What follows are some car-related memories from my distant past.  Once in awhile remembering the past is fun, however, for the record, generally, I prefer living in the present. 

High school was over fifty years ago.  I honestly no longer know if the stories I tell are totally accurate.  I’m going with mostly accurate.  I am not mechanically inclined and not really a car guy.  I like using cars to do stuff, not so much doing stuff on cars. 

Starting about a month or so before I got my license and about a half dozen times, my older brother gave me the keys to his turbocharged Corvair Corsa Turbo 6 to practice driving.  He would say here are the keys, try not to crash.  I then drove off alone. 

It was probably the fourth time I drove his car.  I had the hang of it.  I knew how to shift and the like.  It is just about sunset.  I am turning left from County Road B heading north on the entrance to I35W toward I694.  This section of the interstate was, at the time, brand new with very little traffic.  

I accelerated, my foot to the floor, shifting through the gears. At about 100 mph the front end started to float.  I was not at redline on the tach so I tried to keep going faster. To this day, I think I took my foot off the gas just a split second before I lost control.  I did not crash but it was close. That is as fast as I’ve ever driven. I was too dumb to be scared, but smart enough to avoid wrecking my brother’s car. 

The following summer I got a summer job at a fiberglass repair shop.  I think it was located a couple of blocks from the Minneapolis Auditorium.  They fixed fiberglass boats and did bodywork on Chevrolet Corvettes (their bodies were fiberglass).  They rented some very dumpy storage space down on Nicollet Island.  Part of my job was to shuffle cars from the storage space to the main shop.  That summer I probably drove a dozen or so Corvettes down Hennepin Ave between the storage space and the shop.

One of the cars I shuffled was a custom 1966 Corvette painted British racing green with a dark racing stripe down the center pulling a hydroplane race boat on a custom trailer both painted to match the Vette.  Everyone I passed along the way stopped and stared at a seventeen-year-old kid driving the Vette with a boat down Hennepin Ave.

Donnybrook Raceway started in 1968, (yes I looked it up).  The following year, I drove my 1959 Pontiac Catalina in the middle of the week to watch a Sports Car Club of America event.  Basically, amateur drivers put a rollbar in their stock sports car, put on a helmet, and raced each other.   We were allowed to park and stay in the infield campground (bare field with a couple of porta-potties).  I slept in the car.  The next day my car would not start.  I even talked one of the race mechanics into taking a look and he could not get it started either. 

So that afternoon I hitchhiked home.  There were two entrances to the track one for the general public and the other for the racers and track staff. The non-public entrance was closer to the infield so I walked out of that entrance and stuck out my thumb.  

A green Ford Mustang pulled out of the track, pulled over, and picked me up.  The car had a rollbar. The driver was wearing a helmet and racing gloves. He asked me where I was headed and drove me to the corner of County Road B and Highway 280, three blocks from  my house.  For the duration of the trip, he did not say more than a couple of words.  Which was good because he was driving very fast.  We passed cars like they were standing still.  The tires squealed slightly as we rounded corners.  He was in full race mode. Scaring the crap out of me was probably just a bonus.  

During my Junior year of college, I was mentally not in a good place.  I told my mom I planned to drop out of school spring quarter and hitchhike my way to the east coast.  I didn’t drop out mostly because I was too depressed to change course.  However, when my brother heard about my funk, he suggested I fly out to Norfolk Virginia, where he was stationed (Navy) then drive back home with him and his car.  He was to be deployed for six months in the Mediterranean and did not want to leave his car on the base for that long.  

His car was a custom 1967, maybe 1968, Pontiac GTO painted multiple shades of metal-flake green. Big cheater slicks so the car was raised in the back.  Traded the Corvair Corsa plus some cash for it as I recall.  

So I flew down and spent a week of my Christmas break in Norfolk, VA.  Two days before Christmas we headed home.  The first thing to know is I had long hair.  The next thing to remember is it was a custom painted street rod.  The third thing to remember is the 55 mph speed limit had just taken effect.  About a mile from his base a Virginia highway patrol started following us.  Hour after hour, as we drove from the eastern edge of Virginia to the western edge, a highway patrol car was right behind us.  Periodically one patrol car would take an exit but another patrol car would pick us up. 

When we got to the Virginia / West Virginia state line, there was a West Virginia state patrol waiting to escort us.  The same routine, periodically the patrol car would take an exit, and a new car would be there to follow us.  We stopped for gas and the patrol pulled in behind us.  He nodded his head and tipped his hat but never said anything.  

Once we got to Ohio we were no longer followed.  The speed limit might have been 55 but we wanted to get home sooner than later.  We treated speed limits as suggestions and drove as fast as the traffic would allow. 

No moral to these stories.  Maybe someday I’ll tell you some more. Learning how to break into cars is a good story.  Anyone one of a half dozen teenage road trips is a good story. For now time for lunch. 

 

The closer you look the more you see

www.scaleandperception.com

 

The corn dog from the Roseville VFW was good but an MN State Fair pronto pup would’ve been better.  I was sad the 2020 MN State Fair was canceled, however, I was not crushed.  It is a shame the vendors lost income, but in fact, it saved me a couple of hundred bucks.  I miss the “Great Minnesota Get Together”, however, canceling the fair made sense.

The reality of this pandemic is the virus is highly contagious, spreads mostly through the air between congregated people.  In America, over two-hundred thousand died, five times that number were hospitalized, millions got sick, millions were asymptomatic and yet the vast majority of us are yet to be infected. 

Not enough time has elapsed to know how long immunity continues post-infection. Vaccines are being developed although none are yet proven to be both effective and safe. 

Assuming a vaccine is developed, it will take many months maybe years to ramp up production and to twice vaccinate the over seven billion people on earth. Add the reality that many might refuse to be vaccinated and God alone knows how long we will be fighting COVID-19. 

Most people wish life would soon get back to pre-pandemic normal.  Being honest, I can’t remember any “normal” time in my entire life. In my life experience: more days than not, unexpected shit happens, we react, and then tomorrow comes.  Then, as often as not, during the next day, the unexpected shit once again happens.  

In reality, this new coronavirus is not the only threat we all face. Forces known and unknown are always threatening our lives and requiring us to adapt as best we can.  Cancer, auto accidents, diabetes, illness, overwork, lack of sleep, and oh so much more besides COVID-19 also threaten our well being. 

We wear seatbelts, we filter our water and we wear warm clothes on cold days. We wash our hands, we have sewer systems.  The list of ways we react to threats to help our chances of survival is long. 

Almost always as we react to a new threat, real or imagined, it is first awkward and controversial.  Then, over a period of time, our adaptation becomes second nature (normal). Some people will still not wear a seatbelt but most of us click it on without a second thought.

Right now, most people, including me, think social distancing and wearing a mask is required to reduce the threat of COVID-19.  We also wash our hands, get checkups by a doctor, periodically change our sheets and you get the idea.  Each day we do our best to assure we see tomorrow. Sure we can take some risks, but most of us know tempting fate is not a good long-term strategy. 

A meteorologist responding to a question about bad weather said; the weather is what it is.  Judging the weather to be good or bad is more about your circumstance than about whether the weather is good or bad. Snow makes driving difficult but snow makes cross-country skiers smile.  

People are social beings. The negative consequence of social distancing is real. It goes against our nature. Yet congregating in close quarters such as in concerts, churches, sports, weddings, funerals, and the like are not a good idea during a pandemic. You might not get sick or die but you might well spread the virus to someone who will.  

One thing I know for sure, life will never return to a pre-pandemic normal.  Life always evolves.   Normal always evolves. Who knows what concerts, weddings, sports, and the like will evolve to.  I am actually looking forward to seeing how it all works out.   

Weddings are a good example.  Over the past several decades I attended dozens of weddings.   Each wedding was different. Some big, some very small.  In back yards, in big cities, on farms, in small towns, in big buildings, in churches, in small banquet halls and, you get the idea.  

I saw a bride ride into a wedding riding side-saddle on a white stallion, while a gospel choir sang under an ancient oak tree.  At another wedding, Linda and I were the witnesses and only guests.  Each wedding is unique.  There is no normal wedding. The thing is, in the end,  the status of the couple was: married.  Whether the wedding was lavish or in a judge’s office during a coffee break, once it is done, the couple is legally married.  

Weddings during the COVID-19 pandemic can happen. The wedding might be different than the couple originally thought but no wedding is ever normal and virtually all of them are memorable in their own way. 

I miss concerts but at a recent distance get together, one of our friends played the guitar. You can’t beat live music. Our little mini-concert was every bit as wonderful as I could imagine.  

Where is this normal to which so many of us refer?  Working or learning from home was not the norm, yet there are many who love working or learning from home.  On the other hand,  for some, working or learning from home is not ideal. Doing the best we can with the hand dealt is the best we can do.

Normal is changing like it always does: shit happens, we adjust and move on until some other shit happens. That’s life.  Like the weather, life is not bad or good, life is what it is.  Whether it is good or bad depends on how well you adapt to it.

 

The closer you look the more you see.

www.scaleandperception.com