Month: August 2013

Last month my sister and brother-in-law did something I've been wanting to do for years: see my grandparents' old house in western Massachusetts where we used to spend alternating summers as children.

While she didn't get all the shots I might've wanted had I been there, she took enough that some comparisons can be made. And unlike I had feared, all my childhood memories had not been completely erased.

1968:

And 45 years later, 2013:

At some point over the last four and a half decades, the owners had remodeled the entire north wing of the house, adding a second garage and apparently reworking the breakfast and laundry rooms in the process.

The biggest change to the property is that the original 22 acres has been subdivided into 3 plots and there are now three houses standing where before there had only been one. Also the original, rambling, ramshackle barn that I used to love exploring has been demolished and rebuilt.

The Barn, 1971:

The Barn, 2013:

But everything else looks pretty much the same.

I'd still like to see it for myself.

Everyone has memories of their first new car, and I am no exception.

Dennis and I had recently relocated from Tucson back to Phoenix so he could attend Arizona State. We had moved in with Steve Weirauch, a cute bear of a man I'd met while in town for a job interview. (Until that time we'd been planning on simply getting a place of our own; ironically settling on an apartment complex that was about a quarter mile from where I ended up living before Ben and I moved to Denver). Steve had a huge townhouse and was looking for roommates, so we all thought it would be a great idea. It turned out that it wasn't, and ultimately led to Dennis and I splitting up (three-ways can be very, very dangerous).

But I digress…

Steve had a brand new 1983 Toyota Celica. I'd wanted a Celica for years, and driving Steve's on occasion only reinforced that desire. Unfortunately, they were out of my reach financially so a Corolla was about all I could afford from them at the time. Having reached the point that the truck absolutely, positively needed to go, and I needed reliable transportation even if it wasn't going to be my dream car, I resigned myself to getting a mom-mobile. But one night I was walking through the dealer's lot when something amazing caught my eye: a Corolla SR-5. This beast bore no resemblance to the standard Corolla; this car had Celica DNA written all over it.

The salesman told me they'd just started receiving them. I went for a test drive that night and immediately fell in love.

I went home, crunched numbers, determined that I could probably afford one without going broke, and returned the next day. The car I'd driven the night before had already been sold, but he had another in back. It was so new it still had the protective shields on the fenders and the entire interior was wrapped in plastic. This car had every available option (including a sunroof!) and was the exact color combination I wanted. It was $10,000. (Celicas were running around $15-16K.)

Getting the car was a long, drawn-out process that took the entire day—once again requiring my parents' cosignatures. Since I was in Phoenix and they were now living in Tucson, Dennis and I drove down that night (in the new car!) to get the paperwork signed.

Dorothy, as she came to be known, was an awesome vehicle: excellent gas mileage, snappy performance, great handling, and just plain fun to drive. It wasn't until Anderson came along that I'd bonded so fully with a vehicle. With only 12 miles on her odometer when I drove her off the lot, over the years she provided more than one late night adventure, took it in the ass when a drunk Corvette driver rear-ended her, and finally ferried me to San Francisco, where after repeated night-time break-ins, having a major recall repair performed, and suffering through the indignity of the City's climate slowly eating away at her paint, I finally, sadly, sold her a few years later when her exhaust system started rusting through.

That white SR-5 is still the one car that appears most often in my dreams. In the dreams she had never been sold, but rather just put into storage somewhere. I slip back into the driver's seat and she starts right up and we drive off.

And then I immediately start wondering what I'm going to do with two cars.

Unlike my best friend who lived across the street from us when I was in high school, I did not receive a brand new car (a Pontiac Firebird, no less) on the occasion of my sixteenth birthday. No, it wasn't until I was 20 and had saved up a reasonable down payment (and secured my parents' cosignatures for the loan) that I was able to finally have my own wheels.

Those wheels came into my life the summer of 1978. It was a used 1976 Chevy LUV (as in "light utility vehicle") truck. Until that time I—like most boys growing up in the 70s—had dreamt of getting either a Camaro, a Firebird, or a Mustang, but one night I had a dream where I found myself driving one of these small trucks and felt so good about it that when the time came to start looking seriously, I headed in that direction instead. We found one from the same dealer we'd gotten most of our family cars, and as I recall, the final price was something like $2800 and the vehicle had about 26,000 miles on it. This was my first major installment loan; payments were $125 for two years. This was also the first time I'd driven a stick shift, so the test drive was…interesting, to say the least. Once I got the hang of it, however, I was hooked and every car I've owned subsequently (with only one exception) has had a manual transmission.

I'm surprised I have no photos of the interior considering how anally I document everything now. But it came with a dark turquoise vinyl bench seat. After about a year or so the springs under the driver's side were gone and I had to shove a couple phone books (remember those?) underneath it to keep me from sinking to the floor. I swapped out the crappy AM-only radio it came with for a nice AM/FM cassette and a couple years later replaced the speakers, realizing after I'd done that how I'd probably been driving around all that time with blown speakers.

My mom surprised me for my birthday a few months before I moved out of the house by having the interior completely redone. The vinyl seat was repaired and recovered with a nice blue, white, and turquoise tweed fabric and carpet was installed. No more riding on phone books!

It was a good, solid vehicle. Everything about it was easy to service, and the only real problems I had were with the aftermarket air conditioning that the previous owner had installed. I had it repaired more than once, and finally gave up because it never stayed fixed. (You haven't lived until you've driven from Tucson to Phoenix for a job interview in the middle of August with no air conditioning.)

I finally got rid of the ol' girl in November 1983, when the siren song of a new car sounded…