Star struck

There's a lesson to be learned from Mr. Beagles' latest internet mishap: get a toaster oven.  I'll have to look into that, just in case.

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I thought the discussion on cars was interesting, I was just surprised that neither dawg cared much what they looked like.  Well Old Dog gussied his up into a southern belle nookie wagon.

Hmmm...don't think either of us mentioned what we thought of the cars' looks, one way or the other.  But since you brought it up, I thought the '67 Fairlane was a fine looking ride with clean lines, and the best looking of the lot, followed by the Imperial.  There's no accounting for taste, is there?

I wouldn't describe the Ranchero as a "nookie wagon" but it sometimes worked out that way, and reminds me of one car I forgot to mention, a 1940 Chevrolet Special DeLuxe Coupe.  There was a girl I was seeing in Alabama, quite a sweet young thing, and all I'll say is that she was above the age of consent, which was 13 at the time.  Anyhow, when I went to see her I always passed this house that had this car in the yard with a "For Sale" sign and finally I stopped and made a few inquiries.  I found out the price was about $200, and the car actually ran if you had a good battery.  The body was very good, interior not bad, but it needed a brake job and new wiring, which I took care of with the help of a few of my buddies. The plan was to give it to my father, this was the same year and model car he had when he married my Mom after the war.

Drove it around town for a while until I got out of the army and headed north, straight through to Cleveland to see a buddy of mine from Okinawa.  Couple of days later I headed to Chicago but just short of the Indiana border it starting to peter out to the point it barely ran.  Made it to a service station and found out a piston collapsed.  Not good, I'm thinking.  So I call Dad up and see if he could rent a tow bar and come and get me; didn't tell him what I was driving except it was "bigger than the Ranchero."  He shows up many hours later and was amused with the tale despite what a pain in the ass it must have been for him to bail out his newly discharged son.

The trip home was uneventful and we pushed the car into the garage, where it sat for many years.  It would have been easy enough to replace the engine as just about any GM straight-six engine from the last few decades would have dropped right in.  Ol' Pop got as far as pulling the top and bottom end off the engine but that was it.  I don't  think he cared whether or not it got running, just thinking about it gave him pleasure.

Whenever the garage door was open, some lookie-loos would always stop and ask about it, whether or not it was for sale.  After nearly twenty years of sitting and gathering dust (the car, not Dad) he got an offer he couldn't refuse but asked my permission to sell it, anyway.  I said sure, it's yours, do what you want with it.  So he sold it and gave me half the dough, which I tried to refuse but he insisted.  I learned long ago not to argue with him.

One more thing about that car.  In order to move freely to and from base you had to have it registered with the proper bumper sticker: red numbers for enlisted men and blue numbers for commissioned officers.  I think that's how it worked; maybe the numbers were black and the lettering was blue or red.  Anyhow, one of my housemates was an MP and he hooked me up with a special bumper sticker which could have gotten him in a lot of trouble, but never did.  As far as anyone knew, that car belonged to a 2-star general; no numbers, just stars.  Even had my initials on it.  We got quite a few laughs out of it, as you can imagine.