Funerals with, uh, style, if not class.

[theweaselking]

James Calabrese – loving husband, father and grandfather, house painter extraordinaire and well-known local hot-rod collector – may have been dead.

But he still had style.

Friends and family tricked out Calabrese's gunmetal gray casket with chrome and aluminum parts from his beloved 1958 Chevy Biscayne, complete with license plates and dangling dice (but no purple paint).

Karen Calabrese recalled something her husband of 29 years said at a funeral in 1990, as he was admiring the black, bullet-shaped casket that housed a brother-in-law.

"I want that when I die," he told his wife, "and I want headers on it."

"Whatever you want, dear," Karen Calabrese told her husband.

"If you don't bury me with headers, I'll haunt you."

So, over the weekend, Karen Calabrese summoned Jim's lifelong friend, Tony Suskie of Placentia, to oversee the casket remodeling.

Friends bolted to the side of the casket two pristine Hooker-brand V8-engine headers Calabrese long had admired. The aluminum-finished exhaust system had hung in Suskie's garage for years.

They affixed to the top of the casket the hand-polished housing for an air cleaner that came from Calabrese's baby, his '58 Chevy.

They fastened valve covers to both sides of the casket, and when pallbearers carried Calabrese's 6-foot-2, 300-pound body to his grave, they gripped clear-backing tape that had "ghost flame" designs on it.

Near the headers, aluminum decals cut in the shape of flames provided the finishing touch.

"If we had another week, I could have slapped an engine and wheels on the casket and driven it here," Suskie said.

If he could have opened his eyes, Calabrese would have seen three gauges staring back at him.

Oil.

Temperature.

Volts.

The gauges belonged on a dashboard of one of his prized hot rods.

The arms on the gauges all pointed to zero.

But on his final ride, Calabrese looked like he'd lived a life in full.