About a couple of years
earlier I was looking in the local paper for an old Thunderbird. I always like
the 61-63 series after seeing the movie Palm
Springs Weekend with Connie Stevens and Troy Donahue. In that movie there
was a 1963 red T-Bird convertible. In the paper there was a 1961 white hardtop
T-bird with red leather interior for $1200 in original condition. I had to have
it, and for that price, if it was as good as advertised, I wouldn’t even haggle
on the price—at least not too much.
Donna
and I drove out to Pasadena with cash in hand to look at the car hoping it
would be all that I dreamed of. After ringing the bell on the front door, a
little old lady (yes from Pasadena) answered. She said the car used to belong
to her husband who had died about a year earlier and she wanted it to go to
someone who would take good care of her. I was her man. The car was in great
basic shape for its age—sure it would need a paint job and a tune-up, but other
than that it was good to go. I offered her $1000 cash and we agreed on $1100.
Sold.
The most distinctive
feature of the car was the highly touted “Swing Away” steering wheel and a 390
cubic inch FE series V-8 It was a real gas hog, but gas was
a lot less than it is now a gallon so I didn’t sweat it. The main problem with
the car was the brakes. If it was raining you had to be careful since the brake
booster was very temperamental. Sometimes they would fail completely and you
had to rely on the emergency brake to stop. I didn’t usually drive it in the
rain and made sure only to take it out on the bright, sunny California days.
A year
later I finally made the decision to have her painted. My car aficionado friend
Paul Downing told me the place where I had my TR-6 painted had moved and were
now downtown L.A. near Crenshaw and Addams. I would get a great deal. For $600,
it would look as good as new.
While
the car was in the shop, Donna’s cousin from Scotland Alastair and his wife
Corrine, born in Mauritius had come to visit. Alistair looked a lot like a
skinny John Lennon in his White Album days and Corrine a lot like Lucy Liu when
she was in the Charlie’s Angels movie.
They were taking the train down from San Francisco and we met them at the
downtown Los Angeles train station near Olvera Street, the oldest part of the
city. We did the usual tourist thing, ate taquitos and churros, those long sugary
things that would rot your teeth in an Acapulco minute, and then headed back to
our place on Vine Street. We chatted and they told us of their windsurfing
adventures, exchanged photographs and after dinner we dropped them off at their
hotel in Hollywood—I’m not sure which one, but it was probably The Hollywood
Roosevelt.
On the
day they were scheduled to go to their next stop, which was Las Vegas, we told
them we would give them a ride downtown to the train station. I would be killing two birds with one stone by
dropping my TR-250 off to be painted teal and driving my freshly painted T-Bird
back to pick Alistair and Corrine up at a friend of theirs in the valley—Van
Nuys, I think. The five of us, Alistair and Corrine, Donna, Jonathan and me
were cruising down the 101 on a Sunday morning headed downtown when I heard a
strange grinding noise coming from the front left wheel. As I was pulling over
to the right hand lane in an attempt to park it on the shoulder to check it
out, the noise got louder and a second later I saw my front tire careen up over
the hardtop off the car and go rolling across the median past the left lane.
The T-bird skidded along the freeway and I could see sparks shooting on the
road. I had the presence of mind to make a hard right and navigate the beast to
the shoulder right before the Laurel Canyon exit. Thank God nobody was hurt,
but I was afraid to look at the damage. I knew it wasn’t going to be good. Apparently,
the body shop mechanics forgot to tighten the lug nuts on the front left wheel.
Do I hear lawsuit? One thing for sure, there was no way we were going to make
it downtown to the train station on time.
I got
out of the car and inspected the damage. The only thing I could see wrong was a
black tire mark on the hardtop. The front left brake drum looked a little
suspect, but not destroyed. Since it was Sunday the traffic on the freeway was
fairly sparse. I waited for an opening and darted across four lanes on the 101
and rescued my wheel. The tire still looked in reasonable shape. I waited again
for the traffic to clear and bolted back to the car. If we would have had a
cell phone, Donna would have called AAA, and I was nowhere near a phone box.
Fortunately, I had a jack in the trunk and was able to jack the front end up
and replace the tire to its proper position. I don’t think it took more than
thirty minutes all told. I tightened the lug nuts and prayed that it would be
road worthy. It was.
My mom
still lived on Canton Drive which was only a five or ten minute drive from the
Laurel Canyon exit. I asked Alistair and Corrine where the next train stop was
and they said they thought it was some place called Simi Valley. It wasn’t that
far. I said to them that if my mom was home, I could borrow the Mercedes,
(since I didn’t want to risk going in the T-Bird until I checked it out, and I
was pretty sure they wanted to avoid the death
trap like the plague). The Mercedes was parked in the driveway. I
introduced them to my mother and she told our visitors to make themselves at
home. Alistair called AMTRAK and we had forty-five minutes until the train
arrived in Simi Valley—no sweat. We all piled in the Mercedes and made it there
in half an hour. They made their train and when we got back to Canton Drive I
checked out the T-Bird. After I cleaned the skid mark off the hardtop, it was
perfect. I guess I would forgo the lawsuit after all. It wasn’t worth the
hassle.
Now two
years later, after coming back from our trip to Nashville, we knew we needed a
good family car and went shopping for a good used Jeep Cherokee. I wanted a
good four wheel drive, but Donna didn’t care as long as it was in good shape
and had low miles. We had about ten grand to spend from my father’s life
insurance policy, the rest would be used for moving expenses and whatnot. The
fourth or fifth Cherokee was a Gray 1990 with less than thirty-thousand miles.
I couldn’t even remember if it was 4 x 4 or not. While Donna was at work and
Jonathan was at the day care place run by an attractive Israeli woman out of
her house in Canoga Park, I drove my T-Bird out to West Hills to get another
look at the gray Jeep.
I
wasn’t five blocks out of my driveway when the clouds burst open and a deluge
poured down. I knew it was risky for the brakes in my T-Bird but I threw
caution to the wind and kept driving. I made it to the house in West Hills and
the owner and I had reached a tentative price on the car. I told him I would
talk it over with Donna and let him know as soon as possible. I was driving
down a side street heading for Northridge Boulevard when I applied the brakes.
Nothing. There I was headed for a busy street with no brakes going forty miles
an hour. I managed to step on the emergency brake but it was not doing anything
but slowing me down and then I downshifted to low. Still rolling. I was going around fifteen or twenty when I
saw the intersection quickly approaching. I had only fifty feet left before I
would smash headlong into a river of cross traffic. I had to think fast. I
guess that I could have thrown the gear into park but that would have ruined my
transmission. I knew there was another way.
I
turned off the ignition key but the car
kept moving and now I had no power steering and the car weighed at least two
and a half tons. I pumped and then pushed as hard as I could on the brakes
hoping it would slow me down enough to make a hard right turn and then I would
immediately get into the parking lane hoping there were no parked cars. When I
got to the intersection I turned the wheel right as hard as I could and I was
panicked to see a Toyota or Honda parked in the red not more than fifty feet
ahead. I knew I was going to hit it but what else could I do? My front bumper
collided with the black rubber bumper of the Japanese import and moved it
twenty or thirty feet forward. I got out of the car and inspected the damage. I
couldn’t see any at all. Not only was there no damage but I had managed to move
the illegally parked car I hit into a proper space. I had an hour or two left
before I had to pick Jonathan up at day care and I was stuck in West Hills with
a car without brakes. I walked back to the house with the Jeep and told the guy
I wanted the car on one condition. He had to drive me to the day care and then
follow me to the bank. He did and I bought the car. I felt blessed and thankful
for the reprieve. While driving the Jeep home I reached down to switch to four
wheel drive. There was no lever. I had bought the one that was a two wheel
drive. Oh well, less things to go wrong and we were about to embark on a
two-thousand mile journey to Nashville. I wasn’t going to quibble over small
potatoes. I was alive, the T-Bird was undamaged and I made it to day care in
time. MAZEL TOV AND HALLELUJAH!!
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