Recollections from (mostly) Back in the Day

I grew up the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s in a small town in Southwestern Nebraska.  Farm country.  Our town was the largest one in a sixty-mile radius, and weekends would see parking lots populated with cars from the surrounding counties and Kansas, which was just over twenty miles away.

In the summer, when there wasn’t school homework and activities to keep us busy, we would often be bored to tears.  If you didn’t live through this era, it might be a bit hard to truly appreciate how different it was from today.

The Magic Radio Waves

(Or, You kids today don’t have it nearly as hard as we did!)

Today’s world suffers from overstimulation.  I could spend all day on the Internet, watching movies, television shows or videos.  I could also listen to any album from any era, at any time.  There are a million and one different games I could play.  All of this on a device with the volume of a deck of cards, that I always have with me.  Oh, yeah; I can place and receive phone calls on it too, not to mention hundreds of texts a month.  Life is grand.

It was just the opposite of this in the ‘70’s.  If you had a cassette machine or an eight-track player in your car, you were set.  Add a dozen tapes and you had all anyone could ask for!  Most newer cars had AM/FM radios, but there were quite a few ‘60’s cars that were AM only.  The radio stations in our town were both AM, one being “contemporary pop/light rock” and the other “country and crossover”.  Neither really did it for us, but that’s all we had.

The Fun Started at Dusk

In the evening, when the sun started to set, we would be able to start receiving the signal of KOMA, Oklahoma City.  This was a 50,000-watt clear channel AM station.  It was contemporary rock-n-roll and at night broadcast over a six to eight state area.  It was like manna from heaven to our young ears; we had eagerly waited all day to have real rock music available.

Clear Channel AM Radio Stations

These reflect government regulations established in the early ‘40’s.  These stations operate at a much higher transmitted signal strength than most AM stations.  This acknowledges that at night, when the earth’s ionosphere temporarily thins, these strong signals will bounce off this layer and reflect back to earth hundreds of miles away.  As designed, this allowed very rural areas with no local radio stations, to be able to receive programming at night.  When the sun is up, the ionosphere thickens and no longer supports this manner of “skip”.

In the ‘80’s, after I had left home, I learned that KOMA had converted to country music!  This was the “Urban Cowboy” era, after all. (I can proudly say that I never spent the time to watch that movie!)  We were heartbroken.

Much Later

Fast forward to the early ‘90’s.  I’m driving through Eastern Colorado, on a cold, clear December evening.  I had just finished some corporate training and was headed to Nebraska to visit my mother for the weekend.  Quite out of the blue, the number “1520” popped into my head.  This was the frequency of KOMA, which I hadn’t listened to in years.  I tuned to the frequency, and there it was!  Glorious, classic rock just like to good old days!  They had dropped the country format.  The prodigal son had come home!

It occurred to me that these songs, now “oldies”, were the same songs we had listened to back in the day. Hmmm.  I recalled one warm, rainy night that we cruised while listening to The Doors’ Riders on the Storm.

Dragging the Line

(Or, What the Hell Is There to Do?)

We couldn’t just listen to the radio; we had to be doing something.  That something was often just driving around, to see and be seen.  None of us considered this to be the most fun anyone could possibly have, but our options were limited.

The activity of “dragging main” was something that occurred most Friday and Saturday night in towns both large and small, across America.  This usually involved driving a loop or “out and back” route, as slowly as traffic would allow.  Most cars were either guys or gals.  We were always on the lookout for carloads of the opposite sex.

The challenge was for us to get the attention of any girls who might be cruising.  If you were over the top, you risked looking like an idiot.  You had to be cool.  (How many teenage boys are actually cool? Far fewer than they themselves would think!)  It was a little like a bad day fishing; no fish, few bites, but better than not fishing at all.  Those fortunate enough to generate some interest would meet the other car at one of the local fast-food drive-ins.  Nope, no McDonald’s or Burger King’s here; these were local eateries.

On the Move

Our windows were rolled down, unless it was really cold or raining.  This made it a lot easier to establish that eye contact or yell something “cool” while passing on the out-back, each car going a different direction and the lanes separated by a grass covered island.  Or, if you were downtown at that moment, the cars would only be a dozen feet apart.

When I was in college, I had a job for one summer delivering bread to grocery stores.  This job required me to get up far, far earlier than any human should have to.  A guy I worked with gave me rides.  One Saturday morning we were headed to work just as it was beginning to get light in the East.  I saw a couple of cars going through downtown and realized that these guys were still cruising from Friday night!  Maybe they just didn’t want to go home.

The Big Race

(Or, A Convergence of Dumbassery)

If you happened to own a car you considered fast, you might be on the lookout for a suitable challenge to take to the quarter mile south of town.  This was a straight stretch of lonely, paved road, with halfway decent shoulders.  It did cross a short bridge, though.  To the best of my knowledge, nobody ever died here while trying to prove they had the faster car.

I was cruising with my friend Jim one cold evening, in his new 1975 Ford Grenada.  Neither one of us really knew cars, though we might have thought we did.  Though I didn’t question it at the time, the engine (351W) breathed through a 2bbl Autolite carburetor.  Jim had just had headers installed, and he was anxious to experience the newfound power (oh, were we naïve!).

We’re Gonna Smoke This Guy!

We found a willing participant in a guy our age who was from one of the nearby communities, and who was driving an early ‘70s Camaro.  He had two girls with him, though we didn’t chat long enough to really learn much.  We headed to an “alternate” stretch of road, one that was just as far away as the “official” strip; why, I don’t know.  This piece of road was very lightly used and was straight, though it had some rather deep ditches on each side.

I served as the starter.  I remember seeing both sets of taillights shrink into the darkness.  There wasn’t much shrieking of tires or other sound of power from either vehicle.  I mean, we were dealing with 300 net horsepower or so from both cars combined!  Behold, the powerhouse!

I thought I heard tire screeches in the distance, though I wasn’t sure.  I stood there seemingly forever, in the dark, waiting for them to come back.  Yeah, I was cold.  Finally, I saw a set of headlights coming my direction.  Just one set.  What had happened was that the road took a curve to the right some 600 to 800 yards from the starting point.  Neither Jim nor I had thought to mention this.  At that point, the field was at a lower level than the road.  The Camaro, not having seen the curve in time, had launched off the road into the field.  Fortunately, nobody was hurt.  We weren’t good about wearing seatbelts back then.

Yeah, We Shudda Mentioned That!

We never did know what the extent of the damage was to the car.  This was the first and last time we raced on that stretch of road.  In the early 2000’s my mother passed away.  Our neighbors and friends had a get together on a farm property they owned, which was located on that stretch of road.  I remember thinking “Wow.  Where has the time gone?”.

Things are different now.  There are so many different things to do, that idly driving around isn’t one of them.  For music, the radio is only used as a last resort.  Regarding the impromptu acceleration challenges, I don’t know.  Yeah, they still happen in LA, for example, but I don’t know about rural America.  My gut feeling is “not so much”.

Today, this small town has a handful of stations, some being FM stereo.  One or two are fairly good.  In addition, there are one or two more that are out of town but close enough to pick up well.

Once or twice, it has crossed my mind to wonder if Jim’s old car is still sitting in an area wrecking yard, slowly turning into iron oxide.  Probably not.  Likely long gone to the crusher.  Yeah, things are different now.

The Neighbor

(Or, Hard Work Can Pay Off)

I also had another friend and neighbor (Mike) who had some money, because he wasn’t involved much in sports, and he worked his ass off.  Smart kid.  He had a fastback Mustang, and then an Olds 4-4-2.  These were a bit more fun to be seen in.  Two short stories come to mind.

The first was when Mike and I were working in his garage.  I don’t remember on what.  His sister came out and greeted us on her way to the car.  A minute later we heard a huge crash.  Mike jumped up, screaming and charged out of the garage.  I was confused, but he realized instantly that his sister had backed into his Mustang!  It was a long driveway and not well lighted; I’m sure she simply didn’t see his car.

I don’t remember the Mustang being fixed, so I think this is when he got the ’68 442.  Funny thing is that I remember regarding it as an older car at that time.  It was only about four years old then, far younger than most of the cars I’ve owned in the decades since.  Maybe when you’re sixteen or seventeen, four years qualifies a car as “old”, I don’t know.

There was one Fall afternoon, I think it was after cross-country practice, when Mike and I took our British foreign exchange student, Richard, out for a ride.  He was a pretty cool guy, also on the XC team.  He sat in back.  I don’t remember Mike saying anything beforehand, but he made sure to educate Richard about American muscle cars.  At one point, I looked back at him, and Richard was white as a sheet, holding on for dear life.  I’m pretty sure that was his last ride in the car.

The Crappy-Car-O-Rama

(Or, This One will be Fine!)

Mike’s dad was a very successful businessman in the area.  He could afford to drive anything he wanted.  It didn’t seem to matter to him, though.  I think you could have given him virtually anything to drive and it wouldn’t have mattered to him whatsoever.

He supplied his wife with an endless parade of cars that he came across in business, and were generally kinda used and rundown.  Plus (a big plus…), he didn’t seem to like spending money on mechanics!  I remember my brother and I going over one afternoon to see what we could do with the current vehicle, a diesel Oldsmobile!  Since this fine GM experience extended from 1978 to 1985, the car was probably less than five years old.  Neither of us knew jack squat about diesels and ended up walking away, while discussing what we would demand to drive, were we in her position.  I did fix a refrigerator for her in ’78 or ’79, and never did have any real clue as to what I did that actually fixed it!

This big pile of warm poo should warm the heart of anyone who can claim past ownership of an Olds diesel.  Enjoy!

The Fall from Grace

(Or, A Dumbassery Golden Moment)

There was a guy who was a few years ahead of me in school and who was the quintessential underachiever.   I remember thinking that he never did graduate.  He was a big guy and seemed friendly and to be well liked.  His last name Goodrich, and he had the nickname “BF”, for obvious reasons.

He had a ’50’s or early ‘60’s car that was a real beater.  One day he was going around a corner where one of the major streets met the highway, and the door opened while he was leaning against it.  He wasn’t belted, and it’s likely the car didn’t have seat belts in the first place.  Well, BF fell out and the car continued without him.  It hit the 7-Up bottling plant that was at this intersection, damaging a couple of the metal sheets.  Even today, almost fifty years later, you can see the two replaced sheets that have a subtle color difference from the rest of the building.  Some years later I had a summer job there, bottling 7-Up, RC, and Diet Rite Cola, but that’s a story for a different day.

It’s been a long time and my memory is hazy, but I think this is the panel that was replaced some fifty years ago when BF’s car hit the building. I thought it was further back from the front than this, but this is the only non-matching steel panel.

The Older Guys

(Or, The Older Dumbasses Mentoring the Younger)

Our high school wasn’t air conditioned, which was normally fine.  There were days in May, however, that were far warmer than normal, and the best that could be done was to open the windows.  It was days like these that guys would grab a bottle of bleach and have impromptu burnout sessions directly in front of the high school.  We had a closed campus at that time, and this was more than just frowned upon.  I remember kids running to the window to watch a 383 Super Bee send up clouds of white smoke.

One of the weight men (shot, discus) on the track team was two years older than me and his dad owned a business in town.  This was Jerry.  His parents were buying him a ’72 GTO for graduation.  I remember it being red, and hearing that a chain had banged against it on the car carrier, so it needed some immediate body work.  I never had the coin to buy any of my kids a new car for high school graduation, but had I, I sure as hell would not have!  Great way to teach a kid that the world owes them a living.

This photo is of a ’71 GTO, but this is how I remember Jerry’s.  I can’t vouch for the accuracy of my recollection.

The Father Figure

(Or, You Can Drive It When I Need You to Get Me Something)

My dad had a new, ’71 Monte Carlo, red with black interior.  It wasn’t too sporty, having a bench seat and column shift, with Rochester 2bbl, but it was red!  I didn’t get to drive it often, mostly to the car wash and out to buy him cigarettes or something.  One day I was on one of these trips.  I stopped at a two-way stop sign, checked traffic and then proceeded to pull out.  There was an old guy driving a car from my left, and he didn’t have a stop sign.  I distinctly remember him with his turn signal on, and his front wheels angled as he started the turn. 

Just as I pulled out, he decided he wanted to go straight!  He pulled out of the turn, and I found myself stopped, with my foot on the brake, before I even knew what was happening.  I was so glad that we hadn’t hit!  Guess who would have gotten the ticket?  My dad was unpleasant enough in general, I didn’t want to imagine what he would have been like had we hit!

I don’t remember my dad letting me drive his car, aside from running the occasional errand for him.  In retrospect, this was probably a good thing.  I survived bumming rides off friends and, as immature as I was, might have done something unwise.

The ‘Car Guru’

My brothers and I all regarded our dad as “knowing cars”.  Dad would change his own oil and do the distributor rotor, points and condenser.  He got it adjusted enough to run okay, then drove it down to the “service station” and had them set the dwell and timing.  I don’t know if it ever occurred to him to buy a timing light and dwell meter himself.  It was quite some time after this before we figured out that dad really didn’t know jack about cars.  Some of the crap I have routinely fixed as an adult was waaaay beyond his skill level.  Come to think of it, I can’t remember dad ever fixing a single problem with one of the cars.

Dad didn’t have a floor jack and stands.  He used a set of metal ramps instead.  Oh, how I hated driving the car up on those!  I just knew that something bad was going to happen and we’d then have one or both ramps squished up under the darn car.  Never did happen, though.

When Dad changed oil, he’d dump the old oil in the gravel by our detached garage. Honestly, I have no clue what else you could do with it, as there was no recycling of any sort. The guy across the street dumped it into the storm sewer, but even us young guys knew that was a dumbass move. One day I did a quick guesstimation in my head and came up with a round 50 gallons or so of waste oil that had been dumped there over the years.

The Remarkable Find (x2)

(Or, Persistence Can Be Rewarding)

About a dozen years after high school, my brother mentioned a guy who was in my class.  His name was Lonnie, and he now was a mechanic for one of the local car dealers.  My brother said that Lonnie owned a ’71 Buick Gran Sport 455.  He contacted Lonnie and we proceeded to drive over to see the car, one winter evening.  The car was gorgeous.  It was stuffed into one of those old, detached garages that was built years ago when cars were smaller.  You had to go outside to get over to the other side of the car!  Lonnie told us how he used to drive by the car, which was sitting in a field.  I recall him saying that he had to approach the owner a number of times, over a period of years, before he could buy it.

Lonnie told us a story that I’m sure makes perfect sense if you knew all the details, details which I’ve either forgotten or never knew in the first place.  Anyway, somebody had the original heads (Stage 1?) from this car.  This same somebody needed work done on a car door or window.  They offered the heads to Lonnie, if he would fix the door/window!  This was prior to the Internet and eBay, so buyers for these heads would be hard to come by.  Lonnie gladly accepted, and now had the factory heads for his 455!   I haven’t run into Lonnie in all the years since.  I kinda hope he still has the car.

The High-Tech Biology Teacher

(Or, Stupid Students and their Stupid Vehicles!)

We had a biology teacher that was kind of cool.  I think he was maybe in his late 20’s at the time.  Although we didn’t address him by his first name, which was Al, that’s how I’m going to refer to him here.  Al bought an early Mazda rotary car, probably about 1972.  I think that for most of us, our only exposure to Mazda was through magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science.  As far as popular media was concerned, the Wankel was going to replace reciprocating engines, likely sometime in the 1980’s!

Back to Al.  There was an older kid with an old pickup, probably late ‘50’s.  It was only maybe fifteen years old at the time.  Anyway, he managed to back into Al’s Mazda, doing it far more damage than the pickup incurred.  It got fixed, and I heard quite some time later that something had failed in the cooling system and the thing had suffered a fatal overheat.  Poor Al.

Wankel Schmankel

I’m not sure about other countries, but in the US in the early ‘70’s, everyone was talking about the new Wankel engines.  It’s not hard to find on eBay a magazine from the era with this engine as their cover story.  Funny thing is that I don’t think that there was much discussion of the benefits of this type of engine!  I guess most people just assumed that since it was new and so different, it must be “better”.  As it turns out, there were really no benefits.  GM jettisoned their Wankel engine program.  The new AMC Pacer was going to feature this engine, OEM’ed from GM.  They had to punt at the last moment and stuff something conventional into it.

The engine is hard to make emissions compliant, is not fuel efficient, and rotor sealing, though improved, remains problematic.  I guess sometimes just being “different” really doesn’t have much value, if that’s all you bring to the table.  Hey, this is kind of like “diversity”!  Difference for the sake of difference.  That’s good, right?

The Wheels Should Be on the Bottom, Right?

(Or, Don’t Worry, the Kid Knows What He’s Doing!)

My brother, Dan, had a ’72 Cutlass he had gotten from our dad.  It was a nice car.  In the late ‘70’s we were driving on a gravel road one summer night.  I don’t recall exactly why, but I do know we were both stone cold sober.  His speed concerned me a bit, and I asked him to take it a little slower.  His exact reply, which I will never forget, was “Don’t worry; the kid knows what he’s doing!”.  You guessed it.  Not ten minutes later and he took a turn too fast and got sideways. 

I still remember the grass from the side of the road coming up over the hood, in slow motion.  We went into the ditch and landed upside down, with the top of the car crushed down on one side.  It was silent, except for a hiss which was probably a tire deflating.  Of course, our thought was “fire!”.  We were just mildly bruised and were very fortunate, since we were not in the habit of wearing seat belts at that time.  That was the close call for me, and from that day on I have always worn my seat belt, always.  When our kids were small, they were taught that the car just won’t go unless everyone was buckled.

Dan’s car was something like this. Two-door model with 350 V8. Nothing really special, but nice.

The Battle with Mom

I was constantly telling my mom to use her damn seatbelt.  She didn’t argue too much, just didn’t use it unless someone hounded her.  She did once mention some lame excuse about “what if I’m driving across a bridge and go into the water”.  Like there was any water around!  This was a halfhearted attempt on her part to deflect.  I think I told her there was as much a chance of that happening as there was me farting pigs out my butt!  (She never truly could appreciate my sense of humor; don’t know why.)

She finally met someone who could talk some sense into her, her second husband.  My dad had died decades earlier, and this was a (very) late-in-life-marriage.  They were later in an accident, where they were darned lucky that they were both wearing their belts.

The story about my mom and seatbelts reminds me of something else.  Cadillac had the wonderful “Twilight Sentinel” system that told you when to turn your headlights on.  Mom’s husband, Harlan, had long driven exclusively Cadillacs.  I was following them to a restaurant one evening (in my 1989 Mustang 5.0) and was alarmed to see that he had virtually no lights on, in the rear of the car!  It was by this time 90% dark, and he was invisible from the rear.  I do recall the headlights and/or the front driving lights being on, though.  I was not successful in getting his attention (he was in his 80’s, for crying out loud).  When we got where we were going, I ran up and told him about it.  He was confused, as his dash was lighted!  There also was a label illuminated that said something like “headlights recommended”, but he didn’t know what that meant!  As far as he could tell (dash and headlights were on), everything was hunky dory!

The Twilight Sentinel goes way back to the ‘50’s.  I must say, I’m still confused about the dash and front lights being on but not the taillights.  Why didn’t the darn thing just turn on the freakin’ lights?  Oh, yeah, this was about 2004, as I recall.

Old Meets New(ish)

(Or, We Really Ought to Race These!)

I had a friend who owned a Verdoro Green automatic ’70 GTO Judge.  This was in the ‘80’s.  We got the idea to do an informal race between it and something new.  We managed to “test drive” a 1987 White Mustang GT 5.0 automatic.  I’m guessing they had similar gears, both about 3.23’s.  We found a lonely stretch of straight road and went at it.  No timing, of course, but the GTO slowly pulled away from me in the Mustang.  I would guesstimate a 50 net horsepower difference in peak horsepower and maybe 400 extra pounds for the Pontiac.  Anyway, it was fun and eye-opening!

This was the ‘winner’, the ’70 GTO Judge with Ram Air III and automatic trans. It was indeed this color, too.

The ’87 Mustang GT automatic was a worthy competitor but didn’t rule the day.

The Clean Air Gestapo

(Or, Better Not Touch that, Buddy!)

Emissions testing came to our city, and I had to have my ’69 GTO emissions tested, after they pushed back the date range that required testing.  Seemed silly to me.  I had to tweak the carb idle to get it to pass, then I’d just readjust it back where it was.  I was upfront with the dude doing the testing that that’s what was going to happen.  He mentioned something about “someone” going to the homes of classic car owners, like me, and doing a “surprise emissions test” on the spot! I doubted him, and later came up with all sorts of reasons that would never work.  Maybe he actually believed it, but I think this is “urban legend” territory. 

The Urban Legend

(Or, I Just Missed the Buy of the Century!)

Back in the late eighties I had an older coworker excitedly tell me a car story that had been related to him.  The person telling the story (I’ll call him “Bob”, since I don’t know his name) told my coworker, Glen, that he saw a classic Corvette advertised at a ridiculously low price.  It was ultra-low mileage, to boot.  Bob called the seller, who turned out to be an elderly lady.  The story was that her son had purchased the car and had driven it for a short while before being drafted and sent to Viet Nam, where he had been killed.  His parents kept the car in the garage for years and years because they couldn’t bear to deal with it.  Now that her husband had passed away, the mother was ready to part with the car, obviously having not a clue as to its true value.

Hurry Up!

Bob got the address from the lady and headed there with his checkbook.  As he turned onto the street, he saw the Corvette, which was now being pulled on a trailer, slowly moving away from the house.  He was too late; someone else had beaten him to it!  The only problem with this story is that it never happened!  I had already heard this story was circulating, with different locations and names each time.  Had I asked Glen who had told him the story, and had I found that person, I would have learned that it wasn’t him, but a friend of his.  And so on, and so on.  You would never find the person who actually experienced this, because it’s an urban legend, after all!  (Over the years, I was told the “disappearing angel”, “choking Doberman” and “newlywed toothbrushes” urban legends, too.  Look ‘em up!)

Here’s the rare, classic Corvette being driven away from the old lady’s house, after having been in storage for decades. Trouble is, it never happened!

The Dumbass College Guys Almost Freeze to Death

(Or, At What Point Did Dad Get Smarter?)

I consider myself a halfway sharp guy; most guys probably feel likewise about themselves.  But I know that being a guy, I have this extra gene; call it the “dumbass gene”.  All guys have it.  It tends to lose potency as a guy gets older, but it’s always there.  With some guys, it actually seems to get stronger with age.

I, and a guy I knew from my small hometown, Mike, found ourselves at a junior college together.  This was some 150 miles or so away.  He had an older Ford that he named “Jerry”, after President Ford.  The car was a ’67, I believe, and this was about ten years later.

One Friday evening, probably in March or so, we decided in the spur of the moment to drive home.  So, we headed out.  No extra clothes; no food;  no water.  Way before cell phones.  Nobody knew we were driving back.  Oh, yeah!

Warning Signs? Nah!

None of the half dozen or so towns the highway went through had any size at all.    I noticed two things almost right away.  First, it was colder than shit, and windy!  It wasn’t snowing, but the fine snow on the ground was blowing.  I’d never seen anything like this, nor have I since.  That is, where the crop rows were parallel to the highway, they were holding the snow and the road was clear. 

But, where the crop rows were perpendicular to the highway, the snow was blowing in such a way as to make a total white-out for about two feet above the roadway!  You could not see the freakin’ road surface at all!  Then you came out of it instantly, if the rows were the other way, and then drove into the next one just as suddenly.  Seemed you could straddle this “line”, with one foot clear and the other in whiteout.  It was absolutely crazy.

I said there were two things I noticed.  The second was that there was virtually no other traffic on the road.  None.  We saw zero cars behind us or passing us going the opposite direction.  I looked down the main street of each little town we went through and saw not one single vehicle moving.  This might have been an indication to a smarter person that all was not well.  Not to us, though.

We proceeded on.  I remember this adventure every time I hear the Gary Wright song “Dream Weaver” on the radio, as that is the one song I vividly remember listening to on the way.  Well, the last puzzle piece to this little adventure was that the headlights on “Jerry”, the car, were becoming dimmer as the trip progressed.  I don’t think either one of us actually vocalized what this might mean.  Just as well.

Someone’s Looking Out For Us!

We were about three-quarters of the way to our destination, when we were stopped by a sheriff’s deputy.  He probably thought we were nuts.  He asked us if we had seen a grey pickup truck, as this guy had been reported as not having come home.  I remember making the comment “We haven’t seen anybody!”  He left, and right then Jerry gave up the ghost.  We had depleted the battery, which wasn’t charging due to a bum alternator.  It was going to be a long, cold walk to get to the nearest town, never mind getting home.  

The deputy noticed in his mirror that we hadn’t pulled back onto the road, and he came back to check on us.  We told him that the car had died, and he kindly offered to drive our dumb young asses to our hometown, some twenty or thirty miles up the road.  He dumped us off at the police station, which was only maybe a mile from my house.  We walked to my house and froze our asses off.  One mile.  Had we tried to walk from the car to the nearest town, we would have frozen stiff. 

Oh, Crap!

They probably would have found us the next day, in a snowbank, huddled together in a futile attempt to stave off the cold.  I don’t know what bothers me worse in thinking about that, the “huddled together”, or the being labeled as a dumbass for all eternity.  Now that I’m older, something like this can’t happen.  Yeah, I still have the dumbass gene, but my loving wife will remind me to take along a blanket or extra clothes.  And, yes, she does often remind me about the gene!

It’s been a long time, but here’s the closest thing I could find that fit my recollection of Jerry.

The Same Two Dumbasses Learn About Blizzards

(Or, The Sun Shines on Both the Wise and the Imbeciles)

So, this would have been just a couple of months later, in mid-March.  Kinda hard to remember exactly; dates don’t stick in my head very well.  But some net research showed me this must have been March 14, 1977.  Same car, same two dumbass contestants.  This time, it’s a Saturday morning, right after a huge snowstorm that blanketed a five-state area.  We decide to drive home.  After all, the storm is gone, it’s sunny, and not too cold; a nice late-winter’s day.

Well, guess what?  When a crap-ton of snow drops on an area, it takes some time to get it all removed so that traffic can proceed something like normal.  Did this even cross our alcohol-soaked minds.  Nope.  Not even once.  Well, this fact we found out.  We made it to the first small town and then had to wait until they had completed clearing the highway.  This was mostly flat land, but the drifts in town, where the highway went through, were well over the top of a semi-tractor/trailer.  This happened, to some degree, at each town we came to.  Seeing the “channel” and its vertical walls cut through each snowbank was impressive.

Ignoring the Obvious

Mike and I were making slow progress.  Then we came to the first draw that was still in the process of being cleared.  A draw is a small valley, maybe a couple of hundred yards or more across.  Not huge, but at the moment pretty snow packed.  The workers had taken down a small portion of the barbed wire fence on one side of both ends of the draw, and cars could go down the shallow ditch, up through the fence, along a farmer’s field, and out the other side.  This just bypassed the snowed-in section of road.  The ground was still frozen underneath, but kinda muddy at the surface.  I recall hopping out to grab a handful of wet snow to help clear the mud from the windshield, thrown up by other cars in our “caravan”.  I think we had two or three such bypasses.

Things were going swell.  Then, we came to a draw that was hundreds and hundreds of yards across and still not cleared.  There was no bypassing this one!  I don’t think we discussed, or had the money for, staying in a motel for the night.  We proceeded to head back to college, getting there well after dark.  I remember thinking that we had traveled all day, only to end up exactly where we had started out.

Let’s Try It Again!

We tried again the next day, still none the wiser about the situation, just having the naïve belief that “it must be better”.  Indeed, it was.  It was still slow going, and I don’t recall if we had the corn field detours this time.  Importantly, the big assed draw was cleared and we could actually make it home!

This isn’t from that particular blizzard, but it’s indicative of what cattle go through at times. It’s sad, but I have no idea what could be done about it.

This is not the same blizzard, but it’s the closest picture I could find that reflects my recollection of the snow walls we saw. I clearly remember some of the walls being at least six feet over my head.

The Great Blizzard

It would be decades later, and the power of the Internet, that taught me things about this storm that I had never known.  This had been an epic blizzard that resulted in roughly a dozen deaths and the loss of some 100,000 head of cattle! 

Just reinforces my belief that we were indeed colossal dumbasses.  Yeah, let’s go for a trip just hours after a landmark blizzard that killed people.  What could go wrong?

The Evolving Memories

(Or, You Shudda Seen My Car!)

It’s funny sometimes to listen to people recount their automotive experiences from back in the day.  The stories can be a lot like fishermen’s stories, where the fish gets bigger and bigger.  One guy, Ken, was telling me about his high school car, the make and model of which I can’t recall; Chevy, maybe.  Anyway, it was clear that he was a casual car guy.  He told me the car would lift its front tires off the ground when he launched it!  Um, yeah, right; I’m sure it would.  Must have taken a real man to control a beast like that!

This is a representation of how I think Ken remembers his car launching back in the day.

Another guy, Ray, was recalling how he was a hot foot with a “400 horsepower Trans Am”.  I think maybe the car had “400” decals that he confused with horsepower.  Either that, or he was “estimating”; don’t know.

In case anyone is confused, this is not the engine horsepower rating, it’s the displacement.

The Good Ol’ Days(?)

(Or, Dude, I Bought a Time Machine!)

It seems that most of us long for the days of youth, when things were simpler.  For some, it’s the 1960’s, for others, the ‘70’s or ‘80’s.  Yeah, even the ‘50’s!  If we’re being honest, though, we’ll admit that it’s all relative, and the “good old days” were no better or worse than today.  Still, I think it’s fascinating to look at the differences and similarities between two eras separated by decades, particularly as it applies to cars.

I feel compelled to give some unsolicited advice, particularly to younger people.  It’s this: Express interest in the life experience of older people.  If they’re willing to talk about it, take the time to do so and ask questions!  The Catch-22 is that most of us aren’t interested in this when we’re younger, and when we get older, these people may not be around anymore.  My mother’s father was in the infantry in World War One.  It would be fascinating to talk to him about early cars (he was born in 1892), the first time he saw an airplane, a tank, and what it was like in the WWI trenches.  But he died when I was still young and dumb.

It Can Be Interesting!

When I have the chance to chat with someone in their ‘70’s or ‘80’s, I’ll ask them about things such as their favorite car from the past, either one they owned or one they would like to have.  I ran into a guy who had a neighbor who was one of the few chosen to test the Chrysler turbine car in the early ‘60’s.  He actually got to ride in it!  That’s as close to this historical gem that I’m going to be able to come.

I recently chatted with a gentleman, Fred, who was in his eighties who really liked Lincolns and Mercury’s.  He said he had a ’57 Lincoln and traded it in for a new ’60.  He was disappointed with the ’60 and wished he had stayed with the ’57.  Fred didn’t like the pickup of the ’60, and found a larger 2bbl carburetor for it, which helped. 

You might remember that this part of the pre-muscle car era saw many automakers, Ford companies being prime examples, offering large luxury cars with large engines that were increasingly lower compression and fed by 2bbl carburetors.  While this must have appealed to some buyers, it didn’t appeal to Fred!  Curbsideclassic.com mentioned that the 430, which I suspect Fred had, was new in 1958, with ’58 seeing a major economic recession in the United States.  It also says that in the interest of improved mileage, 2bbl carbs were replacing 4bbls on these engines after the ’58 introduction.  Yeah, shoulda kept the ’57!

Did You Say ‘Vacuum’?

There was another guy there, that was maybe just a bit younger than Fred.  He said something about windshield wipers, when they were vacuum driven.  This was before my time.  He said you’d go down a long hill, and the increase in engine vacuum would cause the wipers to speed up like crazy.  Then, going uphill, just the opposite would happen.  He must have appreciated the electric wipers, when they became the norm.

It’s been interesting to chat with old folks about their most memorable autos, and I’ll continue to do this until I’m one of them!