Turning wrenches

DENTON – From the outside, it looks like a tall garage designed to repair and service big rigs.

But inside, Kevin Middleton’s clean and well-organized garage also houses unexpected treasures: World War II gun carriers, framed G-rated WWII pin-up girls, another gallery of photos of WWII Red Cross women volunteers, farm equipment and a variety of mementoes and models.

Middleton, 59, and his assistant, mechanic and welder Taylor Lyons, “turn wrenches” at K.B. Middleton Repair on Pinetown Road and enjoy the rides – literally and figuratively.

While repairing heavy equipment is his “bread and butter,” his latest passion projects involve stepping back in time and revving up 80-year-old military equipment. He’s been working on them for almost a decade as “fill-in work.”

It all started when Middleton’s friend John Gott of Kent Island said, “Hey, can you give me a hand on some of this stuff? You work on tractor trailers, and you were in the military,” he said. “And then the next thing I know, he's got me going to these events.”

The events are held in various places like Gettysburg, which is where the Wheels of Liberation Museum and the WWII American Experience Museum are located. Middleton drives up in his service truck so he can help on-the-spot repairs.

For the WWII American Experience Museum, Middleton helped get an unusual project on the road – “the only American Red Cross Clubmobile replica in the United States that we're aware of,” he said.

The Red Cross volunteers known as “Clubmobile girls” or “Donut Dollies” made and gave out donuts and coffee to boost the morale of troops “behind the back lines,” Middleton said. “They also were trained to take care of changing their own points, their own tune-ups, their own tires.”

The museum staff “wanted to build it out of a two-and-a-half ton truck, so we lengthened the frame, and we lengthened the body,” he said. “We didn't do all the trim work and all the fancy stuff, but we basically made the truck longer.”

That project made a deep impression on Middleton. As an Army veteran and father of two daughters and Army veterans who served in Afghanistan, he created a small exhibit of framed photographs of women who supported the war, including the Red Cross volunteers. “These are all the women that supported the war. This is the backbone that kept the war going,” he said.

Middleton served in the 1980s and was honorably discharged with the rank of Specialist. Even in the Army, he turned wrenches. “Imagine that. I've been pulling on wrenches since I was 12.”

“My father was one of those people who believed that you needed to learn how to learn,” Middleton said. “I can remember as a little kid, (Dad) brought this lawn mower home, and he pulled the deck off of one of those little rear engine riders, and he's like, ‘If you boys can get it running, you can drive it around like it's a car.’ We would tinker on it, and then we'd go ask questions, and then he'd tell us what he thought we should do next, and we'd go back and we'd tinker, and we'd go back and ask questions. We finally got it running.”

“We had a quarter acre of ground, and we ripped up that place going every bit of four miles an hour,” he said, laughing. “You're accomplishing stuff on your own, and that's the way Dad kind of got us going with things. We went from that to go karts to motorcycles and bicycles and whatnot.”

Problem-solving is in Middleton’s blood and he’s a perfectionist, but his manner is laidback and jovial. He relishes tackling complex and difficult projects.

“It's very enjoyable work,” Middleton said. “I love to do the research. What do I need? How does it work? Why does it work this way? Why do they make it backwards? Oh, that's right, it came from Britain. It's amazing, the stuff that you learn.”

The 1941 Bren gun carrier he’s restoring for Mirek “Mike” Hrycak, owner of Wheels of Liberation, had been restored 15 years earlier, but Middleton was charged with taking it apart and fixing everything that was missed.

“We’re really particular about what we do,” concerning the mechanical work, he said, but the gun carrier is “supposed to look like it's 80 years old. It's supposed to look like it's been through a war.”

Middleton has restored or repaired five Dodge trucks for Hrycak and a command car for David Miller of Richmond, Virginia.

On June 24, a 1945 T16 gun carrier headed back home to New Hampshire. The equipment, owned by Thomas Castrovinci, needed Middleton’s expertise and attention to detail. Since it arrived in October 2024, Middleton and Lyons have been restoring the equipment – they re-cored the radiator and both oil coolers, and repaired the brake and steering band controls, the steering brake band drum inside the differential, and even the tracks.

“There's a tremendous amount of time involved” in historical restoration, Middleton said. “Sometimes I've had to call Russia, I've had to call Ireland, I've had to call England to find parts, because there's a lot of this equipment left overseas, so a lot of the parts are still available.”

Like the Bren carrier, the Loyd carrier is powered by a flathead Ford V8. It isn’t a luxury ride, but “it instantly wants to come to life,” Middleton said. Actually, it roars to life and jostles its occupants even on a smooth surface. It’s rough on Middleton, who’s six feet tall, because the driver’s cab is compact and his legs are too long to drive it in comfort.

Neither Middleton nor Lyons can drive the Bren carrier, so they hired neighbor Brian Hetrick to learn how to drive it. “I can't put my foot on the brake – my knee hits the dash first,” Middleton said.

Middleton grew up in Skipton with his older brother George. His parents, George “Toby” and Gail Middleton still make weekly visits for dinner with Kevin and Carol, his wife of 40 years. Their daughters earned master’s degrees. Janice works for a private contractor supporting the troops in England. Karen runs her own business and teaches at the college level. “My daughters are like, if I haven't said a dad joke in two weeks, they (wonder), ‘Is everything okay?’”

Middleton is something of teacher and mentor, as well. Lyons, 24, drives an hour from Tilghman Island where he grew up to learn by doing. Middleton was working on Lyon’s grandfather’s farm truck near Trappe when the two mechanics met.

Lyons said he learned about new technology in trade school, but he likes working on the vintage projects. “It’s just history,” he said. “It's neat bringing it back and learning about it and figuring out how to do it.”

For Lyon’s 21st birthday, Middleton took him to Easton Airport and gave him a flight lesson. “I showed him that there's absolutely nothing you can't do. And from that point forward, that's been the frame of mind. Let's get to it. If you ain't done it, you're going to figure it out … and he's done a very good job.”

Middleton’s own projects are waiting in another garage he and Carol have dubbed The Warehouse. A vintage Oliver tractor and a WWII-era Ford GTB, also known as a Burma Jeep, with a functioning original engine are on the “round tuit” list, he said.

Are any vehicles beyond redemption? “If you have the desire and the funds, everything can be fixed,” Middleton said. “You just got to want it bad enough.”