The best cars are the old cars

Spent last week in Bakersfield (yeah, 107 or thereabouts, but it’s a hot heat) to do some bidness and catch up with sister and bro-in-law and friends….

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Sister Lorri in her reliable and most efficient way made the business aspects go smoothly and I guested in Lorri and David’s new RV motor coach with its Sony TV, surround sound and expandable living room and bedroom. It’s like being aboard ship though… lots and lots of work, but perhaps no more than an in-place home.

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Also bunked in with long-time friend and faithful reader Hap Arnold and had some meals and fellowship with The Gorshings and Mix, also friends from my days growing up in the desert oil field town of Taft, about 30 miles distant from Buck Owens’ and Merle Haggard’s old stomping grounds around Bakersfield. 

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My teen years in Taft, the people I met there in 1963-70, and the 40-plus-year long friendships that resulted form part of the foundation of my life and are worthy of a separate post, if not a book, so I’ll try to stay focused on my 1957 Ford Custom 300 Tudor.

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It was also Frank Curry’s first car. Frank (nobody calls someone his size Francis) inherited my beloved vehicle when I left for the Marine Corps in 1968. Frank was four years my junior and held brother status as his sis, Teresa, was my long-time girlfriend and their parents, Larry and Ruth, I’m lucky to say, were my second set of folks.

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I probably ate more meals there than at home.

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I had paid something like $150 for it in 1964 (it’s hard to believe that figure now that I write it) and it served me well for four years. Sold it to Frank for something like $125 or thereabouts, and recall signing the title and mailing it back while in boot camp.

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Frank had less luck, the car was stolen sometime later and eventually found stripped somewhere near the coast as I recall.

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So Frank and I both felt we’d lost the car we really loved.

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Being on the practical side, I was more concerned about reliability and comfort in the ’57, less so about looks.

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That must be the reason I wet sanded and primered it, but never got around to painting it. Darker primer spots here and there earned it the nickname, Leopard, from my friends.

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I put in Naugahyde upholstery, mats, seat belts, a Madman Muntz 4-track stereo (yes, you read that right… look it up) and a custom steering wheel.

Frank… a mechanical genius compared to me, did lots more… so his loss was greater, but we both mourned and never forgot.

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It was with great glee then, that Frank sent me some photos of his new 1957 Ford Custom 300 Tudor replacement car a few weeks back. For years we’d talked about buying back our high school memories and he beat me to it… the increase in price between ‘68 and ’06 proved that while overshadowed by its ’57 competition from Chevy and the ’57 Ford T-bird, the 300 Custom had held up pretty well…. better, in fact, than Frank and I.

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The new cream-colored paint was excellent and the gold metallic stripe that flared from headlight to rear quarter-panel set the exterior off just right.

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The interior was a time machine… Frank called shotgun, waved me into the driver’s seat, and with Hap was in the back seat we took off in the century mark heat, windows rolled down and at least I forgot our ’57 didn’t have A/C.

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First things first... we dragged Center Street… in most small American towns it’s called Main Street... and made the loop for the full circuit. It was grand… past the now restored Fox Theater, all the old buildings with new businesses in them… some without no businesses in them, and headed to the former Curry home for some pics, carried by the big block's beefy power and throaty exhaust.

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The only thing that was different was that my ’57 boasted the power of the straight six-cylinder and Frank’s is pushed by a ’78 Lincoln 427-c.i. and drive line, tilt/power steering and power brakes.

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Suspended from the dash was a crudely carved Tiki god that I bought in kit form at Disneyland’s Adventure Land as a souvenir of our 1966 Senior Ditch Day trip. I set two rhinestones from some of Mom’s old costume jewelry for eyes and carved my name on the back.

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It had been in my ’57 back in the day. I found out years ago that Frank kept it in the car after discovering it under a seat and had held on to it for almost 40 years for just this moment.

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Rolling down the asphalt streets of the old hometown, Beach Boys music playing in my nostalgia memory, it was a great day and too short. For a brief time we got to return to our teen years in the mid-60s... which was very much like those portrayed in American Graffitti by George Lucas who based it on his high school days in Modesto just three hours or so up Interstate 5 from Taft.

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Of course I’m envious, but overjoyed for Frank and a little for me, cause I get to share in it as well.

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Just wait ‘til I get mine. (Photos courtesy of HapArnold Photography)

Comments

[Charles W. "Bill" Henderson]

It is something about that time of the 60's, living in them, graduating high school in '66, becoming a man overnight a short time later on some ridge with a name that sounds like someone throwing a box of hand wrenches across a concrete floor, that makes all this kind of nostalgia truly "Priceless." In Artesia, New Mexico, we too had the A&W, and the drag down Main Street, and the '57 Ford or in my case, my pal, Dicky Harrel, and his '62 Chevy "409". Shades of American Graffiti, Dicky died on a dragstrip in Canada in 1970 screaming down the asphault with his hair on fire at 200 miles per hour when he lost control of the Chevy II Nova powered by a blown "427" and hit a light pole. God, those were the good years, even with the heartache and the growing up we did. Come see me Gary, we miss you here in Colorado.

[Hap Arnold]

Yep....whut he said. And more. At our age, we get days like the one described only every once in awhile and guard them jelously. Time-travelin' in a vintage '57 machine. Would that the ol' Taft A&W drive-in had still been in operation so that we could have pulled up next to the pole-mounted speaker to order (pick one) a Papa/Mama/Teen/Baby Burger with crinkled fries & special sauce....and a mug o' icy-cold root beer.

Thomas Wolfe wrote "You Can't Go Home Again". While true in the larger sense, I submit that it's possible to do so in brief interludes, such as that experienced by LEATHERNECKM31, FRANCIS & YOURS TRULY last Sunday, June 25, 2006, in Taft, California. For a few, brief, sweaty moments in the back seat of an old car in a tiny town so connected to my youth, I heard the Beatles & Stones in my head in the place where they first burst into my consciousness. Like the TV ad says: "Priceless!"

Hap