May 2, 2008

• My History of Wheels: A Wayback Post

  I would like to thank everyone who dropped by over the past couple of days to visit for a while and to wish me birthday greetings for my fifty fifth year. I had a great birthday, mostly because of the thrill of checking my blog throughout the day and finding more and more comments on "The Birthday Post", some from folks I don't even know who dropped by from the main pages of Xanga. Thanks again. I'll have a new entry up in a couple of days. In the meantime, I'm positng a "WayBack Post" originally entered on February 23rd, 2006 for the Internet Island Blogring.

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  "The cars and the busses go rolling along," I used to sing, loudly, at about age 5 or 6, probably "driving" my parents crazy. "The CARS and the BUSSES." I'd play with my little plastic representations of cars, trucks, and busses, and long for the day I would be able to drive.

  
  I loved transportation and vehicles as a kid. I guess most guys do. The first family car I remember was a 1947 Chevrolet Coupe. I rode in the cramped back seat on the way to Califronia from Idaho when I was 4. The car was coal black, with faded paint and worn upholstery, because by 1957 it had seen some use. In 1960 my dad, who had sold Chevies in Idaho before we moved, upgraded to a station wagon. A turquoise and white 1955 Chevy station wagon, probably one of the most beautiful station wagons ever manufactured. My memories of the 47 coupe are hazy, but the blistering turquoise Chevy Bel Air Wagon shines bright in my memory even today.

  I remember when it was "new", even though it was a five year old used car. There were four doors, and enough room for both my parents and us three growing kids. There was me, my sister, and my brother, all 19 months apart, with me being the eldest. I remember Dad driving this car to his place of employment, Joe Lowe industries, where they made the popsicle line of ice cream treats, in downtown Los Angeles. Sometimes my brother and I would ride in the back on the floor while barrelling down the L.A. freeways. This was a good car, all steel, cloth, and rubber. When we moved to El Monte in 1960, to our similarly new house, my dad drove the Wagon. When we went to the drive in, we watched the movie through the windshield of the 55 Chevy with the shiny speaker positioned over the right hand window. But as we kids passed into adolescence, my parents needed an even larger car, and by 1964, Dad was off to the car lot again, and he chose this time to purchase a 1960 Chevy Brookwood Station Wagon. This was one of the largest cars on the road. I can still remember Dad buying the car. The car lot was in Anaheim, in Orange County, and doesn't exist any more. It was a large lot, with lots of cars. My brother and I wandered among what seemed like thousands of full size cars, just like all the small plastic models I had in my toybox at home. Only bigger.

    The Brookwood's first job was to take us from Southern California to Southern Idaho to visit my grandmother in Nampa in the summer of 64. Yes, we kids pestered my Dad with "Are we there yet?", played lisence plate games, and had quite a collection of coloring books and colorforms sets to keep us busy. We sang songs and slept on blankets in the back of the car with the seat down. This station wagon grew up with us. When I was a freshman in high school, my dad let me "learn to drive" by going up and down the driveway.

  At the age of 16 I had saved a hundred dollars of my lifetime allowances, and I got my driver's license. Dad bought a new car, which would later be mine. We shopped together, and I picked the car, which, strangely enough, was not a Chevy. I fell in love with a 1965 Dodge Dart. It was on a Chervolet dealership, and my Dad and the salesman kept on steering me back toward the more "traditional" Chevrolets, but I wanted the Dart. My dad gave in. I think he paid $1500.00, and the car was four years old at that point. I paid my Dad the hundred dollars I had dutifully saved by doing my chores like mowing the lawn and taking out the garbage. He handed me the keys to the Brookwood. I could drive it to and from football games and to school, but had to drive straight home. Driving this car was like piloting a boat. It didn't even have power steering, so it was not really "easy" to maneuver. When I was a senior in high school, Dad bought his first "new" car, a 1970 Chevy Nova, our first car with air conditioning. I "inherited" the Dart I had picked out, which was now officially "my" car. Dad "traded" the old Brookwood in for the Nova, which cost under three grand in those days, being the "budget" Chevrolet. Just to put things in perspective, though. I got my first job in 1970 and was paid $1.65 an hour. When we finally sold the family house in 1975, it went for about $40,000.00. It's worth half a million or more now. And a "cheap car" is under $20,000.00.

  I made my Dart my own. It wasn't a stick shift, but under the hood was a 180HP V-8, and the "shift selector" was on the floor between the bucket seats. The car was "mellow yellow" and I dubbed it "The Fantastic." Smiley faces were all the rage back then, and I painted one of those red rubber balls, about 15" in diameter, bright yellow, and painted a smiley face on it, then positioned it on the back window shelf. I used to post "sayings" and poetry on the glovebox door, and when I  graduated from high school in 71 I draped my gold tassel from my mortarboard around the mirror.

  My friend Steve and I used to "race" our cars, me in my Dart, and he in his 1969 Camaro, home from where he worked, sometimes using the same, and sometime differing routes. We were quite careless. I would "freeway race" with people I "chose off". I once spun "doughnuts" with my wheels on the massive lawn in front one of the Churches in town. I had a lot of fun in that car. In the evenings and on weekends, I would share a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine with my buddies while parked out front of another friend's house.

  I only drove the Dart for two years. In my sophomore year of college, I bought a 1971 Volkswagen "Bug", also with a mellow yellow finish, custom fitted with an under dash "shelf", shag carpeting, and oversize 16" Magnesium wheels on the rear end. The back of the car was equipped with air shocks.  Sister got the Dart. The "Flukeswagen", as I christened the Beetle, was admired by a lot of my friends. I pinstriped the car in black, and I installed a "quadrophonic" four speaker stereo, an eight track, cassette player, and CB radio, which I seldom used, but had anyway. I made my own eight track mix tapes at home, including stints where I would play "Dee Jay", announcing the music tracks. It was in the Flukeswagen that I would "cruise" either Whittier or Valley Boulevards. Sometimes my two friends and I, all owners of Volkswagens Bugs, would park them side by side to "show them off" or drive them side by side down the center of town. We would also drive them on the sidewalks. I am not condoning this type of reckless behavior. I realize now of course that I was breaking the law. I knew it then, too, and that didn't matter. I had fun.

    1971 is a bad  "Beetle year" and the motor blew up and had to be rebuilt twice. Later on, after I dropped out of college, I bought the 1961 Thunderbird, my first "classic," inspired by my friend Evan, who had a  1949 and a 1956 Cadillac besides his "driving car". Since my Bug was in the shop, I used the TBird as my main transportation, which was a big mistake. The radiator and power steering were two of the things I had to replace, and the list just got longer. I sold the car about a year after I bought it, and it ended up dying in the desert somewhere. Since my buyer didn't register it, the Highway Patrol got in touch with me for impound charges. I told them I didn't car what they did with the car, which wasn't mine anymore.

  Shortly after I gave up the T-Bird, I used public transportation, the first of a few times I actually relied on the bus to get me around in Southern California. My Bug stayed in the shop for a long time, and I finally got it back, but the engine blew up again, and I had a friend this time take a look at it, and he even kept it in the shop longer than the first guy. Both my siblings and I received money from a settlement the Teamsters Union procured a few years after my Dad had died on the job. I used some of the money to buy a car, a 1974 Honda Civic. I drove the hell out of that car, my first with front wheel drive. 

  The Civic's timing chain broke and the motor froze, and I ended up selling it for $600.00 and let the buyer tow it away from the repair center because I didn't want to buy another engine, even though it was for a different car. I went back to riding the bus, which was serendipitous, because I lost my license to drive around this time because the DMV thought I was at risk because of my myriad drunk driving arrests. But that, as they say, is another story. Right before I lost my license, I was using the 30 foot bobtail that I drove for work home some evenings, since I would drive all over Southern California. I parked the truck in the parking lot of the liquor store across from my apartment building.

   

  The next "car" I bought wasn't a car, but a Honda Elite Scooter, in 1984. Even though I had a suspended license, I got the scooter to get comfortable with riding on two wheels in traffic,and then graduated to a brand new 1986 Suzuki 650cc Savage motorcycle. Nothing beats the feeling of driving a recently prepped bike off the lot, turning the fork into traffic, and stepping throught the gears while hearing the throaty sound of the engine. My "thumper" got mistaken for a Harley cruiser more that a couple of times. The seat was a mere 24" off the ground. For the next few years, I rode my bike, sans license, everywhere. I ended up selling the scooter. I saved some money and my next car was another classic, a 1966 Cadillac Sedan de Ville. After the bike blew a head gasket, I made the same mistake with the classic Caddy as I had with the T-Bird and tried to use it as my main transportation. I replaced a good many parts on the Caddy, but when Pat made me sell it when we were together, I sold it for only $100.00 less than I paid for it. I did sink a lot of money into it for replacement parts when I owned it.

     

  When with Pat, I let her drive, and helped her get a 4X4 Chevy Blazer, which I picked out for her and helped make payments. "I see you driving "this" I told her when I saw it on the lot. She's not with me now, but I still keep in touch with her and she drives big rigs, so she "graduated" from the 4X4, with which she fell in love. While with Pat, I sold both the motorcycle and the Cadillac.

   I also got my license again, and when we broke up, I began buying convertibles. My first was a bright red 1991 Geo Metro two door, one of the smallest cars I've ever driven. I drove the car from 1995 to 2000. Today I drive a 1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder convertible, teal green in color. I bought it in 2000, only because I'd wanted that particular body style for years, and when I could afford it, Mitsubishi came out with another body style I didn't like, so I waited until I saw a 1999 for sale. There weren't that many on the lots either. I like this car, but it's a "plastic car" , and is nothing like the 1955 Chevy my Dad drove when I was a kid. When I first bought the Eclipse, I would lovingly wash and wax it regularly, and I covered it when it was parked at home and at work. In 2004, new neighbors moved in to the other part of our duplex. They had a young son who was learning to ride a bicycle. The bike didn' t have  guards on the handlebars and the kid scratched the sides of my car pretty badly. I was told that it would cost about $1200.00 for a new paint job. The neighbors didn't volunteer that their son ruined the paint job, and of course I didn't see the damage being done, so didn't confront them with the fact, cause I didn't want to start a war with the neighbors, who I'm sure would have denied that it was their son who did the damage.  

  I haven't been able to afford a new paint job. Thankfully, those neighbors moved. I did pay off the Mitsubishi last year, so I own the car outright. Instead of  purchasing a new car right now, I'm biding my time, and hopefully will be able to have the car repainted. It was more important to get belt service a few months ago, so at least it's running great although I still cringe at all the scratches, and I don't even wash it as often, because that just shows the scratches up even more.

  I'd love to get a hybrid, especially with gas prices being what they are, or an electric car, but they don't make either in a convertible. (yet.)

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  This was originally a topic post for the Internet Island and appeared on Feb. 23rd, 2006. All the graphics were created for the post. The clarity is better and the images larger than when they first appeared. The images are either actual photos of my cars, taken at the time I owned them, or images taken from a Google search. The 1955 Chevy station wagon  is one of my 1/32 steel models from the Danbury mint. The last section of the entry has been updated to the present. MFN/ppf 5/02/08 6:15a..m. pdt.

  • 9:40 am
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