Frankie Schneider III posts loads of pictures of his Dad. A couple days ago he posted a picture of Old Bess, with that name lettered on front of roof. I'd never seen that before, so I asked him if the car was called that since it was new, or did it aquire that nickname? He said he'd never known that, good question. So he asked a couple of Frankie's surviving friends, first one had no idea. The second, Bobby Johnson, said that the car was given that nickname at Reading by some guy named Buzzard. I said I remembered an old character from Kreitz's crew named Buzzard. So I asked Donnie's wife Linda if Buzzard was still around, not surprisingly he died years ago. So I told her why I asked, and she got back to me later. She said that Donnie said yes, he believed he heard that story. Originally Bessie, but got shortened to Bess. Amazing that 60 years later we can still get answers to questions like this. This picture, courtesy of Frankie, is when Old Bess was new, the name wasn't on it yet, so probably didn't have the nickname yet.

great story and wonderful photo. Thanks for posting.