Calling car #3

(Picture is two old friends, both of which left after my freshman year of high school.)

So, in this Blog I've given some details of the first and second car I owned, and as I just today stumbled across a couple grainy old disk camera pics of car #3, we'll share a few stories from that particular time in my youth:

Car # 2, the Datsun 610, had been involved it an accident and was a total loss. Luckily no one was hurt, but as I was still not even 15 yet the parents pretty thoroughly took away all driving prevailed for a while. Being the industrious student I was, though, I made it so hard for them to get me to and from various functions that they finally capitulated and let me get another car. Dad did, however, try a different track with this one, buying it himself so he could then sell it out from under me at any time he saw fit, just in case. I was fine with that, and car #3 was another Opel, which was good too.

unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Dad had outsmarted me with his choice of autos. The old man had at one time run a fairly successfully import auto repair business, and he chose for me perhaps the best kid-car ever, a 1970 Opel Kadet sedan, homely as a car could be and powered by the tiniest of 1.1l, 52hp motors. Seriously folks, I can carry the motor under one arm, there's one in my shop right now I had to lift onto a shelf just last week. Top speed on this car was a mind numbing 73mph, with 4 miles and a hill to get it there. Now around town was another matter, with the tiny tires and 4.11 or so rear gears this car was a hoot around town, it just wasn't a great highway cruiser. I loved the car after getting past it's homeliness, and have owned another dozen or so of them since, maybe more.

That's not to say the car was all peaches and cream. Quite the contrary, I didn't know anything about Opels back then and there are a few quirks to them you really need to know:
-Quirk one: There is a handle under the dash to the right of the steering column. Push it towards the firewall to divert air through the heater core, bull it back to maximize air flow from the outside through the two center vents on the dash. If you don't know this you may try to drive the whole winter with no heater or defroster.
-Quirk two: Opels had aluminum taillight sockets. This doesn't seem to matter much, except that 30 year-old aluminum oxidizes and renders your lights inoperative. You can fix this by pulling the battery negative wire and inserting a battery terminal brush in every bulb socket on the car. 99% of the time the lights will all work after that. Add a little petroleum jelly or if you have it dielectric grease to make it last anther decade.
-Quirk three: Those pop-out side windows are held in by tabs glued on to the front edges, and the glue breaks loose if you don't have material conditions perfect when you glue them on. Find the front edge trim from a 66-67 Kadett, it actually has a channel to clamp the front of the glass and keep it from falling out at speed.

Drove the wheels off that particular car, until an unfortunate parking incident with someone who did a poor job of parking behind me and me not being able to see exactly where they were through the frosted-over glass. Then that Opel too left my life, never to be heard from again. Shame too, I'd buy it back in a minute, it was an excellent runner with a host of (unknown to me then) rare speed parts on that little motor.

First trip on I-10

If you've been reading this Blog you may have noticed a previous post that was somewhat of a cliff-hanger. We're tracking back in this post again to my Freshman year of college, the same week after Thanksgiving that I got back to Houston just a bit later than expected.

So, there I am, getting in on Tues. morning, literally running across campus with a hand-written paper that was due the day before after 8 days of weird driving adventures. I hadn't even stopped by the dorm because my roommate was in class with me anyway, and after lunch and afternoon classes and whatnot I didn't actually get back to my room until after dinner that night. Keep in mind that there was another trip to New Orleans planned for this coming weekend as well, and it was a trip to fetch an old car at that.

That very trip was already planned out to be almost as weird as the one I just got back from. We were going to drop my roommate off at his place in Lake Charles, LA on the way, and he was going to get a ride back to school with his folks. We, my automotivly inclined friend and I, were also taking along another classmate to visit her family in exchange for lodging. That's four of us. In a Ford Festiva. Ah, the picture resolves itself...

Now, to fully appreciate the mood in the car, you need to understand as a reader a few more things abut me and the buddy I was taking along. We were both on full-ride scholarships based on academics (actually, everyone in the car was) so this was a bit of a nerdy group. I had been on the weight roller-coaster for so long, and dating the same girl essentially since 8th grade, so I wasn't much of a Casanova. My roommate was in much the same boat. My buddy, on the other hand, was one of those good looking guys who always got the girls. And there was a girl in the car, and turns out she was a cutie too.

I hadn't really paid a lot of attention to this particular gal, after all, right up until the week before I was planning on marrying my High School sweetheart. She had helped me study for a couple of exams, and had done a great job, but there wasn't much more there than a casual acquaintance. Somewhere along the line either my buddy or myself had actually taken a good hard look at the girl, though, and we had both decided she would be someone worth getting to know better. At the time I was wishing him good luck because, again, I was already spoken for. But now, on this trip, we were the fiercest of competitors, vying for the hand of the fair maiden.

I thought maybe I even had a chance. On finally getting to my room the night I got back to college my roommate handed me almost a whole pad of "yellow stickies" the gal had left for me wondering what was going on, how I was, and if we were still on for the weekend. I put the laundry away, cleaned myself up a bit, and set off to find her to make sure everything was OK still. When I finally found her she caught me completely off-guard and tacklehugged me. I'll even admit to it, a 105# girl knocked me clean over, and me at 165. Now, keeping in mind that I was a college student, with all the appropriate hormones, and I had just been kicked in the teeth by my fiance, either this gal was truly interested or cunningly manipulative, and I didn't care which. This was all making for an interesting weekend.

So, now you understand the mood in the car. I'm the underdog, the squire competing with his knight for the princess' hand. It was hard to tell how I was doing on the trip over, after all, my friend was smooth and this gal was soaking all the attention up like a sponge. When we got to her Grand parent's place, and the room assignments were doled out, though, I was sure I had lost after all. My buddy got the spare bedroom, where a new couple could talk the night away in privacy, and I got the couch. I was sure that meant I was out of the picture entirely. Sure that is until she came out and sat with me at 2am for a few hours. Ah, young love; I couldn't tell you a thing that was said that night, or what she was wearing or pretty much anything about the quiet conversation there on the couch, but I recall vividly how she smelled and how often I saw a sparkle in her eye from the reflection of the porch light through the front window.

We ended up buying the car and driving it back to Houston, though it never did do much more driving after that. I brought my other car down a few weeks later for x-mas break, and it mostly sat around until it finally got home to SD over the summer. We got pulled over just shy of the LA state line by a highway patrolman for not having taillights or license plates, but since we were heading out of his state, he let us slide.

I got the girl too. We dated for over a year then I asked her to marry me as well. We were happily engaged for almost another year until shortly before I left college and joined Uncle Sam's Canoe Club. It would even be fair to say the break-up precipitated the enlistment, but wasn't the only factor. More happy times, times that started with a couple of very weird road trips.

Teenagers across Iowa

Over the summer between my Freshman and Sophomore year's of High School, a good friend of mine moved to Iowa, the other side of Iowa. Keeping in mind that this was before the Internet and cell phones, we were still just kids, we did manage to keep in touch with the guy and my whole group of friends missed him.

Through the course of the Sophomore year, I somehow got on the hardest diet you could imagine: a bottle of Squirt soda and a king-sized Snickers bar was the breakfast/lunch of choice. At the time I was working a paper route from 5am-6am, working for the school cafeteria 6am-8am, then rushing over to go to school at 8:20. I would stop at some gas station on the way, grab the chosen "meal" and then head on to school. After school I worked another hour at the High School Cafeteria, then off to afterschool activities, then off to work 5pm to 9 or so most nights. The evening job was usually concessions of some sort, so there was food available there as well, so it wasn't like I didn't eat, I just never made time to eat.

That same fall there were two cases of students in my High School being bitten by Brown Recluse spiders, one of which was a very popular guy and pretty serious. School was even shut down for fumigation.

I also had progressed through a couple more cars that fall, a '79 Datsun 620 pickup, '83 Toyota Tercel 4WD station wagon, '66 Dodge Dart 4-door, '69 Ford Econoline, and finally a '78 Toyota Corolla by Spring Break.

How does all this fit together? Well here goes:

The school had been fumigated over holiday break, and still another student was bitten. The decision was made to fumigate again over spring break, this time with all the lockers and desks and everything throughout the school open. This, in turn, meant all the lockers had to be emptied out. By Spring Break the collection of glass Squirt bottles in the bottom of my locker had reached 200+ in # and was still growing. While SD didn't have bottle deposits, Iowa did, and all the bottles were marked for Iowa deposit refund. They were loaded in to the back of the Corolla, all 6 paper bags worth, and the whole group of us decided to meet up with our friend half-way across IA and bring him back for the break. His Mom drove his half, and I drove mine. We lucked out, because at a nickel a piece for the bottles and 97 cents a gallon for gas we were able to fund the entire excursion on Squirt bottles.

Imagine, if you will, four 16-year olds, loaded into an old car, driving on free gas, half-way across Iowa. Sure, the car didn't have enough power to get us up any hills at over 40mph, that wasn't going to stop us from passing everyone we could going down the other side of the hill pedal to the floor! One poor guy in particular played hopscotch with us for over an hour, passing us going up, and getting passed by us going down the hundreds of hills on HWY 20 in western Iowa. He was a great sport about it, and we all waved our happy waves at each passing. I think how angry I would be now f a car load of kids did that to me and I wish I knew when and how I changed. How some things sure have changed.

It was an excellent spring break, too. Great time for all of us, and a couple great trips half-way across Iowa.