Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510090068
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Hyler Bracey is the owner of the world's only horn and whistle museum on wheels.
And Bracey says he lives life with gusto.
Horns and gusto bring to mind sparks and gasoline.
Bracey, from Smyrna, Ga., brought his rolling museum, called the Big-Horn, to the Roanoke Railway Festival at the Virginia Museum of Transportation on Saturday.
On a purple late-model pickup truck sit more than 70 honkers - including the world's largest ship air horn.
For fun, Bracey likes to drive the truck during an annual parade in Atlanta and blow the big daddy as he's passing parking garages.
"It sets off all the car alarms," he said. "That's quite a thing to behold, my friend."
Saturday, Bracey and his wife, Cass Flagg, were busy blowing the horns and discussing the contraption with the crowd at the Railway Festival. It's the first time the horn museum has made an appearance in Roanoke.
"I just had to get this thing on the camcorder," said Dale Young of Fayetteville, N.C., who attends the festival every year.
Kay Houck, executive director of the transportation museum, heard about Bracey from a railway festival fan, who told her she would do good to get the Big-Horn into town.
Houck wrote Bracey a letter.
He wrote back, saying he would come.
Houck said he signed the letter, "Give a toot, Hyler."
"He's something, isn't he?'' she said.
Bracey, 52, is nothing but interesting.
He grew up working on a tugboat - yes, the vessel famous for its horn - off the Texas coast.
He later fell in love with stock cars and raced them on half-mile tracks across the South.
During a race in Mobile, Ala., in 1970, Bracey was in a horrendous crash. He was knocked out as his car burst into flames.
Bracey was severely burned over 45 percent of his body.
"If I wouldn't have been knocked out, I would have died. When you're unconscious, you go into a comatose state. I didn't breathe in any of the flames."
Bracey, who now runs a publishing and consulting business in Atlanta, was given only a 5 percent chance of survival.
"So, I'm just glad to be here," he said.
Horns became a passion with Bracey after the crash. Because his hands were crippled in the accident, he couldn't do much of the meticulous tinkering he once did on automobiles.
The horns can be worked on with big wrenches that Bracey can grasp.
"I have a lot of fun with it," he said, grabbing a lawn mower engine pull cord that was hooked to a horn on the truck. "Here, blow this one. She's got a mellow sound."
Houck said the Big-Horn and other attractions made Saturday's event the best festival in her four years.
Train excursions, a popular festival draw, were eliminated this year, and festival officials didn't know how that would affect crowd totals.
Houck wasn't the only one happy that Bracey brought his attraction to Roanoke. Other festival-goers were, too - to an extent.
Some antique-car owners - who arrived at the festival early and stayed late - sat and listened to bone-jarring horn blasts all day.
Said Billy Carper of New Castle, whose two-tone green 1956 Ford Fairlane took first in show Saturday: "It was fun at first. But it got a little old after a while."
The Roanoke Railway Festival continues today from noon to 5 at the Virginia Museum of Transportation on Norfolk Avenue.
by CNB