Kim Morris/St. Joseph News-Press

A common sight on the streets of King City, Mo., is Romey Davis wheeling one of his restored classic cars through the downtown area.

Anyone riding with Romey Davis saw the scene repeat itself in various forms and numerous locales.

Off in a field, decay on display, a discarded car rests with the elements, maybe for decades. It’s junk.

But Mr. Davis sees possibility.

His son, called Romey Keith, remembers the routine.

“We’d see something in a ditch somewhere, and we’d have to go knock on a door and then go back and get it,” he says. “We were always dragging home parts and axles and whole bodies for father.”

Mr. Davis knew the diminishing supply of Model T parts, spotted them less frequently in newspaper classified ads and learned it took old parts to get new parts built. So he kept a sharp eye for junked possibility.

For the 84-year-old resident of King City, Mo., it proved a necessary resource in restoring antique cars. The auto parts store has no aisle for vehicles nine decades old.

“You’ve got lawn mowers with bigger motors now,” Mr. Davis says in showing his 1917 Model T, painted canary yellow, with carbide lights, brass fittings and a disappearing mother-in-law seat.

In fact, when the engine turns over with barely any effort, the man’s workshop fills with a sound that closely resembles a mower. The retired electrician, farmer and mail carrier overhauled this engine and numerous others in his garages.

There’s a 1929 Model A in the fleet, not to mention a 1924 truck and a 1936 John Deere tractor. A 1963 Mercury Monterrey has chrome features and barge-like size. “You could put a beef in the trunk,” he says.

Mr. Davis knows a lot about the vehicle histories but makes historical authenticity a secondary concern in his restorations. He wanted the cars to look nice and run for family amusement. They are for parades and photos and driving newlyweds away from their weddings.

He came to this pastime at an early age. Born in 1923, he learned to drive in a Model T. (His father hesitated to let him behind the wheel; his mother, when the two were alone, let him drive at age 13.)

And young Romey spent time under the hood. “I tore down so many and been around them so much, I knew about every part,” he recalls.

In a countryside reeling economically and trailing in rural electrification, he worked with windchargers, small turbines that energized batteries and provided remote homesteads with power six volts at a crack. (In his native Gentry County, where wind farms have now blossomed, everything old is new again, he concedes.)

After the war years, which found Mr. Davis in the Navy and deployed to the Marshall and Caroline islands in the South Pacific, he returned to King City and began wiring houses to supplement his farm work. His electrical business, which Romey Keith now runs, eventually took most of his time, and he accepted projects ranging from small-town apartment buildings to a mansion in Mission Hills, Kan.

His youngest son, Tim, planted with him the idea of Model T restoration. Mr. Davis told the boy to look through the want ads for an old car that might become available.

“Boy, he never missed a newspaper,” the father remembers.

Tim found one advertised at a Grant City auction, and the two drove north to the disappointment of finding it sold before the event. But a man asked if Mr. Davis would give $5 for a Model T frame.

There it was, the car that would eventually travel dozens of parade routes and haul happy grandchildren. The frame stood in a field with a tree growing through its midsection.

The Davises cut down the tree, hauled home the frame, bought and fashioned parts and built the car from scratch.

“We had a lot of fun,” the father says.

In a large and well-insulated garage down the street from his King City apartment, Mr. Davis can tinker year-round. “If I’m lonely, I come down here and old George sits with me,” he says, pushing an eight-track tape into a stereo unit and letting George Jones fill the quiet.

Don’t be surprised by the eight-track ... Mr. Davis can keep any electrical device working. Also on a shelf is the still-functioning first radio Romey and Mary Margaret bought the year after their marriage in 1946. “I had a jewel of a wife for 49 years,” he says. She died in 1995. His second wife, Maxine, with whom he lived in St. Joseph, died in 2005, and he moved back to King City.

His pace is daunting and his projects are many, but Mr. Davis recites a long to-do list. His priorities are the steel-wheeled tractor and the Model A. “I’m running out of time,” he says. “Sometimes your eyesight gets ahead of you.”

But in a room of old vehicle parts, Romey Davis still sees possibility.

Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.