A new set of wheels

Some of you may not have heard but I was involved in a really bad car wreck back in November of 2014 (probably why I haven't blogged much).  I lost my '89 Dodge Daytona Shelby turbo which I had previously blogged about having bought.  You can read about it here.

Anyway ... I've got a new toy ... another '91 Chevy Corvette.  This one is the third C4 (fourth generation) Corvette that I've owned.  My first C4 was a 1988 Z51 coupe, red with a tan interior and the quirky but heavy duty Doug Nash 4+3 speed manual transmission.  I bought that Vette in 1992 after a failed relationship.  I sold it a year and a half later and regretted it ever since.

Fast forward to 2008.  I'm about to turn 40 years old and I decide that I want another C4 Corvette.  My dad was about to retire from work and he told me in passing that he really wished that I had another Corvette like I had back in college.  

No problem.  

I searched for a few weeks on the Internet, found a 1991 Z07 Corvette down in Miami, bought it, flew down to Miami and drove the Corvette back.

The '91 Z07 at the start of The Tail of the Dragon - Deal's Gap.
318 curves in 11 miles.  Not a problem.

The '91 Z07 at the bottom of Fontana Dam.

It also was a red coupe, tan interior, but it had a six speed manual transmission (which had replaced the 4+3 back in 1989).  I kept that '91 for almost two years then sold it and restored my 1986 black and gold Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.

I spent almost a year restoring my rare '86 black and gold Pontiac Trans Am (LB9, 700R4, WS6, T-tops, factory Recaro interior) and bought a Lincoln Town Car as my daily driver. 4 years later I sold the Lincoln Town Car (because I'm not a four door car kind of guy) and bought a rare one owner '89 Dodge Daytona Shelby turbo (T-tops, 5 speed, Turbo II engine). 

I kept the Daytona about five months to the day then one morning I woke up behind the wheel of the Dodge, sitting in the median of the highway with EMT and rescue personnel cutting the roof of my Dodge off to get me out. Apparently I had been sitting at a stoplight and a kid in a pickup truck had hit me from behind. I never felt the impact, just woke up when they were pulling my body from what was left of my classic Dodge. 

How I survived I have no idea ... but I did.

While I was in the hospital I started looking for a replacement for the Dodge, could never find one and since I was a two door sports car kind of guy I decided to return to GM.  I chased a '91 Pontiac Firebird Formula with a 5 speed and T-tops (black on black) but miscommunication killed that deal.

That was about the time that I started thinking about another C4 Corvette.  When I sold my last '91 I told my wife that I was swearing off of Corvettes forever and that if I ever said I wanted another Corvette to remind me of what I'd said.

Well, I told her that I wanted another C4 Corvette and she reminded me, in no nice way, of what I'd told her to remind me of years ago.  I also reminded her that before I met her in 1992 that I'd officially sworn off of relationships and women as well ... and look where that got me.

So, I returned to Corvette ownership and bought another C4 ... thought I would go for an automatic since I'd never had a C4 L98 with an auto before.

I didn't know if I would like it ... I was worried that I wouldn't like it ... right up until the moment that an auto transporter company delivered the new '91 white 4 speed automatic Vette to my garage door.

The '91 being delivered to my house.

The '91 white Corvette in the garage ... along with my black / silver 2004 Honda CBR600RR ... and the black and gold '86 Pontiac TA.  Yes, that's a sleeping cop speed bump in front of the Vette ... the previous home owner installed it I guess to keep his wife from driving the minivan through the garage wall and into the living room.  Events like that tend to interrupt "House" marathons with a quickness.

This '91 came from the Venerable and Son dealership out of Walnut Cove, NC and has a Triad Corvette Club membership emblem on the driver's side of the windshield. It also has Loyd's mats, inside door sill protectors and a later model year combo Bose stereo cassette / CD player.  It has what I think is a Clifford alarm system (LED in the center console, some kind of horn hooked up under the hood) but no remotes and no manuals on the alarm system.  If you know this Vette, give me a shout.

So far I'm happy with the '91. It sat up in a climate controlled warehouse for several months not getting driven or cranked so it's about to get a full tune up front to back.

Mods I've found so far include Accel yellow wires under the hood and a strange cat-back system with rectangular tips and tennis ball can sized mufflers / resonators.


It's my new daily driver averaging 28 miles per gallon on the highway.  Not bad for a 25 year old Corvette that has 250 horsepower, 350 lbs-ft of torque, does zero to 60 in about 5 seconds, does mid to high 13 second quarter miles and has a top speed of 157 mph.  I didn't think I would like a white Vette or an automatic but driving it for two weeks now has changed my mind on that ... a white four speed automatic Vette is nothing short of awesome.  Once you push the loud skinny pedal to the floor things get busy real quick and the L98 still has plenty of guts left in her.

As a bit of strangeness, 9 years ago I bought the '86 TA from Greensboro, NC, about 30 miles SE of Walnut Cove so I've got two cars in my garage, both bought off the Internet, which came from within 30 miles of each other. 

Weird but then my life is funny strange like that.

The '91 Vette has its own blog as well ... find it here.

Stay tuned.

3rd generation Pontiac Firebird logo found on cheap toy gun set

Now, looking through the toy section of a local "Big Lots" the other day I found this toy gun set and the revolver intrigued me as a cheap find to kitbash a "Slammer" together (the combination revolver / semi-automatic weapon found in Geoff Darrow and Frank Miller's cyberpunk Where's Waldo epic "Hardboiled") ...  When I picked up the toy gun set to look at the revolver I discovered that not only was it way too small for the scale that I was interested in modeling ... but I noticed that it had a third gen Firebird emblem stamped into the plastic near the hammer and cylinder.

You can see the third gen Firebird symbol stamped into the revolver between the trigger and the cylinder release button.  Here's a closeup of the image.

And here's the actual 3rd Generation Firebird logo for comparison ... you be the judge.

My guess is that the toy was made in China or some other country by some cheap manufacturer who wanted to include a "Ruger Redhawk" or "Ruger Blackhawk" revolver in the playset but didn't want to get sued by the Ruger company so they had one of their employees look on the Internet for a bird outline and found this instead.  It's the only reason why I can think that the third generation Firebird logo ever managed to wind up stamped into the side of a cheap toy gun.

Gone but not forgotten ...

 "Acclaimed as one of the most visually stunning cars ever built, the Trans Am's styling will no doubt remain timeless.  ... If you think '57 Chevys still look good, you'll love the Trans Am - even 20 years from now."

                                                                                 - John Baechtel, "Different Strokes" comparison test
                                                                                                              HOT ROD MAGAZINE, August 1986



 Trans Am

     The other cars out there are nothing more than mundane transportation devices, a collection of anonymous and dreary shapes lurching homeward with their anonymous and dreary occupants tired after a long day behind an unappreciative desk in a thankless, meaningless job.

     But yours is not just a mundane transportation device.  It is not anonymous and dreary.  From the wide aluminum spinning wheels that plant fat, sticky rubber to the hot asphalt to the enormous rear spoiler, to the vibrating high output port fuel injected small block V8 under the hood that actually makes the ebony bird seem to come alive with each pulsation ... this is an orgy of image and power, a visceral assault on the senses of all who behold it. 

     It is Trans Am and its thick padded steering wheel feels oh so right under your leather driving gloved hand as you maneuver in and out of traffic like a great bird of prey riding the air currents through a target-rich environment.  It is moments like these that truly make life worth living and the 6 to 5 regime a small daily price to pay to own such a rare machine.

  
 
Well, she's back.

She who has taken my money, my time and my heart for so very long.  Ever since I first saw her in that magazine spread all those years ago, way back in 1985 I knew that one day I would have her.  I would track her down and make her mine.

It took me 21 years to find her and after 6 long years of ownership (most of that time being either kept in a rental storage unit or taking up space in my garage and in one stage or another of disassembly) I finally got off my ass, pushed some money around and restored the 1986 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am that I've owned since 2006.  You can find the link to the good stuff over there on the right ... it's the link labeled "Project Car".

I can't believe how well this TA turned out ...  After six years I can't believe that I have in my garage one of my dream cars.  When I was a teenager, I saw the one page advertisement for this car and fell in love with it.   Patience is the most important thing you can have in life.  Patience is the most important thing that you can teach a child in life because patience will get you through bad times like nothing else will.  Six years is a long time, especially for a project car to just sit up and go unused but patience has a way of making six years seem like six days, at least in hindsight.  In hindsight, it seems like just last week that I bought the TA off of Ebay, flew to Greenville, North Carolina, picked her up and drove her back home.

And now she's restored.  26 years of use and abuse have been cosmetically erased and she's been returned to her glory days, to a time when she first rolled off the Norwood, Ohio assembly line way back in late 1985 as the flagship of the Pontiac performance line and as a clear example of the "We build excitement" creed that Pontiac had adopted.  I got the TA back last Tuesday and I've been having a blast driving her.  She's the car now that I wanted her to be 6 years ago.  Her exhaust growls as she prowls the city streets.  Her 5.0 liter Tuned Port Injected small block V8 engine screams through its powerband.  Her four speed automatic bangs through each gear with authority and she'll break rubber loose from first to second gear with an authoritative bark of the tires.  The thick leather wrapped steering wheel feels good in my gloved hand, allowing me to translate the TA into any maneuver that I need to, any maneuver that I want to, with the flick of a wrist and the response of a quick ratio power steering unit which has two and a half turns lock to lock.  The WS6 optioned suspension setup makes for a ride like a Sherman tank, I feel every irregularity, telegraphing the condition of the road to me and giving me a control over my TA that few other cars can lay claim to.  When darkness comes, her driving lights snap on and her headlights flip up with the whir of now ancient electric motors.  Her dash and interior are illuminated in a soft reddish orange glow inspired by fighter aircraft and still she prowls ... and I love every single minute of it.

Patience. 

Patience pays, maybe not now but later on, oh, it pays.  Make your plans, stick to them, and just be patient.  It's all on the wheel because it all comes around eventually.

Looking back now I told you 6 years ago in this very blog that life was too short to drive mediocre cars and I stand by that statement.  The automobile industry has become homogenized these days ... Mind numbingly homogenized.  Cars and trucks have given up muscle, individuality, character and performance for stereotypical styling, bland design, improved fuel economy and all with a nod towards being environmental friendly.  Cars and trucks today have no charisma, no personality ... they're just transportation and they're built around social engineering, that is, forcing you to behave a certain way by putting up restrictions and obstacles to behaving any other way.  Factors like economy, emissions, comfort and design are forced on you limiting your choices through artificial means.  I'm not advocating acting like a hooligan with a car or using it to ruin the environment but cars and trucks today tend to emulate, even broadcast, the emerging social trends and the social trends I see in the cars and trucks built and sold today are boring. ... we're so serious about the environment that we've forgotten how to have fun.  Junk pseudo-religion based scientific nonsense like Global Warming has robbed us of our ability to have fun.  If you want to know where this insanity has taken us, just look at decible limits at race tracks ... you can get booted off the track if your car is too loud ... at a race track!  The 1960's were full of high performance, something that died a slow, painful death in the 1970's and only began to come back around in the 1980's.  This TA is an example of that rebirth ... when suspension and handling was superior to the 1960's offerings and where the power of computer controlled, high tech fuel injected engines could nearly match the performance of their big cube predecessors.

I remember the 1970's ... I remember the OPEC Oil Embargo.  I remember lines of cars at the gas stations.  I remember the crappy cars that GM, Ford and Mopar pedaled off on the consumer ... crap like the biodegradable ever rustworthy Chevy Vega and the highly explosive Ford Pinto where economy and corporate profit was considered forefront to driver and occupant safety.  I remember speedometers that only went to 85 miles per hour by federal government mandate.  I remember choking emissions equipment, seatbelts that prevented cars from starting unless they were fastened, the forced phase-in of unleaded gas, the phasing out of leaded gas and the dreaded catayltic converter.  The 1970's were the dark ages of high performance and only one car company kept the light of high performance not only burning but burning bright, like a beacon in the darkness, all alone in the night (cue epic Babylon 5 music).

Pontiac.

The 1980's were a Renaissance in high performance.  Computer controlled fuel injection, emissions that weren't restrictive, four speed automatic transmissions with overdrive, five speed manual transmissions with overdrive, deep rear gears, sixteen inch factory wheels with V rated tires that were stickier than anything seen in the previous two decades, and compact turbocharged and intercooled engines.  Hell, even the Japanese jumped on board and began deploying Far Eastern sport coupes to our shores.  Seeing the turbocharged four cylinder engines from Mopar and the tremendous work that Buick did on their SFI turbocharged and intercooled 3.8 liter V6 was nothing short of inspirational.  When a Dodge Omni GLH-S (which looked like crap) beat the snot out of a Shelby GT350 Mustang from the 1960's, enthusiasts were outraged ... and amazed.  The  use of technology to go faster wasn't something to be ignored.  The 1980's saw an ever increasing climb in performance, a climb out of the mire and muck that had been the 1970's.  As computers took more and more charge of what was going on under the hood, more and more power could be squeezed out of smaller and smaller engines all the while maintaining both emissions and economy.  The fact that although emissions and economy standards got tighter almost every year yet horsepower and performance also increased each year was a testement to the march of high technology through the decade.

The muscle cars of the 1960's could still out power a 1980's sports car on the straight away, especially in the first part of the decade, but the 1980's machinery was far superior in handling and economy not to mention comfort and ease of ownership.  The 1980's held so much promise ... it was the Woodstock of high performance and it lasted all decade long, coming on strong in the first to mid part of the 1980's and then starting to peter out towards the end of the decade but while it lasted it was glorious to live through, especially for a red blooded American teenager like myself.  I got my driver's license in 1984 ... just two years after the third generation F-bodies debuted and I got to see these cars grow from their start to their finish in 1992.  At the time they were considered some of the best handling and best performing cars in America if not the world as attributed in magazine article after magazine article and road test or comparison after road test and comparison.  The Trans Am was compared to imports like the Porsche 911 and the Mazda RX-7, both highly competitive cars and both well respected.  In fact, short of the Chevy Corvette, the WS6 equipped Pontiac Trans Am may have been the best handler of GM's offerings.

So much has changed since the 1980's ...

Cars and trucks are not tough today, no, they're cute and apologetic ... neutered and spayed direct from the factory and that's the problem.  Somewhere along the line we forgot how much fun it is to drive, to really drive, to drive hard, to drive fast, to experience the thrill of acceleration, the ecstacy of winning a race, how it feels for your body to be strapped tight into a form fitting seat as you dance on pedals and row through the gears, making the car bend to your will.  We've forgotten what it's like for the wind to be in our face and the engine to be howling under the hood as the needles on the dash spin in their crazy arcs.  Look at how many cars are offered with manual transmissions today ... only a small percentage.  Automatics are the norm on most cars.  Where once transmissions were built for overkill and you could mod an engine to throw any kind of power at a Muncie four speed or a TurboHydraMatic 400 three speed automatic today when you mod cars, that is, if you can mod them, it's usually the transmission which is the first thing to give up the ghost.  I learned that while playing with my 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP.  The L69 supercharged 3.8 liter V6 was a capable engine and could be modded fairly easily but the transmission behind that motor was a piece of crap and couldn't take much more than what the L69 was putting out stock.  Any major mods to the L69 in the GTP and you had better be planning on replacing the stock transmission with an aftermarket pro-built unit.  Today, cars are designed to do so much and not a lot more ... I guess this makes them more easily disposable and ultimately, much more forgettable.

Driving fast.

Driving hard.

Of course, some people never got to experience these feelings, these emotions, these raw, visceral examples of what it is like to be alive.  No, their experience with cars was limited to some lackluster example of one breed or another, a gutless econobox designed to get from Point A to Point B or where ever else you wanted to go.  Their experience was based on some wannabe car whose only claim to high performance was some fake hood scoop, a bolt on spoiler and a stripe and decal package to make it look sporty without ever actually having anything to back that image up.  I don't understand why the government wants to use tax money to pay for birth control for women ... they already do that with what rolls out of Detroit.  One look at the new cars on the dealer lot today and sex is the last thing that crosses your mind.  In fact, just about any vehicle made in America after 2002 can be considered a rolling form of birth control ... and a general IQ decreaser.

Oh, there was a time when cars were art, art forms, forms of art and rolling works of art.  Cars were sculpted, hand built and they were built with pride.  Today they're built by robots while over paid union members sit around earning a paycheck for doing nothing and whining about not being paid enough.  Have you seen what is rolling out of Detroit these days?  The unions should be paying US, the American consumer, to drive their crap ... not the other way around.

I guess I'm different.

I guess I've always been different.

I love cars ... I love sports cars.

I love performance.

I love high performance.

I love high performance American sports cars.

I think that flowing body lines are sexy ... that aerodynamics are poetry in motion and that the sound of a high performance engine screaming through its power band is an orchestra if not an aphrodisiac in and of itself.  Cars have never been something that I considered mundane or utilitarian in nature.  Cars were members of the family rather than property.

"... the TA's handling is about as close as most people would want to get to an honest-to-God racing platform.  ... The TA's chassis is extremely stiff, and its front and rear roll characteristics are well balanced and tuned to each other.  With near-neutral handling characteristics at the limit of adhesion, and just a trace of understeer that easily transfers into controllable oversteer, the TA ... is a blast to hustle through corners.  It makes good drivers better drivers, and instantly transfers a feeling of confidence to the novice.  It is a car whose handling and acceleration are guaranteed to transform a bored rush-hour commuter into a wide-eyed and grinning enthusiast.  This is a fun car."

                                                                                                     - John Hanson, Motor Trend, April 1986.

Yes, this is a fun car to drive.

No.

Forget that.

The 1986 Pontiac Trans Am is one hell of a fun car to drive because it reminds you that at one time, a time not that very long ago, there was a car company called "Pontiac" and Pontiac built excitement.  Raw, unmitigated, unapologetic, brazen excitement that was accompanied with the rumble of powerful V8s that could plant you firmly back in your seat and easily do twice the maximum legal posted US speed limit (and then some).  It was a time when performance wasn't something that made you feel bad about yourself and performance didn't require you to apologize to anyone for having it let alone enjoying it.

Take the T-tops off, turn the key in the ignition, let the rumble of the 5.0 liter port fuel injected V8 under the hood offer up a continual thump the likes of which the jacked sky-high, stupid ass paint scheme colored Chevy Impala next to you can't hope to match and you've got a certified time machine.  I remember a time when cars thumped because of what they had under the hood, not because of what they had in the trunk.  One of my T-shirts I used to sell had a simple slogan on it: "There's a big difference between being fast and powerful or just being loud and annoying."  That opinion applies even more so today than it ever did before.  When your car has more watts than horsepower, when your speakers are wider than your tires, when the color of your paint is the wildest thing about your car, when ugly design is used as a substitute  ...

Where did it all go wrong?

Cars today have no guts ... which is why people take a $500 piece of crap car, put $6000 worth of jacked up wheels on it, put a $6000 paint job on it copied from some corporate logo scheme or product and fill it with $10,000 worth of stereo equipment ... and they still have a gutless, neutered $500 piece of crap car ... it's got $22,000 worth of bling on it, but it's still a $500 piece of crap car underneath.  It's all part of the "Look at me!  Look at me!" crowd, you know, the mediocre people who drive mediocre cars that you wouldn't look twice at (car or driver) if they didn't jack slap your personal enjoyment with their thump-thump-thump and vulgar lyrics blasted out of speakers that seem to be aimed directly at your car in traffic.  They ride around on 26" inch or larger rims that make their mediocre cars look like misplaced farm equipment.  These mediocre people want you to look at them, to notice them, and usually when they see you looking at them their first words to you are "What are you looking at?!"

Nothing.

The truth is ... nothing. 

You're looking at nothing. 

Absolutely nothing. 

You know it and they know it which is why they drive a mediocre car.  Bling Bling is just God's way of saying He's sorry your car doesn't have any balls or personality to it whatsoever, that He's sorry that you had to spend $22,000 on a piece of crap car just to get people to notice you but it's not you that they're noticing, it's your piece of crap car with all the ridiculous bling bling on it.  If they notice you at all they're not thinking that you're rich or lucky ... they're thinking that you've got to be the biggest idiot in the world for driving something like that.

And what happened to all of the cool car names? 

I mean, how seriously do you think someone is going to take you if you tell them that you drive a Plymouth Neon Expresso?  If you drive a Plymouth Neon Expresso, chances are that you're not a Marine Corps Drill Instructor or a hard rock guitarist ... you're either an interior decorator or a florist.

Remember when cars had cool names?  Barracuda.  The Judge.  Stingray.

Today we have cars with names like Expresso, Backpack, and Aveo.

Cute, meaningless names.

I'm still waiting on the Dodge Tampon, the Chevy Enema and the Ford Little Douche Coupe to appear in dealer showrooms.  I mean, are we really running out of imagination and originality that much that we have to introduce a car named after a type of coffee or something that we use to carry our stuff when we go hiking?  I guess so.  I blame car names on the very problem that we've been talking about ... cars have no guts.  Do you think that Ferrari would ever produce a model called the "Expresso"?

I doubt it.

We've lost something along the way ... in the years since we've lost the edge that cars once had ... the edge that separated cars from being just ... cars ... just transportation.  That's what so much of what is on the road today is ... just ... basic transportation.  Gutless, soul sucking, mind numbing transportation.  It's comfortable, reliable, economical transportation with no guts but a great stereo and some wild paint color guaranteed to be right out of a twelve year old girl's locker ... or diary. 

When you pull up in something real, in something with some guts, it's nothing short of amazing.  It's like being a great white shark swimming with a bunch of guppies.  When you drive something like this TA other lesser cars part away in front of you.  Hemp adorned Environmental Whackos in their beat up, oil burning turbo Volvo station wagon rubber neck as you go by and the Obama supporters in their Prius just loathe and stare.  Kids on the school bus press their faces against the bus windows as you slowly pass them on the side.  Old guys at parts stores and gas stations come out to look at your car and talk shop, happy for the diversion.  People your age reminisce openly telling you how they or their friend or their brother had a Trans Am, sometimes one just like this one and they brag on performance figures you know are false and untrue but you nod your head and smile anyway.

And that's why I don't drive mediocre cars.

Life is too short to drive mediocre cars. 

Life is too short to drive something mundane and boring, something that you see five times going to work and eight times coming home from work because not only can anyone buy a car just like yours but everyone has a car just like yours.  Life is too short to drive what everyone else is driving.  If you want to be different, you've got to drive something different and that isn't always an easy thing to do.

Individuality doesn't come easy.  I guess that's why I've always loved Pontiacs because Pontiacs were the rebels of GM.  In the 1960's they led the muscle car charge with the Pontiac GTO, a midsize offering with a big engine that went head to head against the Ford Mustang for GM's share of the rapidly emerging youth market.  Later, in 1967 the Firbird appeared and then the Trans Am did as well in 1969.  During the 1970's when everyone in Detroit was running away from high performance like it was the Black Plaque, Pontiac was building cars like it was the late 1960's all over again.  Through the darkest times in Detroit it was Pontiac and Pontiac alone which kept the performance fires burning at GM.  When every other make and model of high performance muscle car had become extinct, when only the Corvette was left and even that was in diminshed form, when the Z28 had been killed off and then resurrected as a mostly decal and spoiler copy of the Pontiac Trans Am, Pontiac was still throwing 455 and 400 cubic inch V8 engines under the hoods of its Firebirds right up until the end of the 1970's.

Maybe it was dedication to a cause or maybe it was just that, out of all of the divisions at General Motors and out of all the other manufacturers, Pontiac just got it.  Pontiac understood performance, probably more than any other GM division, probably more than any other automaker in the world because with Pontiac high performance became more than a cause ... it became a passion and maybe even an obsession.

This Trans Am is more than just a high performance American artifact from a long gone age, it's a symbol of what cars once were when performance wasn't something to be ashamed of and when having a fuel guzzling V8 wasn't considered heresey to the pseudo-religious beliefs of the whack jobs on the political Left.  The death of the Firebird was long prophesied throughout the late 1970's and 1980's and it eventually came true only much later than anyone else would have thought.  That in and of itself is both worthy of note and amazing.  The Firebird and the Trans Am were survivors who went through the worst and best of American automotive times ... their deaths were ultimately handed out not by competition or dwindling fossil fuels but by useless bean counters who put short term corporate profit over priceless, non-purchasable things like heritage, legacy and legend.  Things that had to be earned over time, not bought with capital outlays.

 "Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore." - Edgar Allen Poe, "The Raven"

Standing here, now, next to this beguiling bird I have to say that I still find fault, real fault, with GM for killing the F-body.  Pontiac understood, moreso with the Trans Am than with any other model, that you don't kill off a legacy vehicle full of heritage and history just because it starts to become somewhat inconvenient to produce.

Pontiac understood this.

It was business.

It was passion.

They got it.

GM didn't and in truth, probably never will understand what Pontiac stood for or what it meant to so many which is why a lot of us who own classic Pontiacs now also own Fords and Hondas and Toyotas and won't be buying any more General Motors products for a very, very long time ... if ever again.  GM betrayed our loyalty for their own greed.  

Never again.

RIP Pontiac (1926 to 2009).

Gone but not forgotten.




 

 

That's good to know!

Apparently my local NAPA automotive parts store now carries "Pubes and Hoses".  That's good to know should I ever, like, need some extra pubes.

Columbia

Columbia - City of Charm on the River Pearl ...

... at least that's what my police department patch says.  

Lord knows I blew through Columbia many a time in my youth ... It was little more than a couple of redlights set up on highway 98, a place I had to slow down for no real damn reason at all.  I started coming to Columbia when I was 15.  That was 1984.  I had a driver's license (back when you could get a DL at 15), I had a '78 Chevy Rally Sport Camaro and I had no good intentions at all.  Back then, Highway 98 was a two-lane affair rife with blind spots and its own "Bloody 98" reputation for having so many people killed on that stretch of road.

Later, in the late '80's, the MS DOT began to widen the major two-lane highways into four lanes and getting to Columbia from Hattiesburg and back wasn't that much of an adventure anymore.

Columbia never crossed my mind as a place to settle.  I never thought I'd stop here for long let alone marry into this place and live here one day but life is funny strange like that, especially my life.  I guess I should have known that if I passed through a place often enough I'd eventually grow to like it, maybe even enough to live there one day. 

I passed through Columbia many times in high school, on my way to play basketball games at other schools and riding our big school bus with the rest of the team.  Years later, I used to haul medical supplies and specimens for a long defunct medical lab and Marion General Hospital was one of my stops.  I never thought I'd be working there one day let alone working there for twelve years in a row now.

I've been in Columbia for over 15 years now, that's nearly a third of my life.  I look back at where I wanted to be ... somewhere else.  I always thought that I would be the one who would move off ... way off like to Colorado or Texas or Alaska.  Instead I settled thirty miles west of where I grew up.

Big leap there.

I've realized something along the way ... I've realized something over the years ... people leave the area where they grew up not because something is holding them back but rather because there's nothing really holding them back.  I know a lot of people I went to school with who grew up in this area and now they're in other states, scattered across this once great country and I used to be a little jealous of that fact.  I used to sometimes wonder why I hadn't left for somewhere else ... and then I realized that I didn't need to.  Everything that I needed, everything that I wanted in life was right here, just 30 miles west of where I'd grown up and gone to school.

People leave and go far away because they're looking for what they don't have here and often they're not only mistaken but they're dead wrong as well.  It's sad to know that someone you thought was pretty grounded is now on the other side of the country having the exact kind of life that they had here only somehow it's so much better way out there ... or so they tell me.  It's funny that I don't really hear the joy in their words.

Several people that I knew left for the big cities ... New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, Miami ... and most of them are doing about the same as if they had stayed here, some worse, some better.  You couldn't get me to live in a place like New York city ... you don't go to a big city to find yourself, you go there to lose yourself ... to be absorbed because when you live in a city ... a city ... that has five times more people in it than the entire population of the state where you came from then you have to ask yourself one simple question:

"If I couldn't stand out in a place one fifth this size, how am I going to stand out in a place that is five times larger than where I came from?"

I'm 43 years old at the time of this writing and I've had a really good life ... no, scratch that.  I've had one hell of a great life.  I sit back and read about other people on Facebook and I have to smile.  Some are as old as I am and still chasing their dreams ... and truth be known they will probably still be chasing their dreams when the Reaper comes for them, all the while refusing to give up and admit that a dream was all that they were chasing.

John Cougar Mellencamp once sang about the charm or small towns and while I never liked that song when it was new the truth is that the song has grown on me over the years.

So, I live in Columbia.  It wasn't really a choice on my part, no, I married into Columbia way back in 1995.  Two years later I settled here so that my wife could be close to her family and have a job that she wanted.  I didn't mind commuting the 35 miles one way to Hattiesburg each day; I like driving.  A lot of time I turn the radio off and just listen to the hum of the engine, the song of the road and the cool breeze of the climate control system.  There are days when the road is covered in a light haze or a slowly wafting fog.  There are days when God draws up the curtain, slowly, on some of the most magnificent sun rises and slowly lowers the curtain on some of the most beautiful sunsets.  Bad weather tends to break north and south of Columbia though the clouds do get impressive more often than not.

Sometime in 1997 I started working part-time at Autozone ... in addition to my job at the DOT.  I just wanted some extra folding money for the weekend and for my sports cars and sportbikes.  I didn't have kids so ... Sometime in '99 I started looking at a MP position in the Army Reserve and was one step from being sworn in but Y2K was coming up and even though MDOT had to let me go they weren't happy about it since I was the only computer guy in the entire district.  About that time my manager at Autozone talked me into joining the Columbia PD as a reserve officer ... six months of training and all the powers and responsibilities of a regular police officer only I didn't get paid for my time.

I'm glad that I never signed on as the MP ... another guy I went to school with got that position instead and things were good ... until 9/11 when his unit got activated and he was one of the first to get shipped overseas where he stayed for a long time.  If I had chosen the MP position, that would have been my fate as well ... I may not have had children or had them when I did and I certainly wouldn't have been there for them growing up like I was.

Columbia isn't a really exciting place to live ... it's an even more boring place to die.

People have asked me what it's like to live in Columbia.

I have only one answer; Columbia is like Mayberry ... if Quintin Tarantino had directed "The Andy Griffith Show".  In fact, Columbia is one part Mayberry, one part Picket Fences, one part Twin Peaks and one part Twilight Zone.  Columbia is like a frontier town in the Old West ... it's not much to look at, it has its own special charm, it has everything that you need and it gets a bit rowdy sometimes.

For a little while in the 19th century, Columbia was the capital of Mississippi but the capital was later moved to Jackson.  There is a famous large and very beautiful house, very old, that is to this day still referred to as "The Governor's Mansion."  Our courthouse has four giant clocks on it and reminds me of the courthouse and clock in "Back to the Future."

I told you what Columbia is like ... well, it's also part "Eureka."  There have been UFO sightings in and around Columbia and even a few Bigfoot sightings.  Hell, we even have a toxic waste dump that's kind of like Love Canal where I hear that there is a huge pond that has a chemical sheen across the top of it, mutated, tumor sporting fish swimming in it and tiny silver bubbles which burble to the top of the water and burst into puffs of smoke once they reach the surface.  I've never seen any of that but I've heard it often enough to think there might be just a bit of truth in it.   Anyway, it's interesting barber shop or coffee shop talk that seems to come up more often than not.

To give you a taste of what it's like to live in Columbia, I went out for a ride the other day and found myself sitting in the local McDonald's, eating my lunch which has gotten cold since over the last fifteen minutes I've had to talk to and converse with about six different people who know me or recognize me.  Looking out at the highway I see a dust devil swirl by, wind and loose dirt from a construction project nearby.  It might as well be a tumbleweed and the effect would have been the same.

A pair of people wearing western wear and cowboy hats are riding horses at a slow clop through the Super Walmart parking lot.  A woman in a long dress, white gloves and a bonnet is riding a rusty old bicycle through the parking lot trying to sell homemade peanut brittle.  A rusted out Papa Smurf blue Geo Metro with an unlit Domino's Pizza sign on the roof buzzes by sounding like a giant constipated beetle.  

Down the road is the old Walmart which has been gutted and retrofitted to a variety of smaller stores that share space in the strip mall that also has an aging Winn Dixie and the three trio of fast food; KFC, Hardees and Taco Bell.  Next to the Taco Bell, in the same parking lot, is a long ago closed Burger King ... the sign out front reads "CB Whop er Me L" and gives a price that is six years ago. 

Down the road and across the highway from that is the old Jitney Jungle which is now a Tractor Supply store, the old K-Mart which is now a flea market and a host of other small stores including a rent to own, a check cashing place and a liquor store ... the liquor store has been there longer than any other store ... vice is always necessary, it may even be something that Maslow needs to rethink the priority of, even adding it to his hierarchy of needs.

There's other ghosts and free market corpses as well ... the abandoned and half overgrown Sonic on Lumberton.  The steak house that is now a gym.  The two old western wear stores ... the Autozone that I used to work at that's now a consignment shop and had once been a bowling alley long before it was a parts store.  The empty slab where the old A-frame house used to sit across from Autozone ... a house of drunks and poor white trash ... the house where I personally saw two trashy women leave drunk one night ... only to French kiss a tree later that night and both perish in the twisted wreckage of their car.

There's auto parts shops, tanning places, family restaurants that change names and ownership more than they change menus, antique shops, a Walgreen's, gas stations, bait and tackle shops, hunting supply stores ... a Radio Shack ... and a Ward's (fast food).  Ward's is such a tradition in Mississippi that I don't think that you're even allowed to put a city dot on the map unless it actually does have a Ward's.

I finish my cold meal and ride my Honda through my neighborhood, passing a deep creek.  Looking down into the bottom of the creek I notice it is almost dry.  There, on a sandbar in the middle of the creek, with a trickle of water running around each side, is a large gray television set ... just sitting there on the sandbar with the power cord trailing off into the water and I think "there's nothing good on TV."  Two days later a collection of storms moves through the area, heavy downpour and when I ride by the creek  a few days later the TV is gone ... swept away by the raging waters of the swollen creek.

I ride around ... relaxing ... and look for the "Yard of the Month" sign or who got "Student of the Week" this time.  I'm often surprised by what the houses look like where I find those signs in the yard.  I head downtown on my Honda, passing over exposed bricks dating back to the 19th century when roads still weren't paved with asphalt.  I pass down Beef Alley, past buildings that are older than my parents, over railroad tracks that have been almost covered up completely and past loading doors in the sides and rear of buildings big enough to hustle cattle out of train cars and into the buildings. 

I turn and ride past the police station, heading for one of my favorite spots to relax and just be alone.  I ride past Pioneer Aerospace ... the company that makes parachutes for the US government, the company that used to make parachutes for the space shuttle and I remember tales of the employees taking the chutes out to the water park and folding them there.

I ride on to the scenic bend in the river.  I park my Honda, take off my jacket, my helmet and my gloves and sit on the bank watching the water flow by and occasionally a fishing boat or even the local tourist air boat go by.

Columbia: City of Charm on the River Pearl.

I guess that's not too far from the truth and I guess Columbia's not too bad a place to live ... if you like Mayberry and Quintin Tarantino.

One road ends and another begins ...

August 7, 1992

It's been 20 years since that night long ago ... the night when I graduated college with my BS degree in Business Administration.  I remember that night because it was a happy and sad time.  Happy because I was saying hello to a new life and sad because I was saying goodbye to one of my friends.

1992 had been a year of goodbyes.  By August 8 I had said goodbye to the woman I had thought I was going to marry (see previous post), said goodbye to another woman I should have stayed with and now I was saying goodbye to one of my best friends, Cody.  Cody and I had met the first day of college way back in the fall of 1987 and somehow we had clicked and we'd been friends ever since.  We got separated when I came back home to go to college but we met up again in the Spring of '90 and then kind of grew apart while I dated Katrice.  Once Katrice walked out on me, I got absorbed back into the fold of my old group and the last six months had made up for lost time.

We spent the night at Cody's apartment ... me, him, his girlfriend and Flynn.  Joy was missing.  I missed Joy but she was long gone and far away in Pensacola.  Still, her absence was felt; an intangible absence made tangible by our memories of her and the time that she had spent with us and the time that we had spent with her.  

The four of us drank Bud Light and sweet tea and whiskey and wine coolers and Coke and Dr. Pepper.  We ate cheap carry out pizza from Papa's Pizza across from USM and reminisced on five years of both good and bad memories.  Sometime after 4 in the morning I fell asleep on the couch.  Cody and his girlfriend were already asleep in the recliner, snuggled up and Flynn was rummaging around in Cody's barren fridge for one last beer, the smoke from his cigarette wafting up and away from him, illuminated there in the light of the fridge and silhouetted against the dark of the kitchen.  

I called it quits, closed my burning eyes and woke up four hours later.

Saturday, August 8, 1992

It was light outside.

I checked my watch, got up, stretched, collected my stuff and in doing so woke up Cody and his girlfriend.  One last handshake and a brotherly man-hug from Cody, one hug from his girlfriend and a moment of silence.  The fellowship was ended.  Our post-graduation paths now parted and we were going our separate ways.

Cody was going back to Texas and his girlfriend was going with him.

They had plans for a life together.

I was going on vacation for a week in the Great Smoky Mountains with my family and to see my grandmother's brother and his wife.  I had a job waiting on me when I got back.  Other than that I had no real plans at all. 

When I returned, Cody and his girlfriend would be gone.  Days gone and hundreds of miles away.  That was another sad and happy feeling ... Cody and I had made it out of college together.  He had met a girl.  So had I.  Neither one of us got the girl that we wanted but he got the girl that he needed and I was ...

Alone, through no fault of my own ... or maybe I had made a few mistakes along the way.  I thought of Kelly, gone for over a month.  I thought of Joy ... gone now for four months.  I thought of Katrice ... gone now for six months.  All of them were dust ... ghosts of my past ... intangible absences made tangible by my memories of them. 

Walking out the door of Cody's apartment was like walking into a new life.

I found Flynn sitting on the front window ledge of the apartment, smoking his ... who knew what cigarette number he was on.  He took a swig from his battered flask and held it out to me.  I took a long swig of whiskey and handed it back.  The whiskey burned all the way down and sat smoldering in my empty stomach.  It was a happy and sad feeling as well but the world got a lot more orderly then, better than any coffee could tidy it up, and that was what was important.

And then I realized something ...

I had graduated from college last night.  I had given up all of my part-time jobs and I had a real, full-time job waiting on me to get back from vacation ... a full-time, well paying position in one of the largest banks in the state in the Information Systems department.  I was going to be a computer tech and like so many other things in my life that job had just landed in my lap at the last second.

I felt sad then, even more sad than I had in the last 24 hours.  I felt sad because everyone I knew was either leaving me or had already left.  My life was resetting itself.  Increment the counter back to zero.  I was alone, again, just like I'd always been ... well, I had Flynn which I guess is how I had started this whole adventure six years ago.

Six long years.

Six years ago, that early September Saturday morning.  I had just started my senior year in high school at Petal.  I had been changing the oil and filter in my black and gold '79 Pontiac "Bandit" Trans-Am there in the driveway of my parents' house and Flynn had pulled up in his beat up old '70 Pontiac GTO.  You see, Flynn and my parents had the same street address, they just lived on different streets and my Ames Performance Engineering (APE) Pontiac Firebird catalog had found its way into Flynn's mailbox by mistake ... or had it been some kind of cosmic fate?

That was the day that Flynn and I had met.  Everyone else had come after and now everyone else was leaving or already gone.  Anyway, it was just Flynn and me, again.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Just like it had always been before.

Flynn took a last pull on his cigarette and flicked it out into the grass beyond the sidewalk.  He took another swig of whiskey from his flask and put the flask back in his vest pocket.

"Kind of hungry.  Want to get something to eat?" Flynn asked.

Yeah.

Yeah I did.

"IHOP?" I asked, already knowing where Flynn wanted to go.

Flynn pushed himself up and off the window ledge, stretching.

"I reckon." he said, taking the lead and walking towards the parking lot where my Vette was parked.

I guess I was driving.

I took one last look at the apartment complex around me ... so many memories.  I took one last look at Cody's apartment, said a silent goodbye to a place that had only recently taken on the aspects of a shrine and then stepped on after Flynn, my keys in my hand.

Just like old times.

Flynn and Shields.

Let the good times roll.

Later that day I wound up at McAllister's Deli with my other friends, the intellectual bunch; Bill, Mel, Eric ... I remember that we spent a long time sitting there eating triple chocolate spoon cake and drinking sweet tea and going over our own memories, shared and personal, of our college years.  I remember Bill claiming that he could outdrink me in sweet tea and me accepting the challenge.  McAllister's had these huge 44 ounce cups that they served tea in and with free refills the gauntlet had been thrown down.  I made it through two cups of sweet tea, syrupy sweet tea ... got a refill and started on my third cup.  Bill made it about a quarter of the way through his second cup, got a look of distress on his face, excused himself and made for the bathroom.  A few minutes later he reappeared looking paler and disheveled.  Apparently there is such a thing as projectile tea-vomit and he had just experienced it.  He conceded defeat to me and we all broke apart to go our separate ways.  Bill and Mel already had jobs at Magnolia Federal Bank and I'd soon be joining them.

Eric was working at a software company in Meridian about a hundred plus miles away.

Things hadn't turned out that bad after all.

I had a college degree, I'd said my goodbyes and I still had a few friends left, friends that I'd only grow closer to in the next few years to come.  We said our (temporary) goodbyes, my friends wishing me well on my vacation.

I went home, tired ... no, exhausted ... and I hit my bed and fell asleep about 3pm in the afternoon.  I had nothing else to do.  No part-time job to go to, no girlfriend to be with ... right then I just wanted to sleep, to feel like I had accomplished something and to just rest after a very long, long journey through the walls and halls of academia.  I closed my eyes and I melted into my bed, slowly sinking into it like it was made out of warm gelatin.

I didn't dream at all.

I woke up five hours later with the worst headache I had ever had in my life, a real splitting headache and all I could think of was it was the product of drinking over 100 ounces of syrupy sweet tea in less than 30 minutes.  I suffered that night with what amounted to a tea hangover ... the first and only one I've ever had.  I was miserable and even several aspirin didn't seem to take the sharp edge off of my headache.  I thought that I might have to go to the emergency room the pain got so bad but about the time that I got up and ready to drive myself to Forrest General the pain started to subside.

I read a book for a while then got a shower and went to bed for the night.  It was a little after 9pm.

Sunday, August 9, 1992

The next day I helped my 70 year old grandmother fall gracefully into the passenger seat of my '88 Chevrolet Z-51 Corvette and together we headed out a day early for her brother's house in Chattanooga, TN.  She was a delight to travel with, telling me stories of her youth and her brothers and sisters.  My grandmother was a short woman and her head barely rose up above the dash / side of the passenger door but she kept me entertained as the miles between Hattiesburg and Chattanooga rolled by.

We stopped off for lunch at the Galleria Mall in Birmingham, Chick-Fil-A, and I remember seeing the massive water fountain rising and falling.  In the Winter, the fountain would be replaced with an old style merry-go-round.  We did some window shopping and then got back into my Vette and headed on down the road.

Late that afternoon we drove into the driveway of her brother's house and I helped her unpack.  My parents and my sister would be up late tomorrow so I had about a day and a half to kill.  That night, watching the sun go down over Missionary Ridge, I lay in a hammock in the back yard, keyed up my Sony Walkman and just relaxed.  I think I fell asleep and it was some of the best sleep that I'd had in a while.  My great uncle woke me and told me that they were going out to get something to eat.  I didn't do cafeterias so I told them I'd just get something on my own and maybe catch a movie later.

I ate at Pizza Hut by myself, in a mall there in Chattanooga and then went to see Clint Eastwood's new western "Unforgiven" at the theater across the highway.  I got back to my great uncle's house somewhere after 10 that night and fell asleep on the guest bed which was a folding couch that they had made up for me before going to bed.  I turned out the light and lay there in the dark ... thinking.

Just thinking.

What a long strange trip it had been, I thought as I lay there listening to my Walkman.  I listened to Chilliwack and Boston.  "My Girl", "Whatcha gonna do", "More than a feeling" and "Don't look back" were the four songs that I kept playing over and over again on my Walkman.  The batteries finally gave out, the tape slowed to a stop and I made a mental note to pick up some AA batteries in the morning.  I put my Walkman away but I could still hear the music in my head.

Again I felt a tinge of sadness because I thought that my journey, the long trail of my youth, had finally come to its anticipated but not expected end.  Little did I know that the journey was just starting.

The pillow smelled of Springtime, the sheets were fresh and I fell asleep to strange dreams about an uncertain future, about adventures yet to be had ... dreams that were punctuated by the sounds of late night traffic passing on the road in front of the house and the air conditioning cycling on and off periodically.