August 1, 2012
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My History of Wheels: A Wayback Post
"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 toy 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 piloting 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. It had a manual transmission and a small 3 cylinder Suzuki engine.
My next car, and the one I drove for the longest period of time at 11 years was my 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 liked the car, but it's what I call a "plastic car" , and is nothing like the 1955 Chevy my Dad drove when I was a kid. The Eclipse had an automatic transmission and I wanted a five speed manual. However my hip replacement broke a few years later, so it's good that there was no clutch pedal when I needed to walk around on crutches in 2009! 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 never was able to afford a new paint job. When I moved into the senior mobile home park in which I now live, I parked my Eclipse in my carport, but the paint job was badly fading, and the clearcoat was disappearing because I hadn't really taken care of the exterior for many years. After the car racked up over 120,000 miles on the odometer, I began to have to pay out of pocket to repair all matter of things which were going wrong, because of "normal wear and tear" as my mechanic put it. At about the time I was thinking seriously of either just purchasing a new car, or restoring the one I had, the radiator hose got unfastened while I was flying down the freeway at 80mph, water got into the block, warping the pistons and I had to trade her in for what I'm driving now.
I stayed true to my brand and late last year, purchased my very first "new" car, a 2011 Mitsubishi Lancer ES. I've raved about how much I love this car, my "Mock Evo" (The Evolution version of the Lancer, with a much more powerful engine, is a popular Asian "hot rod".) My hip is completely healed, so I don't have to worrry about clutching with my left leg, and got the car with a five speed manual transmission. Hopefully, this Christmas, if I get a bonus this year, I'm adding a rear "Evolution" style spoiler to the deck, having the windows tinted, getting custom wheelcovers, and a subwoofer for the stereo (nice big trunk to put it in!).
Being able to shift again manually is helping to spur my love of driving once again. One guy in the park, who is in his mid 80s, just bought a 2006 Mustang convertible! it's never too late to hot rod around the South Bay in SoCal if one has the desire. By 2014 I'm seeing myself astride a real "hog", a Harley Davidson Heritage Softail, with white and turquoise two toned paint job. (like the 55 Chevy, going back to my "roots". )
The first version of this entry was a topic post for the Internet Island & 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
Comments (43)
Let's see... I had a 1974 mustang, a 1976 Audi fox, a 1995 Saturn, and a 2001 Kia Rio. Still have the Rio but today is day 3 of biking to work. I think I'll drop the insurance for it and just bike to work from now on, I'm desperately out of shape and need the exercise. Found mostly bike trails to and from work though to keep of the roads!
Hi, Mike. Some good "way-back" reminiscence (hope I spelled that correctly. Am having more prob. w/remembering how to spell in my seniorhood). Oh, on that note, thanks for the spelling correction on my site. I should have known that. It may have been a typo, and I should have checked it. ~~Blessings 'n Cheers
Dog this post was the shit.
You are like the Valentine Michael Smith of Xanka, you come to save us but we will end up killing you.
Not me, I mean, I read Heinlein so I'd be on of the cats that saved you.
Ahh... you have a great love affair with convertibles.:) This is a great post, dear.
@Mockdonimus_Tuntsweet - I don't really know how Mike is going to feel about our "grocking" him
My dad depended on his car for work, his work entailed driving to homes in all parts of Dallas to tune pianos, up to and including the grand piano at the DSO. No matter how recently he had tuned that instrument when Liberace came to town he would refuse to play until Daddy tweaked it. Anyway, the point was that he felt he needed a new car every two years, generally stayed with Chevy Bel-Aires until they came out with the Impala. He had air conditioning in his car long before we did in the house. He never wore any kind of work uniform, instead it was pressed white dress shirt and slacks. Couldn't go into some of those fancy houses and bend over the strings of the piano with a cloud of sweat smell now could he? So I didn't get a car until I started dating a young man in the summer before my senior year. He too had lost his licence (too many speeding tickets) so he parked the car at my place and I would drive us wherever. Just befpre we married he bought a little Mercury Comet 202...it was a pretty little thing, I never called it anything in particular but most other people would say "If you go to the exit of the parking lot and see a yellow smear on the road, it is that little Yellow Canary cut the turn too wide again." So it became the Yellow Canary. I drove that car until it died about 2 years later. You see it had idiot lights and the one that told me the temperature most of the time played games with me. It would say hot, I would pull into a station (that was when they had full service stations) the guy would come out and check it and say all was well. And it was for about the next 10 miles then I would pull in to a station and a different guy would tell me the same thing. One night I was on a highway, now bustling with wall-to-wall businesses, but then was nothing but farm land. I worked the 3:00 to midnight shift so it was really late. The light came on and I didn't worry too much until it started whistleing like a tea kettle on grandmas stove. I pulled over as soon as I could find something off the highway and under a light. (I was 18) scared to death when a man pulled up...sat with me until it cooled down enough to make it the two miles home. Sure enough the block was cracked and it never ran again. Someone that knew how to drop an engine in it got a great car, no dents, no marks, perfect interior, good transmission for $200.00.
About that time I married an Okie. Now Okie country boys have a reputation that when a car breaks down it is pulled into the lower 40 with a "some-day-I'm-a-'gonna". Then he would buy another used car and we would drive it until it died, then another....By this time we lived in the city and neighbors will put up with only so many cars non-running taking up parking. City would be called, we would pay some sort of a fine, and they would tow them away. I finally got tired of the "some-day-i'm-a-gonna"s and one day "I did". He is now in Arizona with his new wife and they both seem happy, personally I think she got the short end of the stick but it's none of my business and I love to talk to her when I call.
Bobby's dad is from Oklahoma and the old addage mentioned above holds true in a lot of respects, but Bobby drives a car into the ground then gets rid of it for another.
Sorry I wrote a blog on your blog but I find it very interesting that your memory is so much sharper than mine. Some day we are going to have to meet on an IM in order we don't bore your readers and just play "memories".
@Mockdonimus_Tuntsweet - @mommachatter - Back in the day, I used to put drugs in a bowl on my coffee table, just as described in Stranger in a Strange Land. I do empathize with MVS. Also the savage in Huxley's Brave New World. BNW was made into a TV miniseries if memory serves. However Heinlein's SIASL and Clarke's Childhood's End, two of my alltime favorite sci fi novels, and both recognized classics, have never been made into films.
My first cars were a Terraplane and a Ford Model B. If you have ever heard of either one, you get the gold star
One of my favorite cars was a BMW model 1600 -advertized to cruise at a hundred. It would. I paid $2500 for it new. they gave me a medal when it got past 100K kilometers.I kept a '57 VW slide-top bug out in the ME woods - only car I ever had that I was confident that i could disassemble the motor out in the woods - put it back together and crank it up. It was one with a kick lever when your gas ran out - no gauge - you'd better hope you kicked the lever back the last time you filled it.
@baldmike2004 - Aye if Hollywood made Stranger in a Strange Land and fucked it up in anyway, that whole studio would get killed. They'd be firebombed off the face of existence by true motherfuckin nerds...not these pussies who go to comic con. They just wanna dress in spandex and stand in long ass lines. Real nerds like us read that real, OG gangsta ass Sci Fi.
With that said, stranger would be a good movie if they got the right cast and crew to put it out.
God forbid them bitch niggaz fuck it up.
I'd put on 2 Freddy Kruger gloves, take some ecstasy and chase all they mommas.
Those are some nice looking wheels. Yessir. My Dad had this car.
http://www.cruisenewsonline.com/BeachBlast16/1970PontiacLeMansSportConvertible.jpg
Pontiac LeMans '66. Man that was a great car he kept for years and years but with the top down, you just couldn't expect to keep any kind of civilized hairstyle. *Grin*
I remember we'd show up at parties and someone on the street would ask, is that for sale, no, how much ? It's not for sale. It's beautiful ! Yes it is.
My Dad was sure proud of that car ... He passed away 2-years ago. My sister got the car and she promptly totaled it in a collision that left her in the hospital for 2-months and the car was sold for scrap. Life's little twists and turns.
Me ? I don't drive at all. Don't ever plan to ... but ... those are some nice looking cars you have there. Yessir. And I know you're gonna take good care of 'em.
Incidentally, Bald M, if you need advice on how to block people in Xanga, just ask. I'm always willing to help.
classic cars definitely stands out on the road.
@baldmike2004 - the closest thing I can find is that Tom Hanks has thought about doing it but there hasn't been any definate progress on the project. He said it was his favorite s/f when he was growing up.
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