My First New Car

                                                                                                                                                                                                    My first car was a 1958 MGA coupe, very cool.  The year was 1963 so the car was a used car that was really my dad’s car but, he was at sea with the Navy most of the time so I just took over the car.  I’m not going to talk about that car here or the fact that I sold it for $300 and they are worth a junk load of money today.  No, I want to talk about the first “new” car.  The first time I walked into a dealers show room and said I want that one.  What a great feeling that was.  The year was 1972.  I had dropped out of College and was working in a school bus garage during the day and playing guitar in the bars at night.  I was making enough money to buy a new car.  It wouldn’t be the Lotus Super 7 that I wanted but, it would be new and that was a big deal to me.  The car I settled on was a Honda AZ 600.  I knew nothing about the car other than it was $1,800 and that’s what I had.  I waltzed into Anderson Honda and said I’ll take one in Forest Green.  What a feeling of power and command to just order these people to hand over the keys to the car I desired.  But first, they wanted to feel the same way, so I had to hand over the money.  Everybody was happy.  The air was filled with new car smell!  I was in love.  I had a new car and I was on top of the world.  I had spent every dime I had.  I didn’t have enough to buy insurance but, I would next Friday when I got paid again.  Between now and then I would have to eat new car smell.  Four days later my birthday arrived and friends were over at my place looking to have a good time as usual and I quickly ran out of wine so off I went in my new car.  I took my buddy Dave Kay with me so I could show off my new ride.  Before I tell you about the ride I want to take a minute to talk about physics and geometry.  The Honda AZ 600 is fifty inches tall and fifty inches wide.  My buddy Dave is 6  something tall and weighs in around 250.  Did I mention that I was taking my girlfriends dog, Duke the full size Collie,  in the back seat?  When Dave got in the car it wasn’t like he got in but more like he put it on,  Like a dancer pulling on their tights.  I think the Honda folks used a Collie to determine the space for the back seat or at least that’s how it looked when the dog was wedged in there.  When I got in it was like we were all spring loaded.  If someone opened a door or rolled down a window we were gunna blow.  I know we couldn’t all breath in at once, we had to do it in rotation.  Enough of the physics and geometry.  We made it to the wine shop that also sold gas, beef jerky and chips and picked out a bottle of their finest Spinyada.  Actually we bought two gallon bottles and loaded back in the new car to head back to the party.  I didn’t think there would be room for the wine but there was.  There I was zipping along at 70 mph in the left hand lane impressing my friend Dave when I see head lights coming up fast behind me.  The car pulled out from behind and then back into my lane, cutting me off and leaving me nowhere to go but into the center strip of grass.  I kept my foot off the brakes and started to ease the car back on to the pavement.  Leaving the pavement onto the grass was a smooth transition but, at 70 mph we cover a bunch of ground in the ten to 20 seconds I spent in the grass, and it wasn’t a smooth transition were I tried to get back on the road.  There was about a 5 inch step from the grass back to the road surface and the tiny tires just couldn’t handle the bump.  We got airborne and that in itself wasn’t real bad, it was the 70 mph going sideways part that I knew was trouble.  Everything really does go into slow motion.  Scientist have shown that our brains process information faster at times like this so it seems to us that the world has slowed down.  When we landed sideways we, of course, began to skid.  Since we were in slow motion, I had time to turn to Dave and tell him, “Hang on we’re gunna roll”, and right on cue, we did.  The car rolled on to my side and, in slow motion, I began to do repair estimates in my head.  “Replace drivers side mirror, replace rear quarter panel and door skin, paint whole car……..”, then we rolled on to the roof, “Bump and paint the roof, replace radio antenna…..”.  At this point things kind of went off the rails in a big way and I just concentrated on keeping my hands on the wheel, feet on the floor and staying as limp as I could.  We rolled five times and finally went end over end once and came to a stop on the other side of the highway.  As my world began to stop spinning I was spitting the glass out of my mouth and trying to open my door which was jammed.  I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing out the drivers side window as I really began to put my shoulder into getting it open.  Finally I figured out that what I was seeing out my window was grass, the car was on its side and the chances of me getting the door open were slim.  I turned to check on Dave and he was gone, just a seat that was flattened like someone had taken a nap there.  I looked out the back window and there sat Dave.  Both he and Duke had been catapulted out through the tiny back window when we did the end over end.  Remember I described us as spring loaded.  The two of them went out the back window like  pumpkins from a pumpkin chunkin cannon.  “Dave, you OK?”, I said.  “Hell yes”, he said, “That was the best fucking accident I ever had!”  This was something coming from him, he’d been a chopper pilot in Vietnam and had been through some good ones.  His nose was broken in three places and starting to bleed but he didn’t care.  He had not been wearing his seat belt and while I was doing repair estimates he was visiting every nook and corner of the cars interior.  He had done a high speed facial inspection of every dash knob, door handle and emergency brake handle in the car.  I suppose he had thought that he didn’t need a seat belt in a car that fit so tight anyway.  He was thinking along the lines of the airbag was always deployed.  My only injury was a cut on my knee where one of the wine bottles had broken.  In retrospect we should have belted them in.  Both of us were soaking in two gallons of wine.  Duke the Collie was nowhere to be seen.  I was scared to find what was under the car.  As Dave was getting to his feet the Oakland County Sheriffs came buzzing in like wasps.  Turns out they were in a high speed pursuit with the guy that ran me off the road.  One of them ran over to Dave and took him by the shoulders and asked, “Are you all right?”.  To that Dave came back with one of the all time great answers, “Hell yes, we’re stunt drivers and we have to keep doing this till we get it right” .  This coming from a guy with blood and wine dripping from the tip of his nose,  I just put out my arms to be handcuffed.  The cops didn’t go there,  never even asked if we had been drinking, the fact is I hadn’t had the first drink that night.  I sat on the tan front seat of his car, while he took the accident report,  I was making a butt shaped wine stain and he never asked if I had been drinking.  The cops left, Dave and I pushed the car back onto it’s tires, started it up and drove back to the party.  That was the last time I drove the car.  The engine was cracked and of course the body was trashed.  The car was totaled and I had no insurance.  My first new car lasted four days.  We found Duke the Collie on the front porch of a farm house down the road quietly waiting for us to come take him home.  He got right in the car.  Love is blind.

Confessions Of A Crash Test Dummy

#1     Rosiland had never set foot on an airplane before, hell, she’d never been anywhere outside of Michigan before.  We were taking a trip out to Oregon to see my mom.  I was beginning to understand that Rosiland was a bit apprehensive about getting on the airplane.  The day before we were to leave she began to drink.  I had to do a lot of talking and hold her hand each step of the way.  I got her on the plane and was giving her the run down on what to expect and how everything worked.  This plane had headsets to listen to music and I discovered that you could also listen to the tower and the pilot.  This was very cool and I put the headset on her and told her to listen to what was going on.  I also put them on so we could listen together.  This seemed to calm her a little.  We taxied out and began to roll down the runway, lifting off and climbing out of Detroit.  As we begin a right turn I hear the pilot say, “It’s not handling right, I’m going to try to get it back to the field”.  “Do you want emergency equipment on the field?”,  replied the tower.  “affirmative” said the pilot in the cool pilot voice that was definitely stressed to the max.  I looked at Rosiland and she was smiling and nodding her head and I though “What the @#%!! we’re gunna die and you’re lovin’ it”.  I’m totally puckered at this point but trying not to let on that I am quietly peeing myself so I won’t scare Rosiland.  The moments pass, and pass, and, nothing happens.  We just keep flying and it takes me a moment to realize that the headset is tuned to the tower and everyone they are talking to.  The pilot I was hearing was not our pilot but the small plane that was attempting to take off just after us.  He got bounced around in our jet wash.  I told Rosiland that we were not in any danger after all.  She said, “What are you talking about?  Something wrong?”.  She had changed the channel to a rock n roll station just before we took off.  “Flying is much more fun than I thought it would be”  she bubbled.  I ordered the first of several drinks.

#2    I was flying into Washington International as it was known then.  It was a night flight and the snow was heavy as we began our approach.  I was a young Marine in uniform sitting next to an Army helicopter pilot with his arm in one of those cast that stick straight out from the shoulder and have the 45 degree brace to the hip.  Across the aisle was a sailor and the rest of the plane was filled with blue hairs on some kind of field trip from the home.  My buddy Bob the American Airlines pilot told me later that the approach we were on is widely regarded as the most dangerous in the country.  You come down the Potomac River and make a hard 180 degree turn to the runway.  This night was a bouncy one.  The chopper pilot was nervous as hell and that wasn’t helping me maintain my composure any either.  We hit the runway hard but just on one wheel.  We bounced to the other wheel and began to slide sideways in the snow.  Army and I were just gritting our teeth and holding on.  But the sailor, had it together.  He coolly turns and shouts down the aisle to the blue hairs, “Everybody slide your feet!”  That’s all I needed to hear, we  busted up laughing.  The flight attendants didn’t think it was too funny.

#3    I was sitting on the canvas bench seat of a CH 46 staring at Cpl Martin across the aisle staring back at me.  We were somewhere over the jungle around Khe Sanh when something went real wrong with the aircraft.  Something took out one of the two rotors and we began to spin.  Without both rotors counter rotating this was going to get ugly.  We were around 500 feet and going down.  All the Marines were pinned to the sides of the chopper like some Tilt a Whirl from hell.  Martin and I locked eyes as we lost altitude at a sickening rate.  Then, Wham,  I was driven down in my seat like a human pile driver.  As the dust settled and the blades wound down we got the hell off and set up a defensive perimeter around the wreck.  Everyone was OK though I have back problems to this day.  With in the hour a huge helicopter called a Sky Crane came out and picked up the CH 46 and left.  No one came to get us, we had to walk.  I don’t know what a helicopter cost but I now know it is more valuable than a Marine.

#4    Rosilands dad owned a body shop in Detroit so when my car committed suicide he gave us the shop loaner.  It was a big Bonneville that weighed a few tons I’m sure.  It was a good thing gas was cheap back then because this thing was the biggest tank you could legally drive on a public highway.  We crested a big hill north of Detroit and ,much to my amusement, as I touched the brake it went right to the floor.  In front of me lay a long street with woods on the left and houses on the right ending with a T turn.  The cross street that formed the T was a four lane with heavy traffic moving around 45 mph.  I had to stop this thing so the first thing I did was start hitting mail boxes but I seemed to pick up speed with each post snapped.  I veered to the left and began taking out small trees at the edge of the woods.  The heavy monster just kept gaining momentum and the cross traffic was upon us.  Rosiland, being a resourceful girl and what you might refer to as a self-starter, decided that if we turned off the motor we would stop.  There wasn’t enough time to tell me what she planned to do, she just reached over and turned the key.  Motor stopped…so did power steering.  If you ever get a chance to drive a 70’s Bonneville with no power steering you will find that you have to brace your butt against the roof to get enough muscle on the wheel to turn…and that’s the position I was in as we plowed through four lanes of traffic.  I’m not sure how it happened but, we didn’t hit anyone.  We brushed the dust off a couple car fenders but hit nothing.  The big Bonneville rolled to a stop on the side of the road where we sat laughing like the insane people we had just become.  We left the thing on the side of the road and never went back for it.

#5    It was very cold in the Michigan farm country where I was driving Sam’s 67 Chevy Biscayne.  There had been a blizzard the day before and the snow was still blowing around in the strong winds.  One minute the sky would be clear blue and the next minute your world would turn white with powder.  So, there I was on a back road trying to keep my momentum up so I wouldn’t get stuck when I see the snow blowing across the road ahead.  It was so thick that it looked almost solid.  I increased my speed to about 40 mph.  It was solid.  It was about a 12 foot snow drift and with a “Frump” kind of sound I found myself in it.   The car had come to a stop and the windows were completely covered with snow.  I tried to open the door, no go.  I rolled down the window and found that the snow on the window stayed in place because it was many feet thick.  First I laughed at what had happened but then I thought of the big Michigan snow plow slamming into the drift with me in it.  Sam’s car was an automatic.  I began to slam it in Drive and Reverse over and over again.  The process took about fifteen minutes but I did finally punch out of the other side of the drift.  I probably should have told Sam to have his transmission checked.

#6    I was driving my Austin Mini Cooper S from Detroit to Stuart Florida, which should get me in the Guinness Book somehow all on its own.   The car in the picture isn’t mine, my car was primer grey and had an exhaust leak that vented only into the passenger compartment.  By the time I got to Atlanta my eye color did match the Mini in the picture and I was more than pretty buzzed.  I crested a hill (does this sound familiar?) and found traffic at a stop on I 75.  I jammed on the brake and tried to down shift but nothing worked.  The brake pedal was rock hard but no brakes, the clutch pedal was rock hard but no clutch.  Traffic was stopped because road work was being done.  There was a big dirt field to my right that was filled with those saw horses with the blinking yellow lights on them.  That field was the only option as far as a place to go so in I went still doing 70 something mph.  The only way left to get the little bugger stopped now was to get it sideways and scrub off the speed.  I pulled the hand brake and threw the wheel over hard spinning it into endless donuts through the saw horses and dirt.  I’m sure the little car just disappeared in the cloud of dust and flying saw horses.  Very impressive to the amazed drivers back on the road.  The car stopped and I got out and just sat on the front fender until I regained my composure.  When I began looking for a reason these things had happened, what I found scared me.  The brakes and the clutch are two separate hydraulic systems that use rubber hoses.  The inner wall of two hoses on two different systems had collapsed creating a one way valve in the brakes and clutch at the same time.  When I thought of what the odds were of that happening I began to think that it was my time to die and I had somehow cheated death.  I spent the rest of the trip suffering from major paranoia.  With the use of a wire coat hanger I was able to ream out the clutch hose enabling me to shift again but, the brakes were done.  I drove the rest of the way using the hand brake and hanging my head out the window for the necessary oxygen to think clearly.

You know I could go on and on with these crashes (see My First New Car) but I guess my point here is that we end up laughing at any crash we walk away from.  In the morning when I get out of bed, if I do, and I feel the little pains of my first movements, I have to remind myself of how those pains got there and how much fun it was getting them, then it’s coffee time.

Perfect Day

I wake to the sound of the rain about an hour before dawn and looking outside I see it’s also pea soup fog and I think to myself, “Perfect”.  I’ve been getting ready for this day for eight and a half years.  For all that time I’ve had one day in mind.  Today it will happen.  The garage is quite and dark and the car is waiting for me.  Today is the cars day too.  I haven’t finished my first cup of coffee yet as I climb into the seat and settle in.  Pull out the choke and fire it up, let it warm up a bit as I ease the choke back in a bit.  She is a vintage British sports car and she goes racing today.  Backing out of the garage the rain begins to stream off the green paint and she is back in her element, fine English weather, on a Tennessee mountain top.  My son is now up too and getting the last of our gear loaded for the short trip ahead.  He will be driving with me today.  At only fifteen years old, he’s still driving on his learners permit but, he is a seasoned driver.  He began racing Karts at the age of eight.  I drove him to school every day in our MGB roadster and gave it to him when he got his permit.  Normally he would be racing his roadster and I would be in the GT but, his car needs some work on the brakes so, we will both drive the MGBGTS.  We will compete in an Autocross.  This is a race against the clock through a course laid out with highway cones.  This type of racing stresses precision car control.  In a road race you typically take advantage of any mistake the car in front of you makes.  In an autocross, the “car in front of you” is the clock and it never, never makes a mistake.  Today we each will have only six runs, six chances to make as few mistakes as possible and shave off another thousandth of a second.  We will be a two driver car, switching drivers with each run but, today is a special day and I want to drive the first run by myself.  On second thought, I realize that it is special for the whole family and allow my son to ride along.  We arrive at the start line and the starter says, “When ever you’re ready”.  I press the pedal to the floor, the supercharger jams fuel and air into the cylinders and the car jumps through the start lights.  First gear last only seconds before we hit 7000 rpm and shift to second just in time to stand on the brake enough to sail through the first corner.  It’s a decreasing radius but, I hit my apex well and am set up for the offset Chicago Box to follow.  Back on the gas still in second gear the car sets me back in the seat.  The box is behind me before I know it and the next nintey degree right hander is rushing at me, I miss the apex by a couple feet.  My momentum takes  me to the outer edge of the course and I feel like I brush the cones there.  Each cone struck is a one second penelty where thousandths decide first place from third.  No time to glance in the mirrors the next right is here and the apex comes and goes followed by a pivot cone setting up a hairpin turn from hell.  Hard on the brake then hard on the gas with the wheel hard over while the inside front tire leaves the ground and the other three claw for some kind of grip.  I’m now going the other way on the course and everything is reverse until I come out of what was the first turn.  This is the beginning of the end, a left hand sweeper that turns into a right hand hairpin.  As I tromp on the gas the left front tire leaves the ground again, as I brake and turn into the hairpin the right rear leaves the ground.  Just past the hairpin I fly past the timing lights, stand on the brakes and turn left to exit the course.  My time is on the big LED board in front of me, 42.563 seconds.  A very respectable time for my first time in the car not to mention the car is thirty-seven years old.  As I pull back to the starting grid I feel and hear a rumbling  that shouldn’t be there.  I first get back into the starting grid but, no sooner than I get there I decide to drive back to the paddock area and have a look.  Finding nothing outwardly wrong, I decide to let my son have a go with her.  We both took a total of three runs before we decide that discretion is the better part of valor.  The car was hurt, no sense in making it worse, call it a day.  At that point in the competition, my son had a time that was a full two seconds faster than me.  He had beaten me in my own car, on my big day.  I was proud of my car because it had preformed past my expectations,  I was proud of myself for getting it there but, how do I explain to my son why I am proud to be beaten so badly by him.  He feels like he stole my day. How do I explain that,  passing me,  he changed a fine day into a prefect day.

Condemed To Nine Years Hard Labor

                                                                                                                                                                                          Nine years ago I was cruising the web and came across an ad for an MGCGT for $1800. The picture looked like it wasn’t a rust bucket and it was located close to me. I went to have a look. The car was wedged between two muscle cars and at first all I could see was the left rear fender. It was the fender of an MG Factory Works MGCGTS. There were only six of these all aluminum bodies ever made. At that time they were all accounted for but one. So, there I stood in a field in central Florida, my heart racing, looking at that fender. I raced to the front of the car and my heart dropped. The hood was not the hood of the MGC which had a bubble in it to make room for the larger 6 banger engine. This was an MGB hood. Then I remembered that when MG raced the first car, the MGC was not yet released on the market and so, because of the racing rules, the first of the Works cars was in fact a B. This made it even rarer. One of a kind! I opened the hood and there on top of the valve cover breather it read “OFFENHAUSER”. There also ran a rat from behind the master brake booster. Offenhauser made some great racing engines. I was beside myself. OK, back to reality, the only thing about that engine that was “Offenhauser” turned out to be the little cap it was printed on. The fenders were all made of fiberglass and the rest of the body was not aluminum. I did not have the missing car. I did have a car with a worn out engine and some very bad fiberglass body work. It was a copy of the works cars. A bad copy. It didn’t run, the brakes were locked up and it was a rat condo. So, I bought it.  I arranged to have it dragged on to a truck and delivered to my studio in Ft. Myers, Fl.   That was the beginning of my 9 years at hard labor sentence.   I soon got to know a voice on the phone named Bob at a parts supplier called Brit-tek. If you have a British car you need to know Bob. In my opinion, if you have a British car, he’s God.  My first car was a 1958 MGA hardtop. From there I went to a Mini Cooper S then another Mini then a string of MGB’s with a Vauxhall and a Jensen FF in there somewhere. I though I knew a thing or two about British cars. I even played guitar in an Irish band (Father Pat and the Gales) for gods sake. Then I began to talk to Bob and found out how much I didn’t know. Quite a bit as it turned out (and I competed for 10 years in the B) Some day after my wife has passed away I will ask Bob how much I have spent in the last nine years. If I asked today the shock would kill her I’m sure. I never seemed to have time and money at the same time so the project took almost a decade. I rebuilt the engine. I beefed it up a bit. I added a supercharger. I bought all new body work. I bought all new brakes. I bought a new exhaust system. I repainted the new body, I bought new rims and racing tires, etc, etc, etc……… Would I do it again you may ask? Sure, in fact I have already started. (you never really finish a British car…..ever).  My son is now getting his license and we are rebuilding my old MGB roadster for him. I autocrossed that car for a long time and it was my daily driver, so it needs a bit of work & money.  Somewhere, up in New Hampshire, Bob is smiling.

Shooting Jimmy McConn’s Car

I think Jimmy McConn’s life revolved around his GTX.  It was green with a white interior.  There were little pillows in the back seat and nobody was allowed to sit back there.  Nobody!  The GTX was powered by an engine that could warp time.  It was even faster than Fern’s GTO, even when we kicked in extra gas money for all three two barrels.  Jimmy tried to enlist in the military but was turned down because he suffered from migraine headaches.  I mentioned this because I had snuck an AK 47S back from Vietnam and Jimmy was itching to fire it.  I had already taken out Ace Talley’s dad, Jim.  Big Jim Talley, he and his wife Betty might have been the only reason I dated Ace.  Back on subject.  Jim told Jimmy it was the most fun he’d had since he was eighteen.  Jimmy was next.  Now when I say we went  out to shoot the AK I’m not talking about heading down to the range.  Oh no.  This gun was very illegal.  First, I snuck it back from the war as a souvenir.  I thought I could fill the barrel with lead or weld the bolt home to make it legal.  Nope, it seems that there was a General Turner that had been selling guns to South American countries.  These guns were confiscated weapons form police depts around the USA.  General Turner got caught and now there was quite the witch hunt going on for illegal guns.  Mine was full automatic, folding wire stock, banana clip and about a 6 inch barrel.  Getting caught with something like that was ten years in jail and/or a ten thousand dollar fine.  I can talk about it now because most of the people involved are now dead and the statute of limitations has long since run out.  Or this could be total fiction.  OK, back to Jimmy and I out in the Virginia countryside in his car at night with an loaded AK.  Yes, we were stupid asses but, that never stopped us before.  We did what most ignorant red necks still do today, we shot an innocent road sign.  Damn near wrapped it around the post and cut it off.  Left a bunch of shell casings on the road because they came from North Vietnam and would be hard to trace.  Jimmy had emptied a clip and at the same time redeemed some of his manhood after being turned down by the Army.  As we drove home we passed the large wooden sign for Fort Belvoir.  I had been there many times before, played golf with my dad there and gone to the commissary with mom for groceries.  I knew the layout.  I knew that after you turned at the big sign that there was about half mile of pine trees before you came to the guard shack.  I knew that there would be two guards there at that time of night and chances were they were Vietnam veterans.  I’d had a couple of nasty run in with the army in the war so I thought I would scare the living crap out of these two guys.  I was going to splinter the big wooden sign and the sound of the AK was going to amplify the guard’s PTSD by a factor of  at least 10, maybe 11.  A good nights work.  The AK was under the front seat and I had to reach over the seat back to grab the pistol grip on it.  It will become clear in a second that I did not know that Jimmy had left the selector switch on full automatic.  As I pulled the gun out…it went bang a whole bunch of times in rapid succession.  Actually about half of the thirty round clip.  Under the seat and in front of the muzzle was a box of tissues and the inside of the GTX looked like it was snowing.  Little bits of tissue floating down everywhere.  Jimmy, being anal about his car is screaming (he must have been screaming because I could hear him and both of us were now deaf) “My car! My car!”.  My answer made things go real quiet in the car, “F#*k your car, I’m hit”.  Yes sirree, I remembered the feeling from the war and knew exactly what had happened.  My leg was numb from the knee down so in the darkness of the car I began to feel my way from the knee down.  My calf was bleeding a little but, the thing that got my attention was the small hole in the middle of the heel of my Hushpuppy shoe.  I knew what this meant, I was going to loose what was now left of my right foot.  I told the now quiet and very white Jimmy McConn to pull into the Sportsman Lodge just ahead.  This was a motel with a lit parking lot where I could get a good look at what I didn’t want to see.  It’s not like in the movies,  getting shot in a bone takes away about four inches of bone.  Getting shot in the foot takes away all the bone.  I knew the front of my shoe would look like a bomb went off in the toes.  In the light of the motel I could see that my shoe was in tact.  I took off my shoe and found the entrance wound on the right side of my foot just in front of the heel.  What the…?  As best I can figure the barrel was at an angle towards the floor of the car and the rounds were hitting the floor first.  Rounds do very funny things when they hit something and this one had hit my heel dead center but then it followed the inside of my shoe around to the right and entered the side of my foot.  This may sound strange coming form someone that had just been shot but, I was feeling lucky.  I told Jimmy to drive us back to the Talley’s house.  Jimmy entered first and Betty saw the look on his face, “Oh Lord, what happened”.  Jimmy said I shot myself and the ship hit the sand.  I explained that going to the hospital was out of the question.  Gun shot wounds with a brass jacketed round would be a real attention getter at the emergency room.  “Betty”, I said, “would you mind taking it out for me”.  So there we all were in the kitchen and Betty is getting out the hydrogen peroxide to clean the hole.  She poured it on and it didn’t foam up.  It’s supposed to foam up.  We all stared at it not foaming up and finally decided that it wasn’t working.  The only other thing we had was rubbing alcohol.  This was gunna hurt a lot.  It was like the scene in a cowboy movie.  “Here, bit down on this, it’s going to hurt”.  If Betty had been a dentist she would have said, “You’re going to feel a little pinch”.  On went the alcohol and golly wolly my world lit right up.  I think the Talleys had a time fixing the claw marks on the kitchen wall.  I’m sure I foamed up.  After that, digging the slug out with kitchen utensils was a breeze.  Betty Talley was one hard core Mom and I love and miss her to this day.  Jimmy had recovered his manhood and overcome his desire to go to war all in one night.  Your welcome McConn.  I healed up just fine with time.  We could never find the bullet holes in Jimmy’s car.  The carpet had closed in on the holes.  It was a mystery until McConn had his car at a garage, up on the rack getting his oil changed, with his dad the retired Army officer.  “Jimmy” he said, “What’s this?”  Pointing to the tight group of what was obviously bullets holes on the underside of the GTX’s floor boards.  “My crossbow went off in the car dad”  was his answer.  (Fifteen times?!!)  COL.  McConn decided, wisely, that he didn’t really want to know.  The AK eventually found it’s way to the CIA but, that’s another story, to be continued.

Ralph Nader

My uncle Frank was making eighty cents an hour working on the line, making ball bearings.  He had two years of college under his belt at Purdue where he had studied engineering.  When he retired, still with only two years of college, he was Vice President of General Motors.  He was a very smart guy.  He had fifty something patents with GM as well as some medical stuff.  His mind did not work like ours… he was outside, outside the box.  When he decided to rethink how a car goes around a corner he looked first at how people go around a corner.  As a result he developed a cambering vehicle called the Lean Machine that has a body that leans into a corner.   It’s ability to go around a corner is amazing.  The two of us were at the GM Proving Grounds in Milford one after noon in 1967 to look at GM’s electric car.  (yes they were trying to make one way back then)  I was about seventeen and living with him at the time.  We were driving a brand new Olds Toronado with an automatic transmission.  Suddenly we turned sharply onto the small maneuverability course and all hell broke loose.  Frank put his foot to the floor of this front wheel drive pig and left it there.  We came to the first corner at something like ninety and I kept expecting him to slam on the brakes at some point.  That point came and went.  We continued to pick up speed until Frank heard me cuss for the first time.  He heard me cuss a whole lot.  I figured I was going to die anyway so, what the hell.  Frank did touch the brake from time to time but the right foot stayed planted on the floor.  He calmly began to explain that there was nothing to worry about.  “A six passenger car would have to overcome road friction by a lateral acceleration of 1.8 Gs in order to roll over and unless we hit something like a curb”  he concluded,  ” we would slid, not roll”.   It took me about three more laps before I believed him.  His teaching style was unique.  This was the first glimpse of the thing that Frank was really good at, not the driving, though “time  wise” he was tied with Jim Hall on that course, but rather  his ability to put complicated matters into simple terms.   I got the best look at this during the GM trials of the sixties.  Our family was living in S. California, where the trials were taking place  at that time, and Ralph Nader had written his book damning the Corvair, Unsafe At Any Speed.   The fact that Nader knew so little and yet was listened to by so many drove Frank crazy.  Using Ralph’s name in Frank’s house was like using a four letter word.  I think Frank may have started using his name in place of four letter words.  I understand that some of you think Ralph is a great guy but here’s some thing you might not know, when he wrote the book he lived at home with his mom and didn’t even have a drivers license.  This is the guy so many listened to as the last word on auto safety, …someone that couldn’t drive.  He never won a single case with GM yet the Corvair was taken off the market.  The Corvair, that Jim Hall (World Road Racing Champion)couldn’t get to roll over until they let most of the air out of the tires was considered unsafe because of Nader’s “expert” opinion.  Frank’s position was this; if you want to make cars safe the first thing that needs to be done is to get the human out from behind the wheel, the second thing is to build the car like a race car.  This second item consists of bolting the seat to the frame making it unmovable,  strapping the driver into a five point harness to keep them behind the wheel and in control, wearing a helmet and flame proof suit, a full roll cage, removing the glass from the windows etc, etc and on and on.  Frank pointed out that when wearing just a seat belt, in a 12 mph crash, your head swings froward fast enough to kill you when it hits the dash.  Your head hitting the dash at 15 mph is the same force as if Mickey Mantle had hit you in the forehead with a bat.  Now, it doesn’t take much brain power to realize that your mom would not buy a station wagon  that requires her to crawl through the drivers window and strap in to go to the grocery.  Ford came out with a “Safety Car” back in 1957.  It had “seat belts”.  Nobody bought one, nobody,  so Ford stopped offering seat belts.  Optimization of natural selection.  Companies can’t sell what people won’t buy.  Ralph wanted to make the car companies out to be the bad guys even though it was us, the consumer, that didn’t want safety or at least we didn’t want to pay for it.    Ralph was carving out a whole new legal occupation so,  on with the court cases.  During the trials Ralph had stated that cars should be built so that a human could survive a sixty mile an hour barrier impact.  That means hitting something a sixty that doesn’t move at all.  Well, you move after the car stops.  Your body stops when it hits the inside of the car or the seat belts and then your internal organs hit the inside of your skull, rib cage or pelvis and that’s what kills you.  So much for the big SUV is safer than  little cars (remember get the human out of the car).  Ralph said this could be accomplished by putting a quarter inch of foam on the dash and corner post.  F. Lee Bailey put Frank on the stand to ask if this was possible.  Frank said, “A sixty mile an hour barrier impact is the same as jumping off an eleven story building and hitting the sidewalk”, then, looking straight at Nader he finished with, “I’ll put a quarter inch of foam on the sidewalk if you’ll jump”.  Nader lost that case too.

The world is filled with people saying “Wouldn’t it be great if….” but, very few of them follow through with a realistic way to make it happen.  If someone said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could reduce auto emissions by 70% ” and then invented something that did just that, Al Gore would not have won the Nobel prize for his slide show that year.  The fact is, someone did just that, Frank Winchell invented the catalytic converter, turning emissions into water and cutting emissions by 70%, we all have one today and nobody has ever heard of the guy that did it.  If reduction of harmful pollutants was the measuring stick to determine who is most “Green”, we would have to say the winner is the “evil auto executive”.  When Frank retired he was diagnosed with colon cancer and had to have it removed.  This means he would crap into a bag that came out his side for the rest of his life.  So, he went up to the Mayo clinic and designed a new bag that could be worn even by a woman wearing a bikini.  I saw letters from people stating that they would have killed themselves if he had not invented that bag.  The thing is, Frank was not doing things for glory or even wealth so he remains  unknown.  On the other hand, we all know Nader.