Cars

I was going through some old pictures the other day, and several of the pictures really made me smile.  I went through hundreds of pics, nothing even remotely as sharp as the digital pics of today, but still, you can see what you're looking at.  

If you remember, a week or two ago I wrote about taking my first steps in the Gulf of Mexico near Beaumont, Texas.  Two pictures from that day are in there, as is a picture of me and my brother at our great-grandpa Sullivan's house in Murfreesboro, Arkansas.  On this sunny day in southwest Arkansas, I appear to be four or five, which would make my brother Barry two or three.  We are standing about six feet apart with a string of fish, perch I believe, between us.  What makes this photo so cool is we are both standing there in our J. C. Penney white cotton underwear.  Don't laugh, I'm sure there is a picture of most of you dressed like that floating around somewhere.

But two of the pics were of cars--the first car I ever owned, and the first new car I ever purchased.  Memories flooded me.  How much I paid for each, the number of tickets I got in each, old girlfriends whom I dated (actually there are not that many), the accidents I had in each, and the DWI incident of June 30, 1986, which is a story for another day.

I bought my first car in the spring of 1977.  I had decided, or should I say Harding had decided for me, that if I returned for my third year, there would be certain, how can I put it, restrictions on me.  Like I was on double-secret probation.  Let's be honest.  Teachers hated me.  I was a smart kid, who hated to study, was undisciplined, and sometimes missed class in order to play intramural sports.  I was a waste of talent.

But I've done ok for myself, but that is a story for another blog.  Staying home, I got a job with McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis.   I rode to work with Dad for a while, but we worked a couple miles apart in the vast McDonnell complex at Lambert Field in St. Louis.  My mother, who was working at Ozark Airlines at the time, told me one of the engineers at Ozark had a Volkswagen Beetle he was going to sell.  Two of my best friends at the time, Steve Hays and Paul Council, both had VW Beetles and loved them.  So I bought Mr. Cook's 1969 baby blue VW Beetle for $1,000.

It was a three-speed. The engine, which was about the size of a Briggs and Stratton lawn mower engine, was in the rear.  Lifting up the front hood revealed my athletic locker.  Baseball spikes, gloves, bats, shorts, windbreaker, tennis shoes, etc.  You could even put suitcases in it if needed.

I don't remember how many miles were on it.  In addition to the speedometer, it had a tach on it, which I found fascinating.  Neither one of our family cars had this feature.  As I mentioned earlier, the color was baby blue, or if you prefer, Robin's egg blue or Carolina blue.  When cleaned and polished, it was a very pretty car.  It's funny, looking back. I was more dedicated to that car than I was my studies.  Go figure.

The car had a sunroof.  I loved that.  There was a plastic crank that you turned clockwise to open.  When I had it open in the spring, summer, and early fall, which was pretty much every day, it made me think of the old Led Zeppelin song, "Kashmir."  After a nearly minute long intro, Robert Plant would start singing, "O let the sun beat down upon my face..."  Yep, that was me.

One other interesting thing about that car--it didn't have a heater.  Well, not in the conventional since.  Between the two bucket seats were two levers that moved forward and back. That was how you controlled the heat.  It seems the brilliant German engineers had designed a system for the Beetle whereby the car was heated by an air-cooled system that channeled hot air from the engine's exhaust system into the car.   I can't explain it any more than that.  All I know is once I learned how and when to move the levers, it worked.

Let's skip ahead a few years to the fall of 1982.  I am now working for Ozark Airlines in Indianapolis, Indiana.  I was staying with Mike and Nan Bohan, good friends of my parents who used to live in St. Louis.  In fact in my younger days, if anything happened to mom and dad, like dying, Mike and Nan would become my new parents.  But I was staying with them because I knew I was only going to be working in Indy for a month.

At the time I was driving a red 1975 Chevrolet Monza.  I think it was built on a Corvair chassis, which if you know anything about cars, you know is a bad omen.  I had the Bug for two years, then traded it in for the Monza.  A little bigger car, and you didn't need a degree in astro-physics to work the heating system.

When the car ran, it was nice, but it did not want to run all the time. It was time to let it go and look for new wheels.  So I started looking.  A week or so later, still living and working temporarily in Indy, I met a gentleman that the Bohans knew.  He had a 1982 Chevrolet Camaro.  Chevrolet had completely changed the body style that year, and it was sharp.  I was smitten; this was what I wanted.  The next day I went to McIntire Chevrolet in Indianapolis and looked through their inventory of Camaros.  I found one, a dark blue one, with a manual, V6 transmission and with a 2.8L engine.  I had the car picked out, but I needed money.

A couple of days later, on my next day off, I flew from Indy back to St. Louis on the first flight in the morning, or as we would say in the airline business, IND-STL.  Mom picked me up at the airport, and I took her to her office at Ozark.  I drove to the Bank of Overland, the local bank we had used for years, as I wanted to be there when they opened at nine.  Orville Morris was the President of the Bank of Overland.  I knew him. I went to church with him. I felt comfortable sitting in the waiting room of his office while he was in a meeting.

Orville arrived a few minutes later, taking his suit coat off. As I sat in the chair in front of him, he asked what brought me in.  I told him I was buying a new vehicle and wanted to borrow some money from the bank.  He asked what kind of car, and how much I needed.  Amazingly I had done my homework and knew exactly how much I needed.  "$8,000," I somehow said without flinching.  He paused for a few seconds, looking at me, then said, and I swear this is the truth, "Ok, stop back by in an hour or so and I'll have a check for you."  That was it.  No questions about down payment, how much I was making, no loan application, nothing.  It was a lesson in the benefits of having friends in high places.

I flew back to Indy that afternoon and drove straight to the Chevrolet dealership.  They had my new car all ready.  Clean, detailed, and full of gas.  I handed them a check and drove my Camaro off the lot.  I now had my first new car.

A few days later, I left Indy and drove to St. Louis.  It's only a four-hour drive on I-70, about 240 miles.  I shouldn't say this, but I am confident the statute of limitations has expired since it was 43 years ago, and I lived to survive the ordeal.  As I was heading westbound, I was on a particularly straight stretch of the interstate.  Very few cars.  I have no idea what possessed me, but I thought to myself, "might as well see how fast this thing will go."  I was 25 and stupid, so I floored it.  The speedometer began to rise, 80...90...100...110. When I was about to hit 120, I let of the gas and started slowing down, back to 65 or 70.  I had scared myself because I realized I did not have control of the car.  I was pretty much just holding on. I am sure my guardian angel had his eyes closed.  Suffice to say after that brain lapse, I never got over 90 again.

But there they were.  Two pictures.  One of my baby blue VW with my brother and me sitting inside, and one of my new Camaro, glistening in the Missouri sun in front of my parents' house.  Two pictures and a blog-full of memories.  I wish I still had both of those cars.

Be kind to each other this week.  Thanks for your kind words and encouragement.  I see a picture of a first-grade class up ahead....