Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Cars, Autos and More Pieces of Junk...

The All VW garage (what car of mine has EVER lived in a garage?!) ended abruptly in the spring of 1972. The thoroughly worn out three year old 69 VW Bug with 110K miles on it (yes!) blew a cylinder and found itself in the VW shop in Mill Valley. The shop was adjacent to the Ford dealer.



A bright red brand new Ford Courier talked to me, saying, "just think of the junk you could haul in me and with a cover over the bed I could double as a camper on weekend fishing trips". Yes! So a deal was struck, I paid cash for the truck (flush then, not now) and drove the lil' charmer home to a surprised wife. Weeks followed with my adding a cassette player so I could listen to The Stones and The Beatles on the way to work each morning. I added some truck style mirrors so I could see better when hauling all that junk down the road too. It good decent mileage for then to, 20 -25 mpg and for a truck was reasonably comfortable. Sometime in 1974 we moved to Petaluma and the truck certainly performed yeoman-like duty during the transition; furniture, a pottery wheel, a 1/2 ton of clay and a small sailboat I built came along for the ride. She lived for another three years running me helter skelter around the Bay Area fixing customer's room-filling computers day in and day out. In the summer of 1977 she stayed home while I attended a golf tournament, my dear wife, having a morning appointment of her own, stayed back til later in the day and then she drove the truck to the golf club (tried too) and blew the engine when a water hose broke along the way in the 108 degree California heat! So long to the lil' red truck, cost more to fix than she was worth (even then). I sold her for scrap with 165,000 miles on her 5 1/2 years after I bought her. Verdict: A Car - Good, honest transportation.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Cars, Automobiles and Pieces of Junk cont'd

So I motored the highways and byways throughout northern California all thru my short 4 year Air Force career in the '61 Beetle. Off road adventures as I hunted down the elusive golden trout in streams and lakes far removed from what normal people consider roads. No SUV, nope, they didn't exist, no 4WD truck either for while they were around mostly in the military they were far from common like today. So my lil' rear engines, rear drive bug did the work for me and very successfully too! I found my bride to be in Fresno and she seemed to approve of the lil' green beast as it got us to and from the coast, the mountains and the foothills with aplomb. It became our family car after we were married in late 1966 and I installed a baby seat in it in the summer of 1968 when my son was born. Shortly after we moved from San Jose to Stinson Beach I bought a brand new 1969 dark blue bug with a cream interior, it even had a gas gauge and a radio!

To and from Stinson Beach every day going to work in The City (San Francisco) some 30 miles distant. There were two roads to take, the upper road thru Muir Woods, Mill Valley and out onto 101 and the coast road that wound along the cliffs thru Muir Beach then up past the Land Ranch thru Mill Valley and onto 101 as well. The lower road along the coast had 165 changes in direction in the 12 miles from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach, kept a driver busy and careful as well. I only ran into one deer in all those miles driving that road from the spring of 1969 to the spring of 1974 when we moved to Petaluma. Along the way we collected another child, my daughter Aimee and a 1969 VW bus that my wife dressed up for camping with curtains and other decorative details.


It then became the family car and the bug was my work car.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

More Cars, Automobiles and Pieces of Junk

The car that followed these first explorations into the world of automobiles was rather unique at the time. It was a pale green 1961 VW "Bug". Used it costs me 900 dollars, the year was 1964. Why did I pick this one? Well the rebel in me demanded something different and the stories at the time pointed out it's nearly ledgendary reliability which is something that was sorely missing in my last two vehicles. It had low mileage as I recall and a certain charm. My friends on base ridiculed me for this choice but my girlfriends seemed to like it. My parents, well they were not that enthused especially since I had borrowed the money from my mother for the purchase. She expected more. It was less.

I particularly liked the 20-25 mpg fuel mileage it got and the handling which was light and different than the front engine cars I had driven til then. I genuinely LIKED the car, small, easy to park and cheap on gas it allowed me to wander into the Sierra foothills in search of trout spots along the fire trails that line the foothills and mountains near Beale. Im kept a light trout spinning rig and tackle bix in the car so that I was ready to go on friday night after work. I spent many weekends wandering the outback of the mountains and fishing lakes and streams I knew not the name of. Such was life at the time. It had the famous auxilary tank, really just a sump in the main one that allowed a person an extra 20-25 miles after you ran out of gas as it had no actual gas guage. Top speed was about 70 mph and would lug along at 3 or 4 mph thru the muddy fire roads that I found myself in almost every week, seldom getting stuck. The engine being over the driving wheels really made it a wonder in bad weather.