,” said Reeves. “We have a real good group around Levelland that stays involved in cars. The older classic cars are great, we need these younger people to be involved because one of these days us older people are going to struggle to get to car show.”