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Knowledge is not always a good thing. Esoteric. Rarified. Just plain old pointless. High school? Anyhow, I have this strange fascination with car reviews. Not the new snuff. But those older wilted beaters that the marketplace has more or less forgotten. You talk to me about a Volvo 240 and my mind will recall a few of these write-up’s and a neat little side story. A 2011 Prius? I would almost rather watch the grass grow.
After years of thinking I have some genetic quirk within the mental framework… I figured it out. I’m not nuts. Or at least not nuts in that particular way. I like older cars because it reminds me of the people I’ve known in my travels. A late 80’s Cadillac reminds me of an old auctioneer who was about to score a threesome for quite possibly the last time in his life when the water pump went out on his ride in rural Georgia. He was married then. Divorced now… and managed to keep the Cadillac going well past the 300k mark. He had no choice after the alimony payments kicked in.
Old Lincolns remind me of a mule trader named Ray Lum. He wrote a book called, “You live and learn. Then you die and forget it all.” Ray was one of the last mule traders in the South and had an amazing assortment of stories that he told the author, a folklorist, as he drove his beat up old Lincoln to the sales. One time he talked to a little old lady about a Model A that was at a cattle auction. “Have you ever ridden in the back of one of those maam?” he said in his Mississippi drawl. The lady, as cute as a button remarked, “You bet. I rode two men in that back seat before I got married.” Old Fords and Lincolns always make me smile.
Then there are late-80’s Celicas. All my brothers had one type of Celica throughout the 1980’s and it seemed like that model represented the country music of cars. It was very hard to dislike the olders Celica. Teenagers. Older couples. Even a few of the many mechanics I’ve met in my travels have liked em’. You go on carsurvey and the level of owner satisfaction for these models would make any Lexus blush. Except for the ‘one’.
This guy I knew in high school thought that all cars that didn’t have the letters VW were unworthy. He always had a boner for anything American or Japanese. To the point where he started wearing jackets with the German flag emblazoned on the sleeves. One day he said the wrong word to a friend of mine about his Dad’s Oldsmobile Trofeo… out of all things. Yep, it was stupid but then again I grew up in New Jersey.
My friend Tony, the felon that he was (he slashed someone’s throat when he was 14) decided that he would customize said VW with some nearby ice that could be used as projectiles for his project. To date whenever I see or hear about a VW, especially one that has a tailpipe the size of a rhino’s axe-hoe, I think of that car. Seeing an old Celica from that time period, usually driven by a Latino, almost always makes me remember a time period where leather jackets, jeans, and hideously bad accents were all I knew.
17 Comments on “Hammer Time: Trivial Pursuits...”
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Yeah certain vehicles always evoke a trip down memory lane. Old Subaru’s make me think of my Aunt Donna’s second husband Mac, 60s Mustangs make me think of my father, 3+3 cab GM Trucks from the early 80s transport me back to Henry Implement in NW Ohio and family vacations where my Dad would borrow the bosses truck and truck camper, mid 80s Cadillac DeVilles make me almost able to smell the cheap colone of my Grandmother’s second husband the real estate agent/property manager down in Florida, G-body sedans make me think of my ex-wife and a wild time I had in the front bench seat of one in college, and I can’t look at the F150 I still own without thinking of the first time I made out with the lady I love now. Sigh….
Early and mid-70s Chevy pick-ups remind me of the boss of the harvesting crew who was a beer-guzzling alcoholic unable to control his bladder and habitually wet himself.
What was once a wondrous opportunity for high school kids and those between jobs to reap some wealth was lost when the tidal wave of illegals drove wages down to the minimum age (and lower level due to ‘piece-work’ AND via the threat of violence by being a Gringo/Anglo despised and unwanted by an ethnic group who did not live by the “rule of law.”
The threat was real and the penalty for violating the invader’s rules could be severe.
One has to live it to understand a reality the mass media fails to convey to the USA public.
Will you give it a rest already? I come here for cars, not incoherent xenophpbic rants.
I’m not sure what obbop is saying either. However, Your own desire to not wanting to be subjected to his comments can easily be rectified by simply not reading them.
Ah the illegal aliens have ruined america rant (taking jobs, not paying taxes, etc). As Al Sharpton once said “Black people ain’t gonna do that kind of work” and the americans that would wouldn’t pay taxes either, in fact a huge number of day laboren true blooded americans don’t pay taxes and live off the system (you know the old, hey lets get married after the baby is born so medicaid will cover it (if they get married at all)), I would take an illegal who bust his ass 12-14 hours a day, just for the dream of a chance to dream that we’ve never bothered to appreciate and are in no means prepared to live without (visit detroit).
Educatordan,
forgive me, I shouldn’t have to tell you, an educator, that plural nouns don’t take apostrophes! In fact, I’m sure you know better. Steven, same goes for you (1980s, not 1980’s). David
It’s summer the kids have been home bugging their parents since June 1st, give it a rest. You remind me of my ex-wife (the Language Arts teacher) and not in a good way.
That was funny.
Grammar Police? Really? Did anyone ask? Is that all you have to contribute?
80s Buick Centuries remind me of my stepdad’s silver 85. Very nose heavy, the front end would bob up and down at the slightest provocation. But I liked the dark blue interior, and really wish we would go back to the days when you could choose colors other than tan or gray, with the occasional black thrown in for the “sporty” model.
Holtzman reminds me of the dictionaries my stepdad used to keep on the front seats of all his cars, including that silver Century…
I don’t care for any other interior colors than Tan, Gray, Black or White. I like boring.
This one was funny as hell… lovely piece, Mr. Lang!
VWs, for one reason or another, remind me of little electric fans sitting on the dashboard. Spent the better part of one school year riding to class in an old Beetle, stuffed in the back with several other kids. It was a horrible little car, still fascinated by it and hoping to find one for cheap.
I’m always happy when one of your post come up mr. Lang, you have a way of storytelling that is very catchy! And i like to read old car review because it help to clear the bullshit that some auto commentator do, i have a collection of (le guide de l’auto) from 1968 to present and sometime reading how they described the car then compared to what we know about it now is pretty funny…
For me, it’s my 1984 RX7. We bought it for the daughter when she turned 16, right after she got her license. I’ll never forget the grin, her standing in the driveway looking at it, going “Oh my goodness…”; she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She had her first traffic accident in it and was lucky; coming out of the high school driveway she lightly rear-ended another car because of fiddling with the radio at the wrong time. One of her schoolmates had her first one just around the corner, but she ran off the road, hit a fence, and the rail came through the windshield on her side.
Her friends, I’m sure, all found out what it was like to be the third and fourth passengers behind the seat in that car.
I don’t drive it as much as I should, as much as like the way it drives, just three or four tanks of gas a year. But I don’t think I really want to sell it either.
Almost all the cars that might remind me of something are gone except from car shows. But anything French from the ’60s will remind me of a wonderful year in France as a kid. Citroen DS–that was what ferried De Gaulle around. And the early to mid-60s GM, I think of them more in terms of automotive beauty than any particular memories. I suppose a Chevette might make me think of my friend David Halpern and his Chevette. He was from Seattle. He drove the thing across the country several times with his English sheep dog and the kayaks on the top. But the really big thing about that car was the wooden dashboard he made for it. Among a zillion other things, he’s a highly skilled carpenter.
Let’s put this in perspective…
In 20 to 30 years, there will be plenty of people with memories like these of Priuses and the like.
Every generation gets its own touchstones – or touchfenders.
“In 20 to 30 years, there will be plenty of people with memories like these of Priuses and the like.”
And the mid-life crisis cars that those folk buy will be EPIC.
I liked the dark blue interior, and really wish we would go back to the days when you could choose colors other than tan or gray. Spent the better part of one school year riding to class in an old Beetle.
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