Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 Remembering Thomas Murray and Car Collector magazine. 

It was great while it lasted. 

I subscribed to Car Collector magazine back in the 1990's. It was a well produced collectible automobile magazine of high quality. Unfortunately it suffered a downsizing move and a switch to lower quality paper at the end of the decade. I let my subscription run out after that. 

One of their featured authors would contribute a fiction piece every few months. Thomas Murray had worked in advertising, writing the advertising copy that was used for the Chevrolet Corvette back in the 1960's. Murray found a way to connect on an emotional level with me, though his stories were always about an earlier time. His generation of kids growing up during the World War II era. Big Bands, Swing music, and Big, Curvy cars. 

His stories feature a lot of remembrances of life during that period. The kids that he grew up with, the things that they did under the shadow of the impending storm clouds of the coming War. High school longings, waiting impatiently to grow up, later realizing how much was going to be lost in the process. Mostly concerned with unrequited love, or opportunities for romance that were never acted upon. He is always very specific with the names of his friends and would be girlfriends, it gives the writing the appearance of a real memory. He is very detailed in relating the emotions that were being experienced in that episode.

Many of his stories start out with a now middle aged man at an antique car show, inspecting the various cars on display, expressing how cars "just like these" had major roles in his youth. They are usually conflicted in their desire to acquire just the right car. Many times their spouse is along with them and she of course, doesn't get it. This gives him an opportunity to explore and explain the "why" that makes up the soul of the old car community.

His take on old cars is always personal and emotional, it centers on how a specific car is tied to memories of a certain special time in a person's life. Remembrances of certain people that were important to them. Many times it's their parents, but it also can be Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles. Obtaining a collector car from that era is a way to relive the past. To bring those memories back to life, again. 

When I read how he describes the feelings that these individuals experience, it is easy to relate to my own feelings about cars in general. 

My Grandparents never had a car of their own during all the time that I knew them. My Grandfather had quit driving before I can even remember him. My Uncle Fred had a '49 Cadillac fastback that I rode in a few times as a child. My Grandfather had bought it for him in high school. My Aunt Ann had a '56 Oldsmobile four door hardtop that she kept for 13 years. She had it repainted and reupholstered in Tijuana during one of her frequent trips to visit her relatives. At the time it seemed like she had owned that car forever, but I've owned my '96 Mustang almost as long. 

My Dad had bought a new Chevy Impala two door hardtop in 1959. It was black with a red interior. He only kept it for three years, he really didn't like it that much. He said that it was too low and was like sitting on the floor. It seemed pretty jazzy to me though. He then started his relationship with station wagons which continued throughout his entire life. His first was a '64 Pontiac Tempest, white with a red interior. With a 326 V8 I thought it was as cool as a GTO. 

Not my Dad's car, but the same color.

My Dad was never really a car guy as a such, but three things that he insisted on were a V8 engine, automatic transmission, and an AM radio! He couldn't stand a cheapie car with the base Six and three on the tree, like his brother used to buy to save money on gas.

I have a strong recollection about that '59 Chevy. I remember how we would go to visit my Grandparents, my Mom's parents, on the weekends in Berkeley. On the drive home it felt so late to me, as a young child our sense of time is so limited, we have such early bedtimes imposed by our parents. When it becomes dark outside it seems so very late at night to us. My Father would exit the freeway at High Street and we'd wait at the traffic signal waiting to turn left. The turn signal would be flashing and the indicator inside would make a loud ticking sound. It seemed so loud because the car was so quiet inside. Either I or my brother would have been asleep, but we usually woke up as the car came to a stop. That sound seemed so loud as we sat in the car in the dark. The green indicator light in the dash flashed with a steady tock, tock, tock.

After turning left onto High Street we went up a few blocks to East 14th. Street where we turned right to reach our house. Our path took us past the large production bakery building that sported an incongruous tower, reminiscent of Oakland's Tribune building. The smell from the bakery would waft over the entire neighborhood. As kids we would sneak up close enough to peek through the windows, watching the loves of bread travel down the line, like the cars that my Dad and uncles would assemble for General Motors. It always seemed that the streets were so empty as we drove along. This area would experience so much change over the years, unfortunately not for the better. But this was still the period that I felt safe and secure in the backseat with my parents seated up front. It was always a reassuring feeling, seeing them up front.

It isn't just an article in a magazine that brings the memories flooding back. Alan Jackson had a very sentimental tribute in his song, Drive, for Daddy Gene. When Alan described how his Dad let him drive the old short bed Ford truck on the dump road and how it made him feel like he was on top of the world. Then he describes how he lets his own girls drive a rusty old Jeep in the pasture by their home. It was the continuation of the circle.

Some witless reviewer criticized the song saying that it glorified under age driving. That person didn't have a clue what the song was about.

My Dad would let us drive that white '64 Pontiac wagon around the parking lot of the dented can store while my Mom was inside shopping.  He'd let my brother and I each take a couple of laps around the mostly empty lot. We'd also get to drive around other deserted lots around the neighborhood. I don't know about you, but for me this was one of my most memorable bonding experiences that I ever shared with my Dad. Working class and blue collar kids don't have ski trips and Summers at the beach house to build memories, we get ours driving down dirt roads and around parking lots. And prowling around third rate used car lots with our Dads.

My interest in old cars doesn't center on memories of the past. At least not those deeply personal ones that Murray describes so well.  

Later on, my Dad let me influence him into the purchase of a '63 Lincoln sedan. It was a powder blue sedan with blue leather upholstery. I got to drive this car while I was in high school. I loved that car, too bad it got wrecked by a drunk driver as it sat at the curb in front of our house. 

If I look at my own cars there weren't many at first. I was primarily a motorcycle guy. I do have some fond memories of those bikes. I wrote about my Honda CB160 a few weeks back. That bike was special to me because it opened up the world of motorcycles and the freedom of riding. 

Besides that '63 Lincoln, there weren't many cars that I've developed an emotional connection to.

If there is any car that has a strong place in my memory it was my '77 Coupe de Ville. I bought that car with all the hopes and dreams that I thought that the future would surely bring. I bought it for myself as a college graduation gift. It was there when I met and married my Wife, and when I started my new job down in LA. 

I've never been one to dwell in the past. I certainly don't want to try and relive it, even if that were possible. I've been fortunate to live a life that has consistently gotten better, or at least I've convinced myself of that! My 50th. high school graduation will be coming up in two years! Pretty hard for me to believe. I'm planning on attending. I went to my 10th. and 20th. reunions. I'm not one of those "rah rah best times of my life" kind of guys. Truth is, high school was tough for me, I wasn't popular with the guys and especially with the girls, and I never felt that I fit in. Like so many kids I just wasn't comfortable and accepting of who I was, but how many kids are? That's a lesson that has to be learned, sooner or later. Luckily I had a few good friends, outcasts like me, and ...motorcycles. Thank God that I'm not of those people that "peaked" in high school and everything afterwards has been a disappointment. I was glad for it to end and to move on to more adult pursuits. 

It's not that I've been super successful, like some nerd who is now the CEO of some software company. I'm not showing up to rub their faces in it. I've had a pretty good life that I'm satisfied with. I'm secure enough to allow myself to enjoy some of those memories of the past. Filtered through the gauze of my achievements and experience. 

So are there any cars that I'd like to own to reconnect with my past? Maybe, but I prefer to think about cars that I never got a chance to own. I think my interest in old cars is about building memories for the future. 

Still worth the read.

Mr. Murray wrote a book entitled "Tire tracks back", an anthology of short stories. I had hoped that they would include his pieces from Car Collector, but they didn't. Maybe we shouldn't try to relive the past, but just grant it a little smile, and sometimes shed a little embarrassed tear at a precious memory. 

In my case it's always tire tracks forward.