Kudos to everyone who responded to the pitch for guest posts yesterday. I’ve been hearing from people during the past few weeks with generous offers of surplus posts to give me some extra time to adjust to my new job and some extra projects that are chewing up the afternoon and evening hours. Bless you!
One offering that came in yesterday was so good, the moment I read it I knew I wanted to post it today! Many thanks to today’s substitute host, Steve.
The car of my youth was a 1947 Cadillac. It was a queer choice of automobile for my family, being both impractical and costly to maintain. But my dad got the Caddie at a low price because of a series of events that are complicated and ultimately tragic, so I won’t go into them now. And although Dad was no car snob, this car appealed to the child in him.
He was delighted to find, for example, that the Caddie didn’t have a hood release in front or a gasoline filler cap in the rear. Dad would pull into a gas station and just grin while the attendant walked around and around trying to figure out how to get the hood up or the gas in.
The trick for lifting the hood was to push up on the hood ornament, which was a stylized woman with wings. When the Caddie was new we had to whack the “Ladybird” ornament pretty hard, and in later years we had to give the Ladybird one hell of a clout on her chin. Dad found that funny, too. To put gas in, the gas station attendant (I know that dates me) had to lift the right taillight assembly to uncover the filler cap hidden underneath.
1947 must have been the first year Cadillac began experimenting with hydraulics. The transmission was a very early and buggy hydraulic system. Our windows were hydraulic, but finicky, so once you put the windows down they were going to stay there for months until the next mechanical overhaul. Worse, the convertible mechanism itself was hydraulic and unreliable. Putting the top down was foolish, for the chances were more than even that it wouldn’t go back up. And then there was that night we went to the Ranch Drive-In Theater and decided to put the top down. The top lurched into the night sky until it was pointed straight up, and then it refused to move an inch either way. The outraged honking of all the cars behind us is something I’ll never forget.
The ’47 Caddie became my car to drive on short hunting and fishing trips around Ames when I got my driver’s license. And by that time the Caddie had a new trick. The engine would shut down after 16 or 17 minutes of driving. Since my dad sometimes drove the Caddie 8 minutes to his office, he refused to believe my stories of engine trouble. I complained a whole year before he tried to drive it 16 minutes and learned I had been right.
The Caddie engine shut down one lovely May day when I was out with buddies Nick and Mike. We couldn’t get it going again, and we were out in the country where I couldn’t call for help. But there was a farm house right up the hill, so we climbed that and knocked on the door.
I almost lost my voice when the door opened. There about five young men in that farm house, all looking like the most lethal biker gang on earth, with tattoos, naked chests, bizarre hair styles and black leather. These guys looked meaner than the mutant hillbillies of “Deliverance” on a bad hair day. I wanted to run away, but I had just knocked on their door. I quaked out my request for help, and this bunch of psychopaths agreed to give me a push.
You might be thinking: but you can’t push a car with an automatic transmission. Indeed, that is what everyone said. But I had just read an article in a paper that said if you got the distressed car above 47 miles an hour and dropped the tranny lever into D, she might fire up.
We got in the Caddy and the gang of escaped convicts got in some kind of hopped up truck and began pushing us. Has anyone driven country roads in Iowa? They are all covered with limestone gravel, which makes a good road unless you get up speed or try to turn left or right, at which point the gravel rolls under your tires like ball bearings. And we were on a serpentine road next to the Skunk River.
By the time we were up to 40 mph the bumpers of the two cars were sawing back and forth wildly and we were drifting from one road edge to the other, inches from disaster. When we got to 50 I dropped the transmission into gear, but nothing happened. Then I realized I hadn’t explained a “Plan B” to these leather-clad father rapers. They were still on Plan A, and their only thought was to keep pushing me faster and faster. Now the old Caddie was slewing madly from one curve to another, throwing gravel way out past the ditches. I was past thinking about starting the Caddie, for it was all I could handle to keep that old beast from drifting into a ditch. Somewhere near 60 mph the engine kicked in, and then I had to floor it to let my friendly sociopathic Good Samaritans understand that I was on my own power.
Did you ever drive a car with a quirky personality?
Trail Baboon 
Did I ever? I still do!
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More, more…..
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Tell us the story, Scott.
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Nice piece, Steve. I purchased my very first car when I was living on my own for the first time in Northfield. It was a powder puff blue, Datsun 610 two-door and I think you’ll know how long ago this was when I tell you the purchase price was $600. After a year or so, the boyfriend convinced me that I should work on the rust. So he rented a sander and we sanded down the rusty spots, primed and painted them. It wasn’t an exact paint match, but it wasn’t bad. Fast forward another year or so. By this time the boyfriend was the husband and he decided we should do this again for the new spots and the re-emerged spots. So he sanded and primed, but somehow just never got around to the painting part. In a move that I still don’t understand, he duct taped over the primed spots, I suppose to “protect” them until he got around to painting in the spring. So we drove the car around all winter, looking, as one of the kids at church said, a teenager with acne holding his breath!
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LOL! Great description!
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Part 2. Same Datsun having survived its acne stage (although never very good looking). Eventually the car developed issues with wet weather and puddles. Distributor cap would get damp and then the car wouldn’t start. (Or worse, once on the back roads of Wisconsin in a surprise monster downpour, the car actually quit while we were driving!) Sometimes it wasn’t too bad and you could pop the cap, blow on it a little and it would then start up. More often we had to string the hairdryer out the side window of the house on an extension cord to get enough drying heat.
Camping once up on Madeleine Island, it rained and rained overnight, so of course the car wouldn’t get going in the morning. We did actually have the hairdryer in the car, but we had to push the car all the way to the campground shower facility to get electricity to plug it in!
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Good morning all,
I’ve put up with plenty of cars that had problems. None had the many unique problems that your car had, Steve. Maybe the most interesting problem was with a Honda that had a cracked head on the engine. Before we found out about the cracked head we would have problems with over heating from time to time. The car didn’t over heat most of the time, so we got rid of it as a trade in as soon as we found out what was causing the over heating. We didn’t tell the dealer about the cracked head and he didn’t notice it. That makes up for the time we bought a car that had problems from being an accident that that dealer didn’t mention.
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Rise and Shine Baboons:
Well, there was the 1972 Volkswagon Bug for which “used” as a descriptor was very kind. I owned this ?vehicle? in my days of young adulthood poverty. Maybe battered, dented, scarcesly running would all describe it more accurately. The battery, which you accessed under the back seat, was so weak it regularly died. There also was no heater nor a defroster which became a problem as I travelled 16 miles across the prairie on I90 in Southern MN.
I’d always wanted a VW Bug, but this car killed the romance of the Bug.
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oh fun – thanks for the vivid pictures, Steve
and VS what fun to imagine you stringing the hair dryer out the window to blow on the car.
i had a Honda with electrical problems that no one could figure out. started fine. but when driven in the heat, even for a few minutes, it wouldn’t start again. this happened at the head of the line at the lift bridge when there was one-lane traffic across the bridge and i had about a mile of cars behind me. some kind folks helped me push the car aside so others could get by. i just wanted to sink into the Superior and die. 🙂
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i hate it when that happens
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i see what you mean dale, this is quality storytling at its finest. i was at a car show last year in spokane when my son was in the leigion baseball tournament. it was at the fair grounds and the place was full i would guess 500 cars on show there 55,56 57 chevys in their little cluster, 39 and 40 fords over there, 59 and 60 caddies over there. i was drooling. and the funny part was that once these guys got them done they either wouldn’t sell them for all the ta in china r they would let them go for a song to get the bucks together for the net project.
my classic car was the 1969 vw bus. talk about quirky… it had a personality all of its own, and i did tooi and we were regularly at odds. i used to stop and take pictures of the odometer when the numbers would line up just for the refereence factor in the scrapbook. i think i bought it with 29 ,000 on it and the first mark of 33333 was in northern minnesota and not very memorable but after that i tried to make sure the turn would be a memorable location. i was f the opinion that i would be strapped to a job that would limit my time and therfore need to get my yayas out at the ripe old age of 16-18 . i explained this to my dad and he bought it. i went to the canadian rockies at age 16 with my 14 year old brother, my girlfriend and a school buddy who had moved to salt lake city during the school year. i brought along my good ol dog dylan a lab basset who was my constant companion and went driving off into the horizon one june morning. this was the trip where i decided to make the rule that no freeways were allowed and i may have been better off pluggin that rule in after the dakota montana wyoming treck to get to salt lake city but hindsight is always 20/20. it took two weeks to get there and my friend was wonderign what had happened to us. i called to tell him we were on our way but mentioned nothing about the fact that it would take a while. we got to salt lake after seeing the most beautiful national forests ever for the first time (my family traveled to fargo that was it) and was wowed by the beauty of logan utah and the ski area of alta canyon. i did previously on the blog mention that i pulld into the driveway of my friends house and walked in the house and was alerted 5 minutes later that my dog had gone off and not returned. this little detail cost me a week in salt lake city. i was a constant figure on the streets of salt lake sitting on the roof of my sunroof opened vw hippy mobile calling out to my dog and asking each and every person i saw on the streets if they had sen a dog that was a lab basset mix , looked just like a lab but with shorter legs longer ears sadder eyes big feet and a tail that stuck straight up inn the air? no well if you do see it please call the dog catcher and he will contact me. found him a week later and have fond memories of morman tolerance for a dog loving hippy with a vw van trying to be passing through but shanghaied into the midst of joe smith country. from here we went mountain climbing in the canadian rockies with the van leading the way. the high clearance allowed me to treat it like a bilygoat jeep and we had a great time. took a wrong tunr in washington into east gulch and did a sideways slide on a downhill wet clay slope that just about did us in. i wasn’t going back that way so straight ahead was the other option, no one had done that reently so the trailblazing was interesting. i ended up blowing up the engine on that car 5 times before i was dow with it and got it declared totaled after getting caught in a snowstorm in the san bernadino mountains where it snowed 5 feet in two days and the snowplow tipped it into the ditch. i drove it for two more years (it is very freeing to have a vehicle with no monetary value to protect parking lot dings are meaningless) before moving on to a fiat convertable that needed a tuneup everytime i took it out for a drive. italian mechanics were impossible so i moved on quickly to a 73 buick riveria (i still swoon over the ducktail design) cars. i still love em. i have a volvo 1800 and a jaguar vandan plas that i covet for sunday drives there is something about a car that calls out to me. a honda or toyota are nice if having the wheels go round is the primary objective but man do i love the sex appeal of a 59 caddy. ( the 46 is pretty nice too) thanks steve.
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A car, a dog, youth, and the road west.
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I love your romantic taste in cars, tim. My mom amazed us all by buying a ’68 (or thereabouts) Buick Riviera that had a real beast of a V8 engine. It didn’t happen right away, but she began challenging high school boys at stoplights with a little blip or two from her engine. And then she would, by God, shut them down!
You’ll remember the song:
The little old lady from Pasadena
(Go granny, go granny, go granny, go)
Has a pretty little flowerbed of white gardenias
(Go granny, go granny, go granny, go)
But parked in a rickety old garage
Is a brand-new, shiny red, super-stock Dodge
And everybody’s sayin’ that there’s nobody meaner
Than the little old lady from Pasadena
She drives real fast and she drives real hard
She’s the terror of Colorado Boulevard
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Since so many baboons are so young, I should explain something in my story. Dad loved confusing gas station attendants because those were usually cocky, car-smart young men who were flabbergasted when they couldn’t do routine things on our Caddy with its secret hood release and gas cap.
In the 1950s gas stations were manned by guys who often wore uniforms, slightly militaristic uniforms. If you pulled up at a pump, the station office would disgorge one, two or three eager attendants who would ask what you wanted and then pump the gas. They routinely popped the hood to “check the oil” and inspect the cooling system. Above all, they swarmed over your windshield with sponges and squeegees, cleaning off all the bugs and road tar.
Few people now remember that. The 1985 film “Back to the Future” was closer in time to the era when little armies of service attendants awaited you in service stations. There is a scene in that film where Michael Fox’s car is swarmed over by station attendants. Enough people in 1985 remembered that to laugh out loud at this unexpected vision of older days.
When a station attendant was polishing your windshield, if he didn’t recognize you, the classic line was, “You folks come far?”
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Like many kids, I didn’t pay too much attention to things concerning the cars. I got my license on my birthday (many, many moons ago) and that very night wanted to go out with some friends. But my mom’s car (VW convertible bug) was low on gas, so my mom gave me a $5 bill and told me to go get gas first. I drove up to the Shell station and the attendant came right over when I pulled up to the gas pump. I told him to “fill it up or $5, whichever came first”. He started to laugh and then got almost hysterical. Turns out that back then, if the VW was bone dry, you could put maybe $3 of gas in it. The thought that anyone imagined that you could actually put $5 of gas into a VW was a hoot to him. I didn’t buy gas there for a few months after that.
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I remember as a child the full service stations. When I saw that scene Steve mentioned from “Back to the Future”, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing hysterically. Such a difference compared to our current glum station attendants behind glass windows. But there are a few full service stations. There’s one called Charlie Brown’s in Elk River on Highway 10. Once in a while, we’ll stop there — it’s awesome.
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Last known gas station attendent for this baboon retired a year or so ago from the former Tracy OneStop in St. Paul by Concordia University. Bob was no longer “full-service” by the time I met him, but he always did my windows and more than once told me to pull around so he could put air in the tires.
He seemed to realize I was a lone woman with a baby who could use all the help she could get.
When John Tracy finally gave in and sold to Holiday, that was the end of my days getting a free car vacuuming with my oil change, but Holiday kept Bob on as a “greeter” until he decided to retire.
I’ve since found a lovely garage in my neighborhood that takes good care of us, but now, buying gas is just buying gas.
Sad to say, I’ve never had a car that was anything but a necessary evil. I dream of ’68 Mustangs or a Mercedes 360sl, but I drive retired dadmobiles, because I “have to have a car”. Actually, have lived for many years on and off without one quite happily and look forward to doing so again. Might get a goat-cart once I get the goats, but those angoras are pretty petite.
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MiG — I also am not into cars. If it drives, then I’m good to go. However, I do occasionally get to live out my car fantasy. I end up traveling to Hawaii every couple of years for work and the rule of thumb is that the rental car will be a convertible. I always spend at least a little time on my own (without client), driving down the highway with the top down and my hair blowing loose. It’s a tonic. If the car is red, even better!
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nice!
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Wow, I’ve been so incredibly lucky with my ancient Honda Civic, Kuro-auto-sama. She has been the best little car ever–it’s only in the last year that I’ve had significant repair bills for her (radiator, muffler, windshield, resealed head gasket), but even then it could have been a lot worse. She’s never left me by the side of the road yet; in fact, the one time her battery died she did it in the parking ramp at MarsCon, and I found someone I knew before I even got back inside the hotel. She doesn’t look so good anymore–once we moved to a place without a garage, the rust started as if making up for lost time–and she’s inching up to 250,000 miles, but she’s a member of the family, and it’s going to break my heart when I have to give her up. Car disaster stories are fun to tell in retrospect, but I’m guiltily relieved I haven’t had to live one yet. Well, there was the time the accelerator pedal gave out on my friend’s wretched Chrysler Eagle in Black River Falls on our way to WisCon, and two different carloads of fans recognized my friend by the side of the road, so we had an impromptu mini-convention on I-94 waiting for the tow truck, but it (fortunately) wasn’t my car.
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CG – I had a wonderful Honda Civic, before my current car. Her name was Civetta (Italian for flirt). She was a gorgeous deep red color and I drove her for 18 years. This is why I laugh when the teenager talks about when we get our next car — current car is only 6 years old; I’m not due for another dozen years, I hope!
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Tell her a former workmate has a 1989 Civic with well over 200,000 miles on it. Can top 40 miles/gallon. Still going strong.
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maybe want to look into getting the same car with less miles on it from a southern placeseeing as you know the value. not many others have the same apppreciation as you do . may be worth an air trip to georgia or texas where the salt isn’t a factor and 100,000 mles gets the price down but you know its just broken in..
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Greetings! Fun story, Steve. In the early ’90’s, we had a 1967 Buick LeSabre — a monster tank of a car. I think it was a maroon/burgundy color, but it was faded to the primer so it had a whitewashed look. It was actually a pretty decent car for its age and it had bench seats front and back, but there were times when its battery was fussy and it would not start. Usually when I was driving it, of course. It was probably the closest thing I’ve driven to the Intimada Sherpa; because people would generally give us wide berth. We obviously weren’t too concerned about fender benders or asserting our rightful place in front of other drivers on the road — and that V8 engine was awesome!
I look back on it now with some sentimental fondness, but I hated that car when I was driving it. Living in North Mpls, that fussy battery left me in a bad spot a couple times. Besides the fact it was like driving a boat. Have a great day, all!
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When my kids got their licenses, I bought an older Ford Crown Vicky, the biggest, heaviest car I could get, a wise sort of car into which to put the young.
How are you healing? How are all the rest of your household?
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Thanks for asking, Clyde. It’s been almost 2 1/2 weeks since surgery and I’m doing well. It’s still swollen, but definitely much better. I’m walking fairly well without the cane now. It feels strong, but not ready for karate, unfortunately. We’re all doing well — just that little problem of unemployment.
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Sigh.
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Glad at least the knee is healing.
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The summer after high school before college I worked 40 hours a week and did all the farm field work. U. S. Steel shut down the Two Harbors operation in the previous fall, so my my father went to the U.P. to pipeline, and was lucky to have that. My mother also started working, but she did some of the milking of the two cows we kept and I did the rest. That year we had no young chickens and a smaller garden.
So I needed a cheap and dependable car. The father of my ex-girlfriend (was an ex at that time) knew older cars well, so he went shopping with me. I bought a 49 Ford with the flat-head V-8, one of the great Detroit production engines, at his wise advice, for $50 from an old widow. It had 165,000 miles on it, very high for the time. Ugly flat-black with that old upholstery smell from having been stagnant in a garage for a few years.
I drove that car all summer, to work, to haul stuff for the farm, to parties, to stay at friends’ cabins, and even on a date or two with a tolerant young lady. She and I would take it on roads where you would never take a decent car; no, not for that reason; we liked old roads and rummaging in old barnyards and sawmills and the like. After all these 48 years, we just became friends on facebook, my first contact with her since then.
On a flat straight road, the car could touch 65 mph. The flat-head was reliable, not all that fast.
The quirky part: 1) the only problem I had all summer was the dimmer switch broke (easy quick home repair), which is a measure of that engine and what my shopping adviser knew. You mere kids do not appreciate how quirky it was to have a reliable post WWII car. 2) BUT just as I drove it to the junkyard to make a quick dump of it in the limited time I had right before going off to Chicago after getting in the oats crop, it started burning oil. I had not added a court all summer. 3) Because of that engine, the junkyard gave me $125 for my $50 car.
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When my wife and I got married, she had a 63 Buick Special, a nice little car which a wise uncle had helped her pick out new. After close to three financially-struggling years in college, it acted up for the first time. It would not back up when the engine got hot. You had to plan your parking carefully.
But we had to get it fixed, despite the cost. So I called a place called Eddie’s Transmission Repair, just north of the U. to find out some idea of how much money we needed. Here’s the conversation:
Clyde: “I have a 63 Buick special . .”
Eddie interrupts: “$278. 63.” (I remember the exact figure.)
Clyde: “I didn’t say what’s wrong.”
Eddie: “Won’t back up when the engine is hot. $278. 63. It will take 3 and a half hours.”
Clyde: I’m a student and I will need to arrange financing. I’ll call for an appointment in a few days.”
Eddie: “What year are you? What’s your major?”
Clyde: “Senior. I’m a studying to teach high school English.”
Eddie: “Come see and we’ll see if we can work out a payment plan here.”
Which we did. But I paid it off right away with a lucky windfall. Nice crusty old mechanic with a soft spot for students was Eddie.
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don’t you love those guys. lucky up on skyline drive in duluth was a charachter you reminded me of here. i was driving with my newly aquired snowmobile and a buddy to the north country where we heard it had snowed. we had to do some tweaking so didn’t get out of the garage til midnight heading for the iron range. well halfway up 35w the lights started diming and when we hit the rest stop with the all night guy in it the card died.. it was well below zero and we had a guy with a fancy new saab that had a remote car starter that had come with the car and he said he couldn’t see where he’d ever se that so he cut of the car starting end of the cable and jerry rigged the thing to our battery ad got us started. we headed north but 30 miles or so the lights were in obvious trouble. we coasted into a motel at 5 in the mornign told the gal to wake us as soon as the service station opened and she had lucky’s new kid there waiting for us when we got to the lobby at 7:00. he towed us in and lucky told us to take the new tow truck down to country kitchen for breakfast and he’d fix the truck while we ate. ( he gave us the new tow truck because he didn’t trust the new kid to drive it) we got to country kitchen and it was a waiting list 45 minutes long so we called lucky from the pay phone and told him to go ahead we would be in in a bit going down the raod to find a different breakfast spot. we were done in less than an hour and so was lucky. voltage regulator got installed incorrectly by my buddies brother an the battery not being recharged. we headed p to orr where we had a great wekend of brandy and snowmobiling but i will never forget lucky giving us that tow truck for breakfast.
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Bet I know which garage.
Once at the U in 20 below weather, the Buick Special dropped the fan belt (only one then) just as we pulled into a parking ramp on Washington. My wife went to her job at the hospital and I went to class. I did not think the battery would last on the drive home.
Late afternoon, still 20 below, I went to a garage right there on Washington. He told me he could not get to it that day. But he said if I was lucky I could spin the belt on. He told me which way the engine turned and to put it on two of the pulleys and start it on the third (only three then) and then crank the engine. I tried three times, but it just popped off. Then my wife came. So I pushed the belt onto the pulley with a big sociology text book while she touched the key. It popped on.
I have told that story to two mechanics; neither believed me.
Only decent purpose that textbook ever served.
Can you tell it’s raining here and I cannot get out riding. But I am also getting a lot of painting done on the Mario clock for my grandson.
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Great story, Clyde! I LIKE this mechanic.
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Your tale triggered so many memories–all my HS buddies except one drove 1948 to 1954 era cars with all their quirks. The fun we had on those, especially in the back roads of Lake County for our nefarious reasons.
One drove a Cadillac, two years old, his father’s not his. The police gave him an award for being the safest teen driver, as if he dared not be.
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I haven’t had too much drama with any of my cars. My first car was a 1983 Ford Escort. Ugh. Talk about underpowered…it couldn’t stay in third gear going up Piedmont Ave. So, within a year of slipping between third, second, and first, I’d gone through a transmission. We traded it in very shortly after.
When my Dad was a teenager, he had a 1946 Oldsmobile that he dearly loved. It had a broken motor mount, so every time he made a left turn, the motor flopped over and kicked into passing gear. He’d be screaming down the streets of Cloquet swerving to the right to try and get the motor to flop back over. The ‘good’ news was that if the police starting chasing him, he was already in passing gear and he’d just outrun them. Later, he’d go to the junk yard and get a different license plate so the police couldn’t find him.
The windshield wiper motor was also gone. So Dad bolted a bar across the back seat, looped a bungie cord around the bar, through the center air vent, and around the fly wheel of the windshield wiper motor. When it rained, he would pull the bungie cord back and forth to get the wipers to work. He was actually pulled over one time because a policeman thought he was fighting someone in the front seat when he was actually just working the wipers.
When used car shopping, it’s things like this that sales folks refer to as, “It has charm.”
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Your father is of the same era as Steve and me. Cars of that era always had quirky wipers. Most used to slow down or quit when you gunned the engine.
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I remember that so well, Clyde. You would be driving in the rain and if you floored it to pass someone, the wipers would stop or nearly stop. Then when you got past them and could back off the throttle, the wipers would go made wiping to make up for lost time.
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sounds like your dad was a character tgith. why don’t you throw dale a guest blog with some recollections yourself. your stuff is always excellent.
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Hilarious, tgith. I can see it in my mind’s eye.
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i had a ford cortina from my fargo cousin. cortina’s only came from canada (maybe late 60’s) and in fargo no one was smart enough to figure out how to get parts. found the cortina graveyard in the usa and kept it going for years until the hood popped up going down the freeway going 75 mph. i had to look under the hood down by the wipers to make sure i wasn’t going to rear end anyone. then look over to the median and pull off slow. weird sensation, has happened to me twice, it would be ok if it didn’ t happen again.
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We have a 1998 Toyota Sienna van that we bought new and just turned the odometer over to 200,00 miles. It hasn’t given us a bit of trouble and I hope we can keep it going for another 100,000. Daughter wants to drive it to college in a couple of years, but we’ll see. By the way, I promised a chicken recipe yesterday. Here it is:
Norma’s chicken
Select any amount and type of cut up chicken parts. Lightly salt. Combine equal amounts of Fryin’ Magic and flour, and dip the chickn in to coat. Brown chicken in oil or butter or both. Put chicken in a heavy casserole or roaster with lid, add a little water, cover, and bake for about 45 minutes at 350 until chicken is real tender. Remove lid the last 20 minutes so it crisps up a little.
My aunt would make this with the big leghorns she raised, and it was my favorite meal as a kid.
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Sounds delicious Renee. What is “Fryin’ Magic?”
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It is a premade frying mix that you can find in most grocery stores.
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I once had a car of a species that liked to go into hibernation for the winter. It was a ’68 Ford Falcon, a little sport coupe. The heater core was bad, so it would not provide even enough heat to defrost the windshield. I insured the car from April through October and then just parked it and took the bus over the winter. The insurance company was cooperative and let me just reinstate the insurance each spring. During the warmer months of the year, it was a fairly trouble-free car, despite being over twenty years old at the time.
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i had a 60 falcon in my life and it was like the good karma car. like cozying up with an old friend. but we drove it in the winter and now that you menion it it was not overly warm. my mom traded it for an oldsmobile f85 i learned to drive a stick in. what a personality free car the olds was.
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The car I wrote about the other day – the one that blew a rod and introduced me to my knight in shining Jeep – was my first car. It was a 1978 Honda Civic of the variety that looked like a Chuck Taylor high top tennis shoe on wheels. Purchased from the neighbor who warned me that it leaked oil a bit (this got worse the longer I drove it), but it also could get 40+ mpg on the freeway. It was not a hatchback, which was sometimes a source for teasing (the trunk was tiny – about big enough for a case of….something to drink…and not much more). It was a great little car, if a bit quirky. The passenger side was rusted a bit under the door hinges, so you had to lift the door and slam it closed (this also got worse – and eventually some of my passengers took to just climbing through the open window to get in). There was an electrical short somewhere that caused the tail lights to go out when you turned on the right turn signal (but not the left). The first summer I had it i remember it started making an odd rattling sound that got faster and slower depending on how quickly I was driving – asked my big brother about it, and he said he’d look at it in a few days…well, that rattle was a very important bolt that attached an arm to the alternator to allow it to charge the battery. I discovered this late one night when out with a friend and the lights kept getting dimmer and dimmer (a little like tim and his vehicle), and eventually there were no lights and now power. Thankfully, the car stalled out in South Minneapolis, mostly walking distance from my folks’ house. Except that by this time Friend and I had the giggles something fierce. We were near Minnehaha Creek, so we decided to walk along that trail – in part because it was a pretty walk, and also because we were hoping against hope that we would find a handy park board-supplied porta-potty on the way…we did not. Which is bad when you have the giggles. At 2am. And there are no handy gas stations or other 24-hour places nearby…and you still have 2 miles or so to walk before you get home…but it was a fun little car to drive. 🙂
Thanks for the lovely homage to your family’s Caddy, Steve – sounds like a fabulous ride.
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Are you aware, Anna, of the towering irony of a JEEP driver coming to the aid of a Honda driver? I’m not sure it has ever happened before or since 🙂
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Great stories all. Thanks, Steve, for starting the flow. You sure have a wonderful knack for telling a story.
My ex had a red 1963 VW Beetle when I married him. In that car we drove from New York to Cheyenne, and that’s where I learned to drive in it. He’d take me out on deserted country roads where you could see for miles so I could get used to driving without having to worry about traffic. At first I’d be so nervous whenever a car would approach on the horizon that I wanted to pull over and wait for the it to pass. Eventually I got confident enough to take the test to get my permit. I had had my permit only a few days, when I was overcome with homesickness. I’d spent most of the evening crying and feeling sorry for myself, I wanted to go back home. When the ex got home from work at the base hospital at 11 P.M., I was a wreck. Trying to console me, he suggested we go for a ride in the car, and that I should drive.
Our car was parked about one car length behind our landlady’s 1962 Ford Galaxy, the only two cars on the quiet little street where we lived. I suggested to the ex that perhaps I had better back up first, but he assured me that there was ample room to get around Kate’s car. Well, in my frazzled state, I had the gas pedal pretty much to the floor and the car wasn’t moving. The ex reminded me that I needed to release the clutch, and was about to add, to do it slowly. Too late! The VW lurched forward at great speed, right into the rear end of Kate’s Galaxy, which I hit it with such force that it broke our headlights and got our bumper caught underneath the bumper of the Galaxy. We were stuck! By this time I was inconsolable, a complete basket case. We woke up Kate, and she came out to survey the damage in her bathrobe. We determined that there was no damage to her car, but we needed to call a tow truck to get the two cars disentangled. By the time the two truck arrived, Kate had somehow managed to calm me down a bit. The driver got out and surveyed the situation. “Hm,” he said, looking puzzled, “could you tell me how on earth this happened.” That set me off again, and by the time he managed to get the two cars separated, I had vowed never to drive again. The next day we went out and bought me a bicycle.
In that VW, we visited all the National Parks in Wyoming, and traveled cross country several times.
While at SIU, we bought the Complete Idiot’s VW Repair Manual, and rebuilt its engine. It had the peculiarities of all Beetles, and it’s heating system was not up to the task of defrosting the windshield during the Minnesota winter, let alone keeping the driver warm. It met it’s demise on HWY 280 one winter morning in 1973 on my way to work. The motor made one horrendous clunk of a noise, and it stopped dead. We sold the body for $500.00, not a speck of rust on it.
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I can attest to the greatly increased ability for the new Beetles to heat up nicely in winter. The defrosters work and everything. Nice and toasty. Almost feels like cheating that mine also came with heated seats….almost. 🙂
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I believe you, Anna, but I used to scrape the ice off the inside of the windshield while driving. Your bug probably has more power too. I can recall that we often had trouble when trying to pass a semi on a long hill, not a steep one mind you, just long. Pure agony. You didn’t dare do it where there was two way traffic. About heated seats, I don’t think there’s need for quilt, at least not in Minnesota. Your car shouldn’t be one of the places where you freeze your butt off!
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i had a propane heater in the vw bus with a big cylander like those on a bar b q ad i would light that up 1/2 before it was time to go. the car engine was warm enough but for me the propane needed to go. lots of interior window scrapes for me too. wifes got he new bug…. there are no similarities other than the body
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Afternoon everybody.
Thanks for the story today Steve. And all the car stories are great fun.
I learned to drive a clutch in the old Chevy pickup out in the fields when I was about 7 or 8. Dad would combine oats with the old John Deere 30 pull type combine and I would follow him in the pick up truck so he could dump. Side boards and a home made dump gate for the pickup box and that old #30 hopper held about 10 bushels? Maybe 15? Probably get two or three dumps in the truck before driving home to unload it.
Then my first car was Grandma’s ’67 Plymouth Valiant. No heat, doors didn’t lock, but it had the little blinker indicators up on the hood. I really thought those were cool. Thing was built like a tank. Straight 6 engine; not as good as the old Slant 6 but it did OK.
I changed a lot of tires on that including once in a tux on the way to prom. We always did re-treads. But it was no big deal; we could change a tire in 5 minutes.
Next was a ’78 Buick Skyhawk hatchback. Learned about fuel filters and changed the clutch in that car. Was a fun car and I have special memories of that one.
After that a ’82 Chevy Eurosport. I liked it for a while but it was really just a clunker and was glad to be rid of it.
Somewhere along the line I picked up a ’79 Saab 300 that was just a blast to drive! Paid $350 cash for it. Key on the floor between the seats, had to put it in reverse to get the key out I think… hood opened to the front, wipers were odd… it was just a real character car until the engine burned out. Also had an old postal jeep I bought from a friend of mine; drove it when I was measuring fields for the ASCS office. (Ag Department). Steering wheel was on the left so it drove normal although the steering was shot; you didn’t want to be going over 60 MPH or it got a little scary… I tried it once but it was – yea- scary. Would make people sea sick riding with me as we weaved back and forth across the lane. But to slide the doors open and cruise was great. I am still using the rear speakers out of that jeep.
A rock hit the oil filter and lost all the oil burning out the engine…
Now my everyday car is Ford Escape, 4 cylinder. Not much power but a decent little car.
My farm truck is a full size pickup. Dodge, Red, four wheel drive, long box, extended cab and a V10 engine. We won’t talk about the mileage. But it’s good for intimidating kids parking in my fields. Can chase them down too. …not that I would ever do such a thing. … much.
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I learned to drive in the fields at the same age, Ben, a 36 Chevy coupe that my turned into what people called Jokers, which were, like that, cars or trucks which had been turned into a sort of tractor. Stick shift, of course, with built pedals for me to reach.
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I thought you’d be able to relate to that Clyde. Thanks for your memories today!
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A Saab 300? I had a Saab 900 that matches that description. Typo?
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Oh, yeah… maybe a 900. Thanks PJ!
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sounds like all you have ever owned are cars with character. today included. we have heard about you harassing thse kids with the pick up after chasing them down. big bad ben
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Big Bad Ben… yep.
(…laughs….)
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When I went off to college I had a burning desire to drive a sports car. I read about Formula One races and just swooned at the sight of a Corvette or Austin Healey (or even, God help us, a Sprite). Then one day my dad’s business partner asked me to drive his car home, and his car was a Karmann-Ghia Volkswagen, which was an insanely expensive Italian body on VW bug chassis that LOOKED like a sports car.
I was in heaven! Reluctant to turn the car over, I parked in front of Lake Minnetonka and enjoyed dreams of owning a real sports car. Then I found out I could not get the blasted thing in reverse. I tried and tried and tried. I was so humiliated for not being able to shift my car that I even wept a bit. Then I remembered something I’d read a long time ago. With VWs of that era, you pushed the shift lever down into the car body to find reverse. Thank God it worked, and I didn’t have to call a service station to make my sports car go backwards.
That car was later stolen from a VW dealership where it was being serviced. The guys who took it used it as the getaway car in a bank holdup. I could not believe that. Well, they chose one of the only five or six orange cars in Minnesota to rob this bank. With 40 whole horses of power, this thing was not going to outrun the slowest cop car. And the storage was so limited in the Karmann-Ghia that a thief with bags of $1 bills would only have room to steal a few hundred bucks! Finally, a car left in a VW service center would presumably have some mechanical problem. I used to wonder about the mental ability of those bank robbers, wondering if they could possibly have made a dumber choice of getaway car!
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When I was learning to drive, my dad has the aforementioned maroon Lincoln Town Car. My mother’s car was the diminuitive beige convertible VW bug. Depending on which parent was available for practice, I got taken out in either car. The Lincoln was an automatic and the bug was a stick, so as you can imagine, it was an interesting learning curve. One day my dad took me driving in the bug and let me drive home from the parking lot where we had practiced. Our garage was on the backside of the house, so the route was like a big candy cane. If you did it just right, you could pull right into the garage. Well, I didn’t do it just right so had to stop to back up the car. As you mentioned, Steve, at that time reverse was over to the left and you had to grind it down to get it there. I was so unsure, was I in reverse or was I in second? I tried it over and over again. My father was never the most patient man on the planet and eventually he yelled at me to just do it. Of course I plowed forward instead of backward and crashed the passenger side of the car into the wall of the garage. The only good thing was that my mother witnessed this whole scenario from the patio and heard my dad yelling at me, so I didn’t get in trouble. It did mean, however, that the rest of the driving lessons were all in the big car until I got my license!
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i had a ghia til it rusted in half
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I had a Corvair Monza Spyder before it burned up like a flaming marshmallow.
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Unsafe at any speed.
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The early Corvairs were infamous for fatal one-car accidents on turns (the inside wheels would tuck up under on the turn). I think comedian Ernie Kovacks died in one of those. Later Corvairs were surprisingly sporty and good in turns. Mine was the last generation Corvair made . . . a real sexpot of a convertible with a turbo engine! I loved it until it burned up.
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Twenty or so years ago, my sister’s ex (a now deceased childhood neighbor), visited the US for three months. He worked the odd construction jobs in Colorado before he came to visit us in IGH. Somewhere along the way he had bought a rusted out old Karmann-Ghia, the dream car of his youth. When it was time to leave the US, he underestimated the amount of time it would take to sell it, so he left it sitting in our driveway and up to us to get rid of it. It took several ads and over a month to find someone crazy enough to want to pay for it. A year or so later, one of husband’s nephews, after a three months of living with us and studying at the U, did the same thing with a 1978 Ford Thunderbird. We have since then implemented a “no car left behind” policy.
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I had in the mid-70’s a Volkswagon Van, best and worst car I ever owned. Had the awful gas heater in the back. I built it into a sort of camper, with a table in the middle with the middle seat out. We used to go on winter picnics up and down the North Shore. Have several wonderful pictures of the kids doing this. We did lots of fun things with it, which was why it was wonderful.
Then coming home from the Cities in the winter at Forest Lake it shut down. I called a tow truck. Luckily my wife had cousins who lived right there and they loaned us a car to get home. How’s that for luck and kindness.
I called Volkswagon in Columbia Heights and told them I had a broken down 1970 Van. They told me that it had about 51,000 miles on it (it did) and that it had thrown the #3 piston. They gave me an exact prices to fix it, around $1100, plus &150 for towing, which I could not afford, but had to. Which was why it was bad.
Then I set out to trade it in at a dealership in Duluth. Had the deal closed and I was to come get the car the next day. I left the Van there (friend was along in his car). When I got there they told me that they had calculated the trade-in for 72 and then saw it was a 70, implying that I told them it was a 72. But I had made it very clear it was a 70. Well, I would need an extra $500 to close the deal. I told them to give me the keys and I was leaving. They had trouble finding the keys. I asked to use their phone and a phone book, which they reluctantly let me do. I called the Duluth Consumer Protection Agency. As it happened I knew the woman who answered. I started to tell her story without saying the dealership. She then named the dealership to me and told me to walk away. Two days later the dealership was shut down for many things, but multiple fraud and bait-and-switch issues.
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those rotten germans
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Ah, I drove a 1950 Plymouth when I first got my license, which looked a lot like this:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=1950+Plymouth+Pictures&view=detail&id=73F4687F92FB2B11D486AD7A59C2E6DDDC0D4D87&first=91&FORM=IDFRIR
Called the Tan Bomb – she wasn’t beautiful, but got me through the first couple of little fender benders.
Husband had a 62 or 63 VW beetle called Bettylou Ladybug. By 1978 when I met him, it had a viberglass bottom replacing a rotted out floor, and vacuum hoses that came up between the seats and hooked over the rear view mirror to provide the heat. To defrost the windshield, you’d just point a hose where you wanted to see and wait for it to defrost.
When our son was 14, we told him not to expect a gift car at 16, and he’d have to work and earn $ for one. He bought his first car for $75, a 91 Ford Escort that I later discovered was dubbed The Death Trap by his friends. They said it had a “hands free adjustable” seatback – if you took a full 90 degree turn the back of the driver’s seat would lie down flat, so you kind of had to be “on your toes”…
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It is fun, Barbara, to hear about how other people have names for their cars. We don’t often give personal names to the objects we use. Cars are different. My brother in law has a big white Dodge Caravan. Its name was too obvious: Vanna White. I loved the name given to her car by some woman who called in on Car Talk. She had absolutely flipped out with car lust for a Jeep Liberty. She named the one she bought “Patrick Henry.” You know . . . “give me Liberty or give me death!”
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A high school friend drove her mom’s VW bug a lot and we called it Velma Wentworth, or Velma for short. Fond memories.
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my sisters first car too. that was a good first car everything looks like an improvement from there.
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I learned to drive in a 1975 Saab 99 with a manual transmission. My dad tried to teach me how to drive the monstrous Chevy Blazer (Intimida predecessor) we had then but that was really bad for our already damaged relationship – something like VS’s experience with her dad but a lot more demoralizing. My mom took over and taught me how to drive the Saab and I loved that car. I could drive it much better than anything with an automatic. When it came time to take the drivers test though, we had a big station wagon. I think it was a Pontiac – it was one of those really big, long ’70s ones and Mom made me use that. Of course I failed on the parking! I’ve always been far more comfortable in a compact car with a manual transmission.
My second car was a ’75 Honda Civic hatchback – one of the very first ones. I should have kept it longer. I thought the engine had gone out on Hwy 60 between Mankato and Waterville but it was only the water pump. I sold it and later regretted that I’d done so.
My favorite car was my ’92 Honda Civic hatchback. I bought it off the lot at Burnsville Honda in the fall of 1992. I paid cash and drove off the lot with the car of my dreams! It didn’t have AC or a stereo, so I had to have one installed (so that I could listen to TMS, of course!) I drove it for 16 years when the engine finally gave out. It had approximately 248,000 miles on it. I can only approximate its mileage because the odometer and speedometer didn’t work for over a year. They finally fixed that problem at Wholesale Tire in Morristown but cracked the dashboard to do it. I probably put at least 12,000 miles on it that were never recorded. I loved that car. It never let me down, ever. It got great gas mileage too – with a manual transmission and no AC, it got 45 mpg in the summer months and around 40 in the winter! It took me to Grand Marais many times.
I’ve been a little funky and low-spirited in the last couple of days because our legislators are not even talking now. Yesterday I heard some political analyst predict that this shutdown could last “several weeks or months.” It sort of put me into a tailspin. I’m trying to stay positive but I miss my job. Thanks for listening.
I’ll be posting some stuff about Rock Bend soon. We’re getting the schedule firmed up and we’ll be putting some of it on the Rock Bend Facebook page (from Facebook, search for Rock Bend Folk Festival). We’re updating our website too: http://www.rockbend.org provides some links to videos of this year’s performers. Oh, and Rock Bend is still FREE, FREE, FREE and it’s still “a festival which has never been coerced, coopted, or besmirched by the proliferating greed of commercialism.”
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I love the word besmirched.
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Krista, I’m so sorry that you’re in a blue funk. I have several friends in the same boat, so I see the worries close up. Wish I could offer some realistic hope and encouragement. The best I can do, is let you and other baboons who are caught in this impasse know that you have support from lots and lots of people.
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OT – I must have clicked on something that made the type here bigger. Anyone know how to get it smaller again? You know, not tiny, just regular.
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Looks like it fixed itself.
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Not sure if I can help, but on my Mac and Safari browser, you can hold down the command key and hit the “=+” key to enlarge the font, or the “-_” key to make it smaller.
Sometimes I make the font giant when I post something – errors stand out much more clearly/ Large fonts are a proofreader’s friend.
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Excellent, Linda, that did it. (Well, with the Control key)
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Here’s a random memory…
‘Back in my day’ we never bought gas in town, we just filled from the big fuel barrel on the farm that we used for tractors and everything.
And then maybe about the time unleaded fuel became law the tax laws changed too and farmers could deduct the tax from the gallons of gasoline purchased if it was for farm use only. So that was the end of filling the car from the tank. And then also the fuel barrel nozzle wouldn’t fit in the new filler opening on unleaded cars.
Full service filling stations were about done then too. I only went to one once here in Rochester because I was dressed up for some special event.
These days Diesel fuel for ag use is dyed so it’s for off-road use only. If you’re caught with that in any vehicle on the road you’re in big trouble.
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What does “dyed” mean in relation to Diesel fuel?
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Barbara I think a dye is introduced into the fuel to give it a distinctive color. This is untaxed fuel that should never be used by vehicles traveling highways, and the color makes it easy to spot as untaxed fuel.
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