1970 or so pic.
As promised - Cars and travel
Well, I didn't think I would start on this yet. While it is beautiful here on the Jersey shore on Labor Day weekend, "social distancing" means there is not much going on. So, recounting the past may be the most fun thing out there.
Cars start early - 1955-1960:
Three window coupe(s)
My first car was a 1936 Ford four-door sedan. Leigh Travis, Al Christensen (my two close high-school friends) and I bought the car for $15 dollars each, and took it apart piece by piece in the spring of 1955. I don't think either of them went on to study engineering, but I was hooked. No picture of it, though.
Then in early '56, I bought a '53 Ford convertible, dark green, and put on spinners and full fender skirts. I racked it up in August '56, which taught me a great lesson, since I had to repair it. I have no pictures, to my knowledge. Since I couldn't have a car in college, I sold it in the summer of 1957.
That led to the coupes above, in 1958 and '59. I found the '29 Chevrolet in rough shape in New Brunswick, NJ, adjacent to Route 1 in the spring of 1958, and towed it home with a chain. Over the next three months, I installed a tri-carb Oldsmobile motor in it. The leftmost picture above shows me working on it in a tee shirt. My dad is overseeing, as well as five or six neighborhood kids. It was never "the hottest in town," but it was a great education, as the pictures of it below (car at right on the drag strip) and timing card show. When I found this old timing card last week, I had to add it.
The second car above (1934 Ford three window) is even more sentimental. In the fall of 1958, I had sold the Chevy coupe, and I knew I needed to replace it. So in February, 1959, I took two of my sisters on a great adventure. They were stalwarts. We drove the coupe home in icy snow.
What had happened was that we had found a classic '34 Ford three window, converted to column shift, in Northwestern New Jersey. We just kept asking around about old cars until we found someone who knew about this, and dickered with the farmer to buy it.
Thundering Turtles
Having cars often means being in groups: In my case, I joined a hot rod club, the "Thundering Turtles," from nearby Dumont, NJ in 1957.
Somewhere, I know, I have one of the business cards we handed out when we helped stranded motorists who needed roadside help. I found them in my archives from several other similar groups. Since hot rod clubs were often disparaged (people wrote lurid books about them, and "American Graffiti" captured it well), we worked hard to be helpful and to spread the word that we were really OK.
So, if you can't find a business card, will an old shirt work? See below. ↓
I can't list everyone who was in the club. They came from several towns (Dumont, Cresskill, Demarest, Englewood, Tenafly, plus others), and I stayed friends with many of them for years. Here are a few:
A group can decide to travel together:
1958 California Trip:
So in the late summer of 1958, the three fellows listed above and I decided to go on a two week trip to California to end the summer. I had spent the first six weeks building fieldstone walls on a 1600's historic home in Cresskill with an elderly gentleman named Montgomery Melbourne, who had been an advertising man, and of all things, an honorary "Kentucky Colonel." He had learned stone masonry from a legendary Northern Valley figure named Jules Gamboli, who had built most of the walls on Park Street, my home street in Tenafly. Mr. Melbourne was intent on teaching me and he did so well.
By August, I had made enough money to fund my participation in the trip. So here goes:
Jack Russell had built a 1948 Olds fastback sedan, with a 1957 Oldsmobile J2 engine, which was a lot hotter than mine. You can fit four strapping young men in a fastback sedan, particularly if you have taken out all of the insulation. Both Paul and Billy had great cars, too, but Jack was the leader, and we went in his.
It was a straight shot. In the days before Interstates, we made it in seventy two hours, with only two stops. The first, on top of the Continental Divide in Estes Park, Colorado, was a bust. When you have removed the upholstery, and you're at 10,000 feet plus, you can't sleep. We pulled out after an hour.
The second stop was more benign. We took a dip in the Great Salt Lake, watched the cars at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, and packed it in after an hour and a half. I picked up the last driving segment, and crossed the Sierras. They all told me I was seeing things in the road, and after 72 hours awake, I wouldn't doubt it.
We ended up in Vallejo, CA, found a motel and slept for twenty hours. So much for driving straight through!
We cruised the SF area, and headed south. A key stop was Pismo Beach, where we hit the ocean for the first time, and I body-surfed. A young local saw our car, and complimented us. He said he had a similar one in his garage at home. We followed him there, and he pulled out a tricked out dark green 1950 Olds Business Coupe. We said "Great!" He said "No, this is my father's car," and went back in and pulled out a clean 1948 fastback, souped up and really like ours.
"No, Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!"
We went on to LA, the Santa Monica beaches, Disneyland, and every drag strip we could find. The linkage is clear. Cars and surfing were going to be the next California wave; we could even see that in 1958, although I still knew nothing about board surfing. I didn't know it yet, but I had found Shangri La.
Maybe I was a little too hard core. The day they went to Disneyland, I hitchhiked on my own to the Pomona and Orange County drag strips. See below:
No pictures (may find somewhere), just card from Orange County, CA Drag Strip, 1958:
Having fast cars means racing (even in New Jersey/New York):
History of '29 Chevrolet coupe: Efforts at Montgomery Drags!
I'm not going to detail everything here, but in the summer of '58, Marilyn, her brother Richard and I spent every weekend at the Montgomery, NY Drag strip, usually leaving at 3:00am from Tenafly. We towed the coupe up the Thruway and Route 17, and then re-installed the drive shaft, which wasn't always easy. We all worked as tech inspectors, and I even got promoted. That's a story for another time.
So what's the net outcome of cars and travel: California on my mind (with surfing, like forever?)
"My later boyhood and teenage years were spent in New Jersey, but not on the “Jersey Shore.” In point of fact, the beach for my family and me still meant Florida. While others went south in the winter, we preferred the late summer and early fall, when, coincidentally, the waves were the biggest and best. But neither in Florida, where we went for years, nor in California, which I visited in 1949 and with a group of friends for a couple of weeks in 1958, did I ever see a surfboard. Always in the waves, but with my body prone and with a “fish-eye” view. By the early 60’s, I had warmed to the Jersey coast, since it was an easy place to reach for swimming and body surfing."
So, thanks again, Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Bruce and Terry With the help of your music, it was all coming together.
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