Cars I Have Known

I am driving around in brand spanking new Toyota Corolla and enjoying the smell of a new car and the feeling that I m going to get to my destination on time. This was always problematic with the Chevrolet Blazer that preceded it. I will swear that I logged more miles behind a tow truck than useful miles in the last few months before the Blazer became a trade-in. But to it's credit, the Blazer was twelve years old and ready for the big scrap yard in the sky

But this got me to thinking about the cars I have owned and how they, in a sense, reflect where I was at a particular phase of my life. For example, my first car was a 1932 Ford Model B coupe which my Dad bought for me after a winning day at the horse races. It was a perfect car for teenager who did not know anything about cars and whose sole commitment to basic maintenance was to wipe the windshield from time to time.

My second car came after I returned from Navy service after World War II ( yes, I’m that old!). It was an orange 1938 Mercury convertible. I fitted it out with twin mufflers and a set of ripple disk wheel covers. But I soon found out that putting the top down in the hot California sun was not as glamorous as it appeared in the movies.

Following the Mercury, due to demands of a growing family, there was a spate of nondescript no-character cars whose main job was hauling kids and groceries around. The brightest spot during this period was the acquisition of a second car, one that I always dreamed of but could never quite justify in my mind --- an MG-TD convertible roadster. It was sheer pleasure to join the sports car fraternity and buzz around town waving to other sports car aficionados.

But the era of the sports car lasted only a couple years until a cracked crankshaft relegated the MG to the scrapheap to be replaced by a totally unhip Plymouth two door coupe. The family car, however, continued to be succession of station wagons, an Aero Star van that leaked oil like a sieve, a Ford Explorer, and ultimately the aforementioned Chevrolet Blazer which I hoped would last forever. And it almost did, until it developed a mysterious ailment which caused it to die at the most inconvenient times. When my mechanic finally threw in the towel and told me there was no remedy, I knew it was time to admit defeat and invest in a new vehicle.

So I threw in the towel as well, in a manner of speaking, and got the most dependable, gas efficient, and prosaic car I could think of --- a Toyota Corolla. I guess that will curtail my trolling for chicks but at least I will get to where I’m going.

A Maybe Farewell to a Morning Pleasure

As I finish my coffee and turn the pages of the newspaper on the table it struck me that maybe the days of this morning ritual may be numbered. There is no doubt that the paper has fewer pages than in the past. Sections have been combined. Alongside a movie review there is a recipe for meat loaf and next to it a comparison of mats for yoga.There are fewer full page ads for anything from women's clothing to home furnishings. And the daily classified ads are reduced to a paltry four pages attached to the sports section. There is also news that another east coast newspaper had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. For a moment I almost have a panic attack.

But the more I thought of it, the more I considered that it was just another human endeavor that is headed for eventual extinction like the tintypes of old. First television news, then the computer began conspiring, with their ten second spots and blogs, to eliminate my daily routine of going out, regardless of the weather, to retrieve the paper and then returning to spend the next hour or so leafing through it on the kitchen table to catch up on what happened in the world at large overnight.

It is not likely that I will ever develop the same cozy relationship with my computer that I have with my morning paper. For one thing it does not rustle and also there is no odor of fresh ink. And if I should spill coffee or smear butter from my toast on my newspaper, I do not have to worry about what electronics I just short circuited.

Terminal Island

The island is still there under the six lane elevated bridge that connects Long Beach to San Pedro. It is a narrow strip of land which is now a forest of warehouses and industrial buildings. There is little to identify it as the summer place it used to be for my family in the early thirties. The camping site that was in the seaward side of the island is gone and probably no one remembers it but me.

I looked forward to each summer when in early August we would load up the car with provisions and camping gear and Dad would drive us to Terminal Island. He would set up two tents, one for sleeping and the other for storage and cooking. Then he would leave us, me, my Mom, and Nana, my grandmother, and return to the city where he worked as a cook. He would return on Saturday and go back to work late Sunday evening.

First thing in the morning just as the sun was rising, I would take my surf fishing pole along with the bait I had bought the night before and head for the water’s edge. I would attach two baited hooks to long leader and a two ounce sinker and cast out into surf that rippled onto the shore. I would dig a hole in the sand to hold the pole and settle down to wait for some hapless hungry fish to strike my bait. More often than not I would return to the camp site empty handed.

Later in the day I would join the other kids in the camp to play in the surf or hunt for shells or other treasures washed in by the high tide. All of that was fun but it was later after supper when the magic started. The campers would drag out their chairs and encircle the communal fire pit to gossip and sing or just enjoy the starlit sky and the sound of the waves breaking on the beach. Us kids would play tag in the dark beyond fire light and maybe toast some marshmallows as the fire logs turned to embers. When the fire finally died we would head back to our tent to sleep and wait for a new dawn.

Apricots

It's summer and as I make my way through the aisles of produce section of the super market the bins are full to the brim with all manner of seasonal fruit, peaches, nectarines, plumes, grapes, and, of course, orange gold apricots. Inevitably I am taken back seventy or more years to when I lived on Mentoria Court in Pasadena. Summer meant raiding the apricot trees that were heavy with fruit in the abandoned lot that was on the corner. It was a challenge as to who would get the best fruit --- us or the birds.

By us I mean, Ethyl, Billy, and I who were the only kids who lived on this dead end street with four houses on each side. Ethyl and Billy were older than me. I was eight or nine and lived in the second house from the corner with my mom, dad, and Nana, my maternal grandmother. It was a rather ordinary ranch style house just like the others on the street except for the house next door where Mrs. Le Ritz lived. Her house was a white gingerbread house surrounded by glorious rose bushes and an impossibly lush green lawn. Mrs. Le Ritz was a widow lady who kept much to herself and tended to her roses. She had few visitors. From time to time someone would come and pick her up. I think it was her daughter. Mrs. Le Ritz looked every inch the picture of a lady in a floral flock and big hat as she walked down the drive and got in the car. In the few years we lived there we never go to know Mrs. Le Ritz well except to say “Good Morning” occasionally. It was just that we had nothing in common.

Ethyl was Ethyl Jacobs and her father was a junkman who roamed the streets with decrepit truck and picked up scrap metal and anything else people might discard that might be salvageable. They lived directly across the street and their backyard was a treasure trove . It was great fun and adventure to scrounge through the latest acquisitions and wonder where they had come from.

Billy Williams lived at the end of the street. Billy’s father had a good job and their house was well kept and had huge front porch where we used to hang out. Billy had a marvelous talent. He had a knack for building model airplanes. His father built him a little shack where he could keep his supplies and build his models. I spent many hours there with Billy watching and wishing I had his skill.

But let’s get back to the apricots. The vacant lot did have a house that had been boarded up for years but we never got up enough nerve to try to explore the empty house. It was enough that there were four huge apricot trees that bore golden fruit faithfully each year. I have not been back there for many years. I doubt that the street even exists any longer. It is probably buried under a new freeway. But never mind, the memories are freshened each year as I stop in the produce section and fill a bag with apricot memories.