Convential Thinking - And Making It Work For The Unconventional

At almost 80 years old, my Dad is still one of the most conventional people I know. And although this can be a double-edge sword, it can be a cool thing at the right time. Being the type of guy that my Dad is, his mindset sometimes took odd turns. Especially when it came to cars. Friends and relatives compare the two of us on occasion, and they have no idea how we can be of the same blood. We're total opposites. On the right is a digital copy of one of the 1st pictures he took of me in a car back in late 1963. I was sitting on my Mom's lap in a... way for it... a late 50's Willy's sliding door postal-carrier type Jeep. Some of the vehicles that followed were two VW's, and a Saab that was one of the ugliest vehicles on the planet. For comparison purposes, one of my first vehicles was a late 60's Mustang with a modified 302 V-8. The first picture my wife took of my first daughter and I with a car was back in the fall of 1986 with our green 1971 Charger R/T. See what I mean?

Where does the cool part of all this come in? I can remember when the first Volkswagen (a sea foam green Beetle) we had got into a minor front end accident (everyone was okay) and totaled the car. The late 60's was still a time where one car per household was more than enough, but now we needed a vehicle to buzz around in until the insurance claim was settled and my parents could purchase their next vehicle (it took a long then like it does now). My grandmother on my Dad's side came to the rescue. She owned two cars (which confused my Dad's conventional thinking); she drove her 1962 Pontiac Tempest with it's economical 4-banger and lent my Dad the beautiful 1961 Chevy Impala that her late husband purchased. She hung onto the car as something to remember him by. While we only drove it for a few weeks, and my Dad really didn't like the car - but I loved it. He didn't like the fact it was so big, that it was an automatic, and had a gas-guzzling V-8. Me, on the other hand, if I had been about 10 years older at the time, I would've begged my grandmother to let me buy the car. It was so cool looking, never mind it had the 348 cubic inch W-motor between its fenders. It was probably a good thing I never had the chance to own it as a late-teenager. I probably would've killed myself driving it...

Another cool example was back in 1968 when Mattel first released their original 16 car line-up. My parents knew by the time I was five that I was into hot rods & muscle cars. I already had lots of Matchbox cars, but they never really rolled that far or that fast. I guess my parents saw ads for these better, faster toy cars on TV. For Christmas 1968, they gave about six out of the original sixteen Hot Wheels. One of the gift-wrapped goodies was the Custom VW Bug. Of course, my Dad wanted to find one that closely resembled the color of the one we owned. The closest one turned out to be anti-freeze in color, one of the rarer colors I would find out years later. That theme carried over to Christmas 1969 when they gave the Classic '31 Ford Woody model. My Dad being conventional sought out the Woody model in brown. I mean, after all, wood is supposed to be brown - not red or blue or purple. The brown '31 Woody turned out to be the rarest of color variations. Go figure...

My Dad's conventional mind-set carried to numerous other aspects of his life. It was almost like trying to follow a flow chart. For example, he almost always took back roads instead of the more crowded supposedly faster main routes. His theory was he could get to where he was going using side streets and back roads faster because they were a lot less crowded. I never found out if that particular hypothesis was true, but I did get to see way more cool cars - ranging from being parked in people's driveways to ones rotting in fields - than I ever would along a busy highway. It also gave me a much better chance to pose the question of, "Can we stop and take a look at that car?" I can say about 40% of the time it worked. 

Looking back, I wished my Dad took me to car shows or the drag strip, but at least I had a cool aunt & uncle who did. We lived fairly close to Englishtown Raceway in New Jersey when I was growing up, and my aunt and uncle never had any children, so I fit the bill of surrogate gear-head child. Car shows were nowhere near as numerous, popular, or well-attended like they are today. The best someone could hope for was a cruise-in at a popular burger joint on a Friday or Saturday night. But drag racing (or NASCAR style racing) was a different kettle of fish. Drag racing was at it's zenith in the 60's and NASCAR was really starting to gain popularity (thanks mostly to television) by the 70's. Back then, spectators could wander around the pits and actually watch top drivers work on their vehicles. It was like everyone had a back-stage pass. What really made things cool, was that the drivers and mechanics seemed to have a soft spot for a young kid who was into hot rods, muscle cars as well as the sport of racing. While other kids traded baseball cards or were into football, I followed the likes of Sox & Martin, Dick Landy, Bill Jenkins, Bill Maverick, Don Nicholson, and more. But, conventional wisdom (and safety) took over & those days are long gone.

A final, unrelated note, just wanted to give readers a heads up that the blog will not be published the week of December 26th. We'll be taking a break for the holidays and preparing for the changes that will be taking place by January 1st.

Until next time, peace out.
Dave