LINCOLN, Maine — The rear body of Scott Crockett’s 1969 Dodge Charger is rotted through. The car’s interior is gone, and the front subframe almost came off when the towline dragged the hulk of metal onto a flatbed trailer so Crockett could take it to his shop on West Broadway.
“It’s really the remains of a Dodge Charger,” he said Sunday. “You could put your hand through it pretty much anywhere.”
But the 28-year-old mechanic knows he can turn the rotted, dead hulk of a car into a replica of the car that bewitched him since he was 5 and decided he wanted to become a mechanic – the “General Lee” of TV and movie “Dukes of Hazzard” fame.
“It is going to be a long project,” Crockett said. “It is something I always wanted since I was 5 years old, so it is going to be done. As soon as I get the money, I will be starting it.”
That love of vehicles is among the reasons Crockett’s new business, Crockett Customs at 305 West Broadway, is among two new businesses having opened or soon to open in Lincoln.
The other, Charles Gulesian’s fish market, represents something of an opposite of Crockett’s. Gulesian is a 53-year-old Lincoln man who for decades has run a plumbing and heating business but always hankered to operate a fish market and restaurant. His as-yet unnamed store is 95 percent built and will open behind the town office off Burton Street in about three weeks, he said.
“Being on West Broadway would be nice, but this is a good location,” Gulesian said. “You get 200 people going to the [nearby] churches, and there is a lot of visibility here.”