Get that heap off the lawn

I have a friend in sales. Have you ever seen “Tin Men?” My friend Baxter (close enough to his real name) told me this story at least five years before the movie came out, so I have no reason to disbelieve (except the guy is in sales, so…). Anyway, Bax was working with a team selling aluminum siding in the cities and towns along both sides of the Mississippi from St. Louis to Dubuque. They drove a big Caddy that was a few years old, and they worked from a lead list. They’d come screaming around the corner in that Cadillac, hop the curb and leave it parked sideways in the prospect’s yard. Bax would go up the front steps, pound on the door, and if the first words out of the prospect’s mouth were not, “GET THAT HEAP OFF MY LAWN!” then Bax knew he had a sale.

What that has to do with a list of cars I’ve owned, I do not know, but it came to mind when the Head Lemur pointed out that Doc, Jeneane, and he have all done this exercise and rather than trying to sell t-shirts for zero commish, I might enjoy even more a stroll down that memory freeway trying to recall all the heaps I’ve ever owned. I’ve been meaning to do it since I saw the post at Doc’s, but I’ve been holding off on reading the others so they don’t unduly influence my warm memories of waiting in a frozen parking lot at 2am for my dad to come and jump start our shitty ‘52 Buick before someone froze to death. Here then are…

ALL MY RIDES

A quick count says I’ve supported global production of vehicles and gasoline to the tune of 18 cars or trucks and four scooters over a forty-five year period. I’ve also owned a single gear bike, a ten speed with multinational brakes, frame, derailleurs, etc., and my current Trek mountain bike. There’s a canoe down in the barn too, but that probably doesn’t count.

The list is incomplete to the extent that it doesn’t include at least six cars owned by significant others in the “what’s mine is hers, what’s hers is mine” category. These included two VW beetles, one Honda Civic, an AMC Renault something-or-other, two Toyotas and a partridge in a pear tree. So what could be interesting about going through the entire inventory of the used car lot that is my life? Not much.

My favorite rides were in cars not my own. They include standing on the running board of my great-grandpa’s car in the early fifties, hanging on tight to the door frame while he cruised down the county road at a thrilling (and undoubtedly sedate) speed. I also remember an experience about that same time in the rumble seat of my mother’s cousin’s pre-war Plymouth coupe. I was a pre-schooler so I’m sure my rumble seat experience wasn’t the most exciting thing that ever happened back there, but I thought it was pretty neat! As a teenager, most of my near death experiences were in cars driven by friends. There was a hot ‘57 Mercury that I rode from Madison to Champaign, Illinois. About halfway there we were seeing how fast it could go when we ran out of road on a curve. The driver held it straight line steady for a few hundred yards into the cornfield, and all we had to do was back up and resume our journey. Another time four of us were packed into a VW bug with rifles and ammunition on our way to a quarry where we intended to make loud noises and blow stuff up. Coming down a freshly graveled hill at about eighty miles an hour, Paul over steered and sent us rolling over and spinning around and around until we stopped just short of a utility pole that could have been the end of all of us. We crawled out of the windows, pumped so high on adrenalin that it was no effort to pop that thing back right-side up and admire the damage. The driver’s side had been polished down to bare metal.

I grew up before Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System was completed. When I turned 19 I joined three other students delivering a “driveaway” brand new Buick Electra from Chicago to Berkeley, two lane highways all the way. The Buick had a speed alarm feature to prevent your attention wandering. You could set it five or so mph above the speed limit and be warned should you drive too fast. Too fast? We set the alarm at the top of the speedometer, around 120mph I think, and we kept it buzzing all across the country: twenty-two hundred two lane miles in thirty-two hours… my lifetime best. The car drank gas. It would have preferred premium, but hi-test gas was like 35 cents a gallon and so we fed it 32 cent regular, saved five or six bucks between us, and dropped it off with a terrible knocking noise coming from under the hood.

The first rudimentary motorized vehicle I owned was also the slowest, a 1948 Keen motor scooter. I bought it from Carl Ruedebusch who had grown too embarrassed to ride it. It had a top speed of 15 miles per hour, and there was no way you could carry a passenger. A little tinkering to remove the governor and I was able to coax it up to thirty miles per hour or so, which made it good enough for who it was for. But in Wisconsin, in the winter, you’ll freeze to death on a scooter, so you can understand my gratitude when occasionally my dad would let me borrow his

1953 Chevy 210

The car was about ten years old when I was driving it, it was a stick shift with clutch problems and bald tires. Dad told me never to take it on the highway. Naturally, I was out on US 18 heading for Fort Atkinson before dad’s instructions were lost in my slip stream. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered the little parking brake quirk at Lynn’s house, about twenty-five miles out of bounds. I don’t remember how I resolved it, but given my mechanical aptitude, I’m sure prayer was involved. I drove the Chevy until the end of my first semester in college. I was a live at home commuter student, a situation that wasn’t very comfortable for spreading one’s wings and such. At the end of my first semester I got in that Buick and took a sabbatical leave.

In San Francisco I discovered that my lack of experience, lack of training, and general flaky tendency to hang out in North Beach coffee shops and bookstores would not advance my fortunes. In fact I quickly went broke. Out in Concord, across the Bay Bridge, up Ashby, through the tunnel, past Orinda, Lafayette, Pleasant Hill, near the Concord Naval Weapons Station I was given a room at a friend’s parents’ house. From there I lucked into a job at Dow Chemical in Pittsburg where I quickly put together enough money to get my own apartment (two bedrooms, pool, one hundred bucks a month) and in rapid succession a

1947 Indian Chief — not the most reliable bike, tough to start cold, and a leg breaker for people who forgot to retard the spark. I needed a car too, so I shelled out $150 and got an ever reliable,

1954 Chevy Bel Air — this was my main ride and got me back into San Francisco as needed and out to the factory when the motorcycle wouldn’t start. But wasn’t sexy. For sexy, I needed my

1952 Jaguar XK120 — this car cost me double what the Chevy had cost me, and it didn’t run. Between the Indian and the Jag I learned more about timing problems than I ever thought I’d need to know. It had also been stripped for racing and there was a time when I was running it with the drive shaft whirling just a few inches from my right elbow and a clear view of the road going by beneath it. It was a flooring problem. Nothing a little sheet metal wouldn’t fix. When it was time to return to school I liquidated these fine vehicular assets and caught a Greyhound back.

That fall, back from San Francisco, I had a slip of the mind and bought a 1963 Capriolo 125cc motorbike to get around on. On a flat road with no head wind I could maybe get this puppy up to fifty miles per hour. There was room on the back for my girlfriend, but riding two-up cut the speed considerably. I traded it in for a blue

1960 VW beetle

The bug looked a lot like the one in the picture. The next summer when I went off to summer camp in lovely Quantico, Virginia, I left the bug with my friend Donna who somehow demolished the front end while I was gone, but her dad and her brothers took care of the body work. I regretted the black paint job though. Looking back, I suspect they were matching paint on the new hood and fenders.

… by then I was 21 years old.

I managed to get a degree and get out of Madison with only two more vehicles processed through the inventory: a brand new Vespa 150cc scooter, and a 1952 Buick Special with a straight eight engine and Dynaflow automatic transmission. I sold the Vespa, and the Buick had an unfortunate problem with the carburetor and a little fire under the hood.

Back in San Francisco, I lived quite happily using public transportation for a couple of years, but then I was Jonesing for a car and a girl friend said she knew some people who had an Opel for sale that only had like 80,000 miles on it. That unit sat on the street until my friend Joe Funk took it off my hands. I think 180,000 miles was more like it.

I think I was going through a depressed period because I somehow found myself behind the wheel of a Ford Maverick. That didn’t last long though. I got an apartment above the all night donut store on Castro at Eighteenth across from the Castro Theater. It didn’t matter that there was always a drunk leaning on the doorbells in the entry downstairs. I couldn’t sleep anyway from the noise of the buses going by. That summer I landed a consulting contract working for the Dean and VP for Medical Affairs at Stanford so I thought with a lengthy commute in front of me, I needed a new car. I got a

1974 Fiat 128 Special with the rally engine. This was an ignorant move based on a low sticker price. The car was a bow-wow from day one. Even so, it got me down 280 to Sand Hill Road and back every day. But it sucked. Totally. I swapped it for a

1974 Toyota Corolla sedan — this was the beginning of a happy relationship with Japanese cars. The Association for Institutional Research had their meetings in Ann Arbor that year and I drove out. I think I was driving the only Japanese car in Michigan. I felt maximum transgressive. Unfortunately, a year or so later I was driving the unit up 101 near the Blithedale Exit heading north and traffic stopped. I stopped too, but the eight or ten cars behind me didn’t so I ended up in crushed beer can mode. Color it totaled. I like to think that mine was one of the data points that helped them re-think that interchange. Anyway, soon I was behind the wheel of

1976 Toyota Corolla Sedan — same car, just a little newer. Loved it.  Followed by a

1974 Ford Gran Torino — divorced dad car. What can I say. It hadn’t suffered much damage in the San Anselmo flood. This was one of the last big American hog mobiles.

1983 Nissan Pick-up — my prospects were picking up. I got picked up. I got a pick-up. What can I say. It was touch and go there for a while because the boys and I were pretty infatuated with the “Dodge trucks are Ram tough” theme song. They were only three, so they can be excused.

1985 Chevy Astro van — two dogs, 2 kids, a canoe, a lot of camping. The Astro was a good vehicle… almost a truck but not a truck. A large cooler fit right between the driver seat and the front passenger seat. Handy for road trips.

1989 Chevy Astro van — we were bailing out, equity emigrants after the Loma Prieta quake. The ‘85 had a lot of miles on it and by then I had cultivated my low maintenance/high capital cost philosophy of car consumer spending. Ironically, the old buggy had tens of thousands of miles left on it and the new one crapped out in Santa Monica when less than a month old. It was all covered by the warranty, and the van gave good service until some time later in Wisconsin it occurred to me that we all would be less likely to die on the highway and we could avoid expensive body work – touch wood – if perhaps we had a four wheel drive vehicle.

1995 Dodge Dakota Pick-up – this was it, the four wheel drive unit. Wow! Makes me realize that around this time, before the Dodge, I owned a twenty year old Ford F150 pick-up that got stuck out in the field that spring when I was planting some trees. I wonder how many other beaters are lurking just outside the boundaries of my twisted consciousness? Anyway, that F150 experience added to the weight of the decision to get a 4 x 4.

2004 Toyota Matrix — Got vanity plates: WEBLOG. Beth’s driving it now and wishes I’d switch the plates with the new

2007 Toyota RAV4 — an audio accessory for new product development. Ask me later how that turns out.

… and bring up the Warner Brothers cartoon finale music. That’s all folks.