Michael Alan Shannon

Mike was such a sweet and wonderful person.I met Mike when he came over to me and asked for my vehicle keys so he could take my postal Vehicle for lMaintenance. We laughed when I told him I need it back before I hit the street today🤣” Not in 3 weeks.” He always brightened my day when I seen him.I feel so blessed that I got to know him. My sincere condolences to all of the family and friends of Mike. Gone way too soon. 🙏😢

Sharing some childhood memories of Mike and I (Scot Palmour) – Great memories of a best friend growing up in Vienna VA. Mike lived 4 houses away on Tapawingo. I lived on Ware St just around the corner. We walked to Marshall Rd Elementary. Mike was the bid kid and I was the little kid.

Hundreds of times I must have knocked on the door to ask if Mike could come out and play.
We would play football, build forts, make spears, dig holes, and torment Leo, all afternoon till dark.
We weren’t the best behaved students and tended to cause trouble and play jokes on other kids. It was great fun!
In Mrs. Worthington’s 3d grade class we would steal the answers to each others SRA tests. I don’t think we got caught. During recess we loved playing keep away as Mike was hard to tackle and I was fast so we would pitch the ball to each other to keep it going. Never any pesky supervision to interfere.
We used red bricks, chain, link fences, and occasionally pipes to mark boundaries for tackle football after school.
Four friends, sometimes three, two against Mike.
Both times I needed stiches in my knee, Mike had tackled me. Red brick and a pipe.
Mike and I would ride our bikes down Lawyers Rd and across Rt 123 to get taquitos from Anita’s when she started Anita’s restaurant.
At Meadow Lane Park Mike figured out that if you leaned a bike against the big chain link fence around the tennis court and also contacted the light pole, sparks would fly and the lights would flicker. It hurt if you were holding the bike when it touched the pole.
When the weather was cold we’d put together train tracks and slot car tracks in his basement. It was the early days of making cars go faster with special magnets and better tires.
We rigged up a switch behind a loose piece of table trim that would put full power to one side of the track. When he would race Leo he could lean against the table and shoot Leo’s car off the end of the curve. Our laughing gave it away.
We would try to sneak up on Leo in the basement when he would bring his girlfriend over. Again, much laughter.
Middle School, we were bussed to Luther Jackson Intermediate in Merrifield. We would get to the bus stop at least a half an hour early to play kick the can in the street between the storm sewers as goals. We would spend hours colleting beer cans to crush into the perfect puck.
By high school we would play across Tapawingo against Tim and Bob for almost an hour before the bus arrived. Neighbors hated us.
There were a couple of storm drains I could squeeze into to get our beer can pucks, as long as Mike could drag me back out.
Several of the school buses were four speeds so there was a lot of grinding gears and shaky starts, Mike said he could drive better.
Our car adventures started as soon as Mike got his learners permit. We would take his dad’s cars to get gas on the odd or even days depending on the license plate numbers. We would cruise the 71 Toronado till it was on fumes then get in line to fill it. Mike would tell his dad the line was really long.
The Toronado would do a really nice front wheel burnout once Mike figured out how to floor it and cut the wheel hard right at the same time.
Mike’s dad did notice the tire rubber on the fenders, I think he was proud.
Then there was the Corvair. It ran on five cylinders, glass packs for mufflers, oil smoke coming up around the back seat, shifter on the dash and a broom handle for an emergency brake. Mike would laugh every time he’d rev it up and drop it into drive. It sounded like five lug nuts in a coffee can. I could hear Mike as soon as he left the driveway to come and get me.
We would cruise the neighborhood trying to get someone to chase us because Mike knew several short cuts around a ball park where normal cars couldn’t fit. One victim tore off his convertible GTO top trying to catch us.

The green Firebird convertible. We didn’t get to take it out as much but Mike always had plans to make it faster. When the Toronado finally died from transmission failure (I think) the 455 engine went into the Firebird. The drag racing started!
When Mike was working at Monkey Wards he also had an old beater no air learner six cylinder Ford Falcon. It was ugly and dirty but ran great.
Mike would come straight from work in the Ford Falcon to the Manassas drag strip. He’d race the Falcon in eliminations. It was always the slowest car but he was so consistent it was hard to beat. If it would get hot and run even slower he’d dump out a bunch of old parts and a tool box from his trunk to speed it up a bit.
At our many Manassas trips something was wrong with Marty’s yellow nitrous Plymouth Duster. Miek was learning over the carburetor when it flashed and set his hair on fire. Eyebrows burned curly and Marty and I were laughing our assess off.
So many good times street racing with friends Scott and Marty. A few scary times, but fun.
After high school graduation we decided to spend the summer working on my grandparents farm in Cody Wyoming stacking hay, irrigating, fixing fences, and feeding cows. I think we made $300.00.
I don’t remember how we got to Wyoming but we made $100 driving an old moldy four door Impala back to Virginia. It was loaded full of crap so we couldn’t sleep in the car. We got kick out of Yellowstone for unauthorized camping. One night we slept in a parking lot at an Indian rodeo somewhere in New Mexico. another night we slept on picnic tables in Tennessee.
Miek would write post cards to let people know where we were. Long distance calls at pay phones took too many quarters and Mike’s dad didn’t like collect calls.
I was proud to be Mike’s best man for his wedding and a few years later he was my best man for my wedding. A wonderful life of great memories.

Scot and Karen Palmour

So sorry for the loss of a great person, a great nephew with a wonderful sense of humor. My heart and prayers go out to all family that will miss him so.