Dennis Barbaria B&L Autimotive Passes

[richcorti]

Got this from Bruce Hertel this am
9/19/14
Dennis, owner of B & L Automotive in the Bronx passed away this morning at Montefiore Hospital……

Great man – always helpful – did a lot for drag racing in the early days when it was fun

Below article from the NEW York Times 10/26/2003

COPING; Honest Work, Sure Hands And Lots Of Questions
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published: October 26, 2003
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HEATHCOTE Avenue, just one block long, seems very far from anywhere, let alone Wall Street. It is a place that time forgot, a jumble of auto repair stores and junkyards off I-95 in the northeastern Bronx. Tucked in the middle of the block is Dennis Barbaria’s small machine shop, B&L Automotive, hardly bigger than a two-car garage.
Mr. Barbaria, a laconic 63-year-old with a bushy salt-and-pepper beard and a level gaze, founded B&L in 1962, when he was 22. New York’s manufacturing base had not yet withered, and the demand for men trained in fixing machines was brisk. Now he is vestigial, a throwback to the days when a person could be a blue-collar worker and still keep self-respect.
A child of Pelham Parkway, Mr. Barbaria graduated from Columbus High School and the Academy of Aeronautics at La Guardia Airport. Just out of school he received two job offers, one as an aerospace mechanic, the field he had trained for, earning $117 a week, the other in a machine shop, earning $200 a week. Mr. Barbaria followed the money.
Within a few years, he had acquired a wife, two sons and responsibilities. So when he and a partner, Joel LoSecco (the L in B&L) found the garage on Heathcote, hard by Co-op City, they jumped at it. The partner did not last long, perhaps, Mr. Barbaria says, because the job, which often involved long hours and dirty hands, ”was too much like work.”

But Mr. Barbaria endured, able to recreate an antique part from diagrams and fix any engine from a 1929 Pierce Arrow to a late-model Maserati.
The mechanical bug bit Mr. Barbaria many years earlier, when drag racing was hot. In 1956, when he was 16, he was a member of a race car club called the Highwaymen that owned a Chrysler-engine dragster. These were not street cars. These were top-fuel dragsters, capable of hitting 230 miles an hour, with a driver protected only by fast reflexes and a helmet.
Mr. Barbaria used to take his two boys on the circuit with him, to Detroit, Kansas City, Tulsa. As in that movie ”Heart Like a Wheel”? Exactly. His sons hung out in Shirley Muldowney’s trailer, and she fed them tuna sandwiches.
The race crew would let five kids, including Scott and Keith, pile into the push car. ”If you were a race car brat, they’d never say no,” Scott recalled. The boys had so much fun, they wanted to be just like their dad.
That sort of thing wouldn’t happen now, because drag racing has become a lucrative industry, controlled by corporations, not guys from the Bronx. ”You can sit at home and watch it on TV,” Scott said.
But hooked by that early exposure, Scott, now 43, works at B&L. His brother, Keith, 40, stayed through engineering school, then left to design jet parts. (A related field? ”No,” Mr. Barbaria said flatly. ”He’s at a different level.”)
Mr. Barbaria doubts that his four young grandchildren will follow the same blue-collar path; they are already expressing other ambitions. ”When you have the mechanical bent, when you’re 8 or 9 years old, you’re already taking things apart,” he explained. ”You find an old vacuum cleaner, you take it apart. The intrigue of the machine has to catch you. By the time you’re 9 or 10 years old, if it hasn’t, you move on.” Besides, he wouldn’t let them. ”It’s better to use your head than your hands, probably.” Mr. Barbaria has pulled back some, too. Now he works 9 to 6, six days a week, instead of 9 to 9. But in the early years, the garage ”used to be a hangout,” Scott Barbaria said with a grin, and the long hours had as much to do with male bonding over big machines as with making money. Now the men’s constant companion is National Public Radio, playing in the background, though his friend Sal, from the old neighborhood, often drops in with newspapers and paper cups of takeout espresso, syrupy and sweet.
Frankly, there is not as much to do these days. Better engineered cars have hurt machinists. But something else is going on too. Whatever the larger economic reasons, from where Mr. Barbaria sits, the recovery is not yet evident. His corporate customers aren’t spending on machine parts. Car dealerships, repair shops and machinists seem to close every day. ”A shop that would give us 10 jobs a month is now doing three jobs a month,” he said.
Is foreign competition to blame? ”I think this is too immediate and too local,” Mr. Barbaria said. ”They’re not sending the cars to India to be fixed.” Wall Street may be looking up, but on Heathcote Avenue, the indicators are still down.[/size]

[kmanParticipant]

May he rest in peace…. B&L was probably one of.. if not the first speed shop i ever stepped a foot in… i will never forget the sights and smells… the place seemed all business and definitely not a place to “hang out” in… man… i just realized… that was a long time ago… rest in peace Dennis….

[lee-valentine]

Dennis was a big part of the success my father and I had,may he rest in peace. He was one of a kind.

[paul-ceasrine]

Oh Geez,

Another good hard working gentleman.

We took all our balancing work to Dennis. I was there dropping off engine components at ‘B & L Automotive’
at least once-a-week for nearly 20 years for my father.

I can still remember that Volvo that was always parked out front. Dennis was ‘the man’ for Balancing.

Dennis Barbaria {2nd from left}

[dinoKeymaster]

BOBBY S. Isn’t that Bones Stevens? ALLEY Oop with Hemi?

[bobby-s]

Not a Lyndwood / Alley OOP, 😥 I’m sure of that. I will say no about Bones from pictures of him in the historical group picture on the site he is taller. But different foods back than, 🙄 Also chassis looks from the little in picture to be maybe a Chassis Research.

[dinoKeymaster]

OK….Paulie usually spot on..now the question…who’s car? Paulie?

[paul-ceasrine]

Captain Dino,

That should be Joel LoSello on the left, and then Dennis Barbaria, who were partners in ‘B & L Automotive’

I’m not a ‘Rail Expert’ like Bobby S.

But that photo may be from {1964 circa}, before my time.

[dinoKeymaster]

I concor Mr Paul

[dinoKeymaster]

ODF …Hibbert Collection 1962 Makes Sense …says it right on it ,Oh looks what’s next to it.

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