Cars

“Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet…”

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I saw the ’56 Chevrolet sitting at a local diner, parked off to the side as if to keep it out of harm’s way.  As a teen in the middle and late Sixties, the Belair was my dream car…my first unrequited love…just like Elizabeth Taylor looking wantonly at me from a picture wearing that light blue slip.   Neither proved to be attainable.  Both the car and Liz caused a flood of teenage hormones of Biblical proportions.  My teenage libido revved like the V-8 under the Chevy’s hood.

The car brought memories of pulling into Porter’s Grill or the Wheel-In as a teenager.   Sometimes with friends, occasionally with that special someone.  Carhops in white paper “garrison” style hats rushing out to take our orders in hopes of a good tip…”Don’t take no wooden nickels”…Ha!

Food brought on a tray that hooked on to your car door while the “Devil’s music” played from tinny-sounding speakers hung above the covered parking places. ”One, two three o’clock, four o’clock rock….”  The smell of deep-fried anything and sliced onions permeated my memories.  An “American Graffiti” moment…or maybe a Shoney’s Big Boy moment.

The car I paused to lust after was a bone stock Belair in turquoise and white and reminded me of many that I saw during my teenage years in the Sixties…except this one might have been in better shape fifty years later.  The car’s paint was flawlessly polished, the chrome smooth and shining in the bright sunshine, the interior clean as a whistle and only lightly worn.  Wow, what a beauty.  Is that a three on the tree?…nope, a two-speed PowerGlide.

My folks were Ford people for the most part right down to my Dad’s ’64 Ranchero.  My father did have a momentary lapse of judgment with a ’68 Buick Skylark.  Thankfully my brother wrecked it with no harm to himself.  Late in my father’s life, there was an Olds Cutlass but no Chevys.

People of that day were loyal to certain car brands, especially during NASCAR races.  I pulled for “Fast” Freddie Lorenzen and his Galaxie 500…the same model we drove except his didn’t have four doors.  Pulled for him until he went over to the dark side driving Dodges and Plymouths.  “Traitor!!!!”

People kept cars longer back then and had time to develop loyalties.  There were no lease plans, people of my father’s generation just drove them until they wore them out, new technologies and designs be damned.  There were still many Forties vintage sedans parked in the church parking lot on a Sunday morning in the mid-Sixties.  Even a late Thirties Pontiac, headlights still on top of the fenders.

Despite our Ford loyalty, my older cousin’s Nassau Blue 55 Belair caused me to break a few of the Lord’s commandments.  Coveting was assuredly one.  It’s tiny two sixty-five V-8 fitted with Corvette accouterments and a racing cam put out a throaty growl as it flew low down Highway 521.

Three on the floor, I did love the white knob sitting atop the shifter.  Lake pipes peaked out from under the doors and matched the chrome rims with half-moon hubcaps.  Like most young teenagers I was in love.

The only Chevy I ever owned was a more rusted than blue ’72 Chevy C10 work truck I bought for a paltry one hundred and fifty dollars in the early Eighties.  It had been old long before I bought it and showed near one hundred thousand miles on its broken odometer.  There was still a throaty roar from rusted-out mufflers, the sucking sound associated with a Holly four-barrel, and an alternator whine you didn’t get from other brands.

I was a teenager in the muscle car era of the Sixties and drooled over ’63 Stingray Split Windows, GTOs, Cobras, Hemi powered Plymouths and the like…still do.   I couldn’t wait for my monthly Hot Rod Magazine to be delivered RFD.

Briefly, in the Seventies, I owned a ’66 GTO, “Little GTO, You’re really lookin’ fine.  Three deuces and a four-speed and a 389…”  Yeah, the old Ronnie and the Daytona’s tune pops into my head but my Marina Turquoise ’66 would fall to the wayside, abandoned due to rising gasoline prices and the oil embargo.  I wish I had had a crystal ball during those days, but single-digit gas mileages didn’t cut it.

My high school parking lot was loaded with tricked out Chevys, but few Fords.  Most were for show rather than go.  There was a white ’58 with the Impala badge that rocked with a type of slow lope associated with the 348 Chevy had introduced that year.  Red bucket seats matching the red trim down the side…a beautiful car.

Unlike baseball, cars were no more an American creation than…well…apple pie and hot dogs, but we found a way to turn them into the American culture traits the Chevy commercial sang about.

Young men piecing together spare parts into cheap “rat rods.”  Jan and Dean lamenting Dead Man’s Curve or ‘grabbing their girls and a bit of money’ heading out to Drag City.  The Beach Boy’s close harmony singing about their ‘Little Duece Coupe‘.  “Necking” at The Fort Roc Drive-In Theater before a milkshake at a drive-in diner, Hardee’s fifteen cent hamburgers, the suburbs.  Cars cruising main streets on Saturday nights across America.  The ultimate car TV show, Route 66.

I never drove across America’s highway, Route 66.  The closest was the Woodpecker Trail from North Carolina through South Carolina, Georgia and Florida with its alligator farms, swamps, Spanish moss, and Magnolia trees.  Small signs posted at close intervals telling me that “the…end…is…near…Repent!”  Shops selling matching salt and pepper shakers to commemorate our travels.

Roadside pull-offs with picnic tables to enjoy homemade fried chicken wrapped in wax paper, Pepsi Colas iced down in old-style metal coolers.  Roadside treats geared toward travelers in their automobiles.  It would have been more exciting if I had made the trip in an early ‘60s Vette with either Tod or Buz instead of my family in a ’63 Ford.

Americans have a love affair with their cars, but I find that my tastes have changed.  I still pause and commit a mortal sin looking at cars from the period of my youth and wouldn’t turn down a ’61 Impala Bubbletop or an Oldsmobile 442.  A Jaguar XKE might be nice…hum.  I wouldn’t turn down the old four-door ‘63 Galaxie.

Today my taste runs toward the more utilitarian. Four-wheel drive pickup trucks, Jeeps, or a certain Japanese vehicle quite capable of off-roading.  As ugly as my Landcruiser was I still miss the ’77 FJ-40 that was stolen from my front yard.  It broke my heart when it burned.  It breaks my heart when I see one for sale and the price they sell for.

Despite my change in taste, I can still pause at a drive-in diner and appreciate an amazing old car.  Appreciate its artistic beauty and the efforts of its owner to maintain it…Appreciate my memories of past road trips and the cars that made them possible.

Intro to Route 66

Videos are courtesy of YouTube

Don Miller’s author’s page may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The picture of the ’56 Belair was taken from Pinterest

A LOVE AFFAIR

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“As I was motivatin’ over the hill, I saw Maybelline in a Coup de Ville,
Cadillac rollin’ on the open road, nothin’ outrun my V8 Ford”
“Maybelline” by Chuck Berry

It was the summer of my thirteenth year and I was in love. No it wasn’t the little brunette girl in my class with the rapidly expanding chest. It wasn’t my first true love, Sharon. She was still a summer away. I was in love with hot rod cars and the songs about them produced by The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. I could not wait to get behind the wheel of my very own “Little Deuce Coupe” with its very own “409,” race my ’63 split-window Stingray into “Dead Man’s Curve” or maybe a drive to “Drag City” might be safer. During this period, I would not have traded my issue of “Hot Rod” magazine for a subscription to “Playboy.” Okay, who am I kidding? I would have also gone to “Surf City” where there were “two girls for every boy.”

As an eighth grader I would stand all “moony eyed” watching the upperclassmen as they left the school parking lot with their souped-up cars or “No-Go Showboats.” A blue ’53 Chevy looked great dressed in metal flake blue and sporting fake wheel spinners on his rims. Too bad it had the same weak “stove bolt” inline six it was born with. A light blue under white ’59 Ford with a retractable hardtop came next. It was long and low slung, looking even lower with its shiny chrome fender skirts hiding most of the wide, white walled tires it was riding on. I think there might have been fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror and know there was a good looking brunette sitting in the middle of the front seat. Just after the Ford, a red ’58 Impala convertible appeared with a white top and matching interior. The beauty rumbled ominously as it went by, a 348 and glass packs supplying the noise. Finally, the car I was waiting for cruised by. Buck’s ’49 Ford Coupe.

Buck is my cousin and my first “man crush.” Not because he was a stud, even though in my youthful eyes he was. It was his car that cemented his “studly-ness.” Shackled in the rear, its low slung profile made it resemble “fastbacks” of later years. A blue-gray metal flake covered the outside with matching “rolled and pleated” seats on the inside. Finder skirts helped make it look fast even when it was standing still and hid matching rims adorned with shiny “baby moons.” The standard “three on the tree” had been moved to the floor and while the original little flat head was still under the hood, there was little “stock” about it. When you popped the hood twin carburetors winked at you and to quote the Beach Boys, “She’s ported and relieved and she’s stroked and bored.” Custom headers were attached to lake pipes running out from under the doors. Yes, I was madly in love with that car and never forgave him when he sold it to buy an equally “bad” ’55 Chevy. I still felt as if my parents had divorced.

Buck wasn’t my only hero. There was a man from Waxhaw who had a “cult” following among the teens and preteens residing along Highway 521. I never knew what his real name. All I knew was that he was a legend in the same manner as Robert Mitchum in the movie “Thunder Road” including the death part when he tried to cheat death one time too many and ran off a road and hit a tree. Prior to his death, “Waxhaw” drove the Highway Patrol crazy making runs through the little finger of land jutting into North Carolina called the Panhandle of Lancaster County.

You could hear him coming from a distance. Un-muffled exhaust pipes screaming in the distance would bring myself and my local friends, Mickey and DJ, out to watch. You better get there quick because “Waxhaw” was pedal to the metal in a “hopped” up ’63 Baby Blue, Ford Falcon Sprint. Belching flames from straight pipes, the little Falcon would scream past my house in a blue blur. Usually a minute or so later the siren of a Highway Patrol could be heard. Despite having a 390 Police Interceptor V-8, they just couldn’t keep up with the overpowered little Falcon. From the turn off at the Waxhaw Highway on to 521, “Waxhaw” would dare the SC Highway Patrol to catch him before he crossed the North Carolina Stateline and safety. To my knowledge they never did.

American men have always been in love with “hot” cars and the “hot” women attracted to them. In the Fifties and Sixties, a more mobile society gave rise to drive-in movies and restaurants, fifteen cent hamburgers and to a certain extent, the suburbs. With expansive back seats and drive-in movies, I would say they also contributed to a rise in the birth rate. I didn’t get my first “hot” car until 1972, a ‘67 British racing green GTO with red striped tires. I didn’t get to keep it as long as I wanted because of the Oil Embargo of 1973. With gas shortages and rising gas prices, a four barreled carburetor mated to a four hundred cubic inch engine would be replaced by an under powered, even for a four cylinder, “F’ing” Pinto for my wife and a ’53 Chevy four door for me purchased for twenty-five dollars.

I never owned another “muscle” car but I still have time. I still listen to the Beach Boys along with Jan and Dean occasionally…and dream. Maybe I can join “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena” and get a “Super Stock Dodge.” Those new Hellcats sure are nice but at my age I probably should stay out of them. For safety I probably won’t go “Sidewalk Surfin’” either.

Don Miller has also written three books which may be purchased or downloaded at http://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM