C9
10-04-2004, 11:57 AM
Monday Night Tales from the Dez.
Part 1 (http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=557476&page=1&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1)
Part 2 (http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=565969&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1&vc=1&PHPSESSID=)
Initial Intro (http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=557391&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1)
Doofus and Whiny - Part 3
At the start of our senior year in high school, a new kid showed up. Straight from the rainy environs of Washington state. He was tall, good looking and one heck of an athlete. Especially so in football. In short, every cheerleaders dream as well as the dreams of a few other young ladies once they got a good look at him.
He started off ok on his first day when he’d introduced himself to a few as Troy Mercury.
We didn’t meet him for a while, but we had to agree, it was a most cool name although a short-lived one as it turned out. We’d heard through the grapevine that his home room teacher introduced him as Murgatroyd Mercury. Murgatroyd . . . geez. No wonder the guy introduced himself as Troy. We found later that no one called him Troy, he just figured he’d give himself a nickname of sorts and pass up the Murgatroyd bit.
We’d heard of Murgatroyd before and always thought it was one of those jokes about a made up name. Maybe it’s a fine and respected name from the past, but to us it sure didn’t sound that way. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d actually meet a guy named Murgatroyd.
Things turned out ok anyway. Once kids at school got to know him he fell into a pretty cool nickname. He ended up being called Murgy. It worked well and rolled off the tongue just fine.
Murgy Mercury. Or Murgy Merc for short. Either way was ok with him and ok with us. I guess we could have gotten used to Murgatroyd, but we liked Murgy much better.
Thinking back on it in later years, it made me think of the Johnny Cash song about “A Boy named Sue.” It did seem that Murgy’s dad stuck him with the clumsy name so he would learn to stick up for himself. Maybe so, but Murgy was big enough and strong enough that picking on him was out of the question for most.
His dad had a cool nickname too. Although his true first name of Michael, always a good and dependable name, used by many and liked by all would have been the one to pass on to Murgy. Michael Jr. would have worked for us.
In any event, Murgy’s dad was known as Mickey to his friends. Now there was a cool name combo. Mickey Mercury. That rolled off the tongue easy enough. For us, we shortened it to Mickey Merc and applied it to Murgy’s dad as well as the Ford dealership he owned.
The Ford dealership was kind of a funny deal. Murgy’s dad had been a successful Ford dealer in Washington, sold out, moved south and bought the one in our town. Murgy told us his dad really wanted to be a combined Ford-Mercury dealer, but Ford wouldn’t let the Mercury franchise come into our town. Don’t know why, the adjacent town was the closest Mercury dealer and they were allied with Ford. In fact the out of town dealer had all three of Ford’s franchises and was the only combined Ford-Mercury-Lincoln dealer outside of L.A. that we knew about. The topper, at least for Murgy’s dad was when Ford let a new Lincoln-Mercury franchise get started in town about a year later. I can only imagine the phone conversations and the confusion that ensued when one of the office girls answered the phone with “Mercury Ford.” And the customer asking about Mercury’s only to find they didn’t handle them.
Murgy kinda had it made in our eyes. Along with being a handsome devil, a good athlete and driving a like new 56 Ford pickup, he had an after school and half a day on Saturday job at his dads Ford dealership. Course, once football season started, practices ran after school and Murgy’s dad - a sports nut of the highest order - had no problem letting Murgy out of work to play football. It was ok with us. With Murgy taking over the starting quarterback spot, it looked like we might get somewhere in the league.
None of us in our little surf rat, hot rod gang played football or any other sport for that matter. We liked cars and the beach too much and besides, most of us worked at an after school job to support our cars. None of it seem to bother Murgy. He joined our little gang and hung out with us in his free time. Which, with football, a girlfriend and work, there wasn’t a whole lot of time. He loved football, but cars ran a strong second. In a small way he lived the life of a rich kid, but he sure didn’t act like it. In fact, we didn’t seem to have the jock thing going on at our school. For the most part, we all got along pretty well and you’d find surf rats and motorheads hanging out with jocks and vice versa.
Maybe it was because it was a simpler time and maybe not. The town wasn’t too big nor was it too small. Just big enough to where you didn’t know everybody in town and small enough that the few cliques there were didn’t really create any problems. All in all, just a bunch of kids running with their friends and getting along with most others. That’s not to say there weren’t long standing feuds, mean kids and kids who couldn’t stand one another. That happens no matter what it seems. Just that it never really turned into a big problem.
Maybe a good illustration is what some of the guys on the Junior Varsity (JV) football team did. We had a new kid enter school that year. New kids not being too big a deal, they showed up, met some other kids, formed friendships and blended into the school right along with the rest of the kids. Before long, it was like they’d always been there.
This kid though, he was different. He had a learning disability and had gone to private schools all his life. At least that’s the way we heard it. There really wasn’t too much information available, but from what we did know, his folks decided that he had to take his place in society somewhere along the line and his sophomore year looked like as good a place as any to start. I’ll just call him Ronald here. As good a name as any other.
Ronald showed up at school the second day after it started. We saw him around and just figured he was an odd duck. He was friendly and smiled at everybody. It wasn’t long until the forces of evil, in the guise of a small band of neer-do-wells took it upon themselves to make him miserable.
It all came to a head when they stripped him of his books, pantsed him and sent him crying into the quad. He was embarrassed to tears and they were freely flowing. The girls who witnessed the whole thing thought the guys who pulled that little stunt were being mean. Seems like girls always had a finer tuned sense of justice than the guys did anyway. Or maybe it was just empathy.
What did happen was that a couple of JV football players went over to the flagpole where the dips who’d taken his pants were about to run the flag down so they could raise the pants up. When the JV guys asked for the pants back, the ringleader of the group, a bit of a bully, stepped out, put the pants behind his back and started to say something. One of the JV players hit him in the mouth so hard that he went down to his knees and now he was crying. Not much sympathy from the crowd. We’d witnessed an injustice and we were all for the guy who punched the pants thief in the mouth. Kinda funny too, the girls started applauding and it swept over the quad.
I saw a couple of teachers watching from a shadowed window, but nothing was ever done about the short and quick one punch fight. They’d probably seen, as we did, Ronald getting picked on and once the dust settled they probably figured that justice was served and not much more need be done.
The bad guys knew their number was up and in fact the way it turned out, their careers as a herd of pain in the ass jerks was over too. For us and especially for the JV football guys an injustice righted.
The JV football team took Ronald under their wing, made him part of the group and introduced him to the world of athletics. It wasn’t long until Ronald was the waterboy for the team, although the school called them team managers. Some felt that the guys that did the scut work didn’t deserve a letter, but we figured they did. Not many worked as hard at supporting the team as those guys did.
For Ronald, it was quite an experience. He fell into a nice crowd of guys that he could call friends and nobody ever picked on Ronald after the day at the flagpole. Ronald, for his part, never took advantage of his protectors or being protected. He truly was a darned nice kid. He talked a little slow sometimes, but all you had to do was pay attention and listen well.
Ronald did good in school, worked hard and got pretty good grades. The topper was his Senior year. He was elected head cheerleader. A position usually reserved for one of the most popular guys at school. Ronald fit the bill quite well.
Head cheerleader, not bad. We’d have been last cheerleader to be on that team. It was loaded with good looking girls.
-<>-
Somewhere in here, my girl friend - DeeDee Wildmon - started dragging her younger brother Tom along with her whenever she went out. Not on dates, thank God, but it did happen once. The deal was that DeeDee would take him into town and keep an eye on him. That’s what their folks thought anyway.
DeeDee would pretty much take him into town so she could meet with us, give him the car keys, shut her eyes, say a little prayer and send him off into the world. With the small knowledge that she expected him back at a certain spot at a certain time. As far as we knew, he was never late.
Tom was two years younger than DeeDee and had just started driving. He was a wild man though. DeeDee would never let him drive when she was along. It was enough for her to turn over the car keys and hope for the best. He got really crazy now and then, but to give him credit where credit is due, he could handle a car with the best of them. He was a natural and got out of some scary situations by simply driving out of them. I always thought it was because he got himself into so many scrapes when driving that he had to learn how to recover. Either that or die. Sort of the ultimate sink or swim school.
A few of us had ridden with Tom and after that first ride there weren’t many who got in the car with him again. Not unless he absolutely, positively promised to drive safe. Going through the gears and nailing the throttle was an expected part of driving for most of us. Thing was, we did it where we could do it safely. Tom did it anywhere the fancy struck him. To be fair, when he promised to be good, he was always good. Especially with us. With DeeDee, it was a different story though. I think he just liked to hear her scream.
She had it under control pretty well the night her dad asked how come Tom didn’t drive once in a while. DeeDee and Tom were in the family’s two year old 57 Ford hardtop and she was getting ready to back it out of the driveway when her dad walked over and asked DeeDee’s answer was most diplomatic. She said that she liked to drive and just hadn’t thought to turn the wheel over to Tom. With that, DeeDee shut the engine off, had Tom get out and walk around the car while she slid over to the passenger side. Tom got behind the wheel, all the while wearing his Mr. Serious face for dad’s benefit, backed safely out of the driveway, into the street and drove gently down the road.
DeeDee said she looked back and could see dad fondly watching them go down the road.
Once they were out of sight, DeeDee had Tom stop the car. Tom figured she was going to want to drive and darned if he would give her the wheel. What DeeDee did do, was to read Tom the riot act. Although in a calm and refined way. The basics were, that if Tom didn’t behave when she was in the car, she was going to gather up her girl friends for backup and report all his transgressions to their folks. A pretty good threat as far as Tom went and it worked pretty well.
All of Tom’s transgressions - and it was a long list - weren’t behind the wheel. The school was still looking for whoever put the firecrackers into the school dump truck. Said truck being used mostly for trash hauling. School wasn’t that big, but it was big enough to generate a lot of trash. Most all of it paper. The flammable kind. One thing Tom hadn’t thought of when he tossed the firecrackers into the trash laden bed. It wasn’t long until there was a heck of a blaze going. It was surprising the dump truck gas tanks didn’t catch fire. It was quite the lunch time show with the fire department showing up to put out the fire. Everybody, more or less, knew who the guilty party was, but nobody said a word.
That was just one of Tom’s little secrets and Tom knew DeeDee’s threat was a good one. Tom knew, if nothing else, DeeDee always kept her word.
After that short little sister-brother talk, Tom drove like a gentleman whenever his sister was in the car. Once she was out though, it was truly, hang on for your life. Tom got his nickname of “Wild Man” honestly. Not so much as a play on his name even though that worked pretty good. He truly was a Wild Man.
The topper to Tom’s short driving career came when he was doing a bit of drag racing on the city streets. Not one of the short and furious low gear blasts and maybe a shift into second that we’d all done somewhere along the line. These were bad enough in our little flathead powered Fords, we’d be doing 50 or so on a city street with a 25 mph speed limit. We quit that stuff pretty early in our driving careers. There were better ways to be involved in a race, with simply driving out of town being one way, but the best and most sensible was to travel to the drag strip that wasn’t too far away.
Not for Tom though, the family 57 Ford, a nice gray and white hardtop equipped with the Interceptor 312 Y-Block was a strong runner. Tom thought nothing about going through all three gears, in town, occasionally reaching some pretty ferocious speeds. All done on the 25 mph speed limit streets in the city. It wasn’t long until the cops started looking for him. In fact DeeDee noticed the cops giving her the eye when she drove the 57 through town. They never stopped her, but it was obvious they were looking.
It all came to a head after a short drag race on the edge of town. A plainclothes cop car dropped in behind the 57 and Tom was dumb enough to run for it. He knew it was a cop car, but he figured if he was caught he could claim that somebody was trying to chase him down and he was afraid. If nothing else, Tom had the innocence part down pat. He’d done well in his career as a little brother. He used to drive DeeDee nuts when he was little and he still did. She’d hoped he would calm down when he grew up a bit, but now she was wondering if she would live long enough to see it. It didn’t look like things were gonna change any time soon and she was beginning to think that the wild stuff would still be going on when she was an old lady.
Anyway, he ran for home, the cop car right behind. Tom slammed on the brakes in front of the house, the rear of the 57 swung out to the left and the car was lined up perfectly for the right turn into the driveway. A firm touch of throttle and the car launched up the long driveway of his folks house.
The cop was no dummy and he’d seen that one coming. Too boot, he was a darned good driver. He duplicated Toms maneuver, slid the cop car the required ninety degrees ending up right in front of the driveway and he gunned the throttle too. Problem for the cop was, he thought Tom had gone up a through driveway in an attempt to get away. Not so, the driveway was like most others and it was a dead end.
Tom slammed on the brakes of the 57 and the cop car, still under full throttle rear ended him a good one. The 57 went through the hedge on the left side of the driveway, right into the neighbors back yard with the cop car ending up where the 57 had been. Once the dust settled, guns were out, the two cops dragged Tom out of the 57, slapped handcuffs on him and tossed him into the back of the plainclothes car. It wasn’t long until a couple of black and white units showed up for backup.
Tom’s folks came out and didn’t understand what the heck was going on. All they saw was their used to be pristine and never been scratched 57 sitting forlornly in the neighbors back yard and Tom in handcuffs in the back seat of the plainclothes cop car.
Once the dust settled, they could see the cop car was undamaged for the most part.
The 57 wasn’t too bad off except for the sides being scratched up pretty good.
Tom got to spend the night in jail. Probably an interesting experience for a sixteen year old. At least he had a cell to himself.
In the end, the cops figured rear ending a car in a driveway was potentially embarrassing, and decided to release Tom and forego any damage claims on the cop car if the Wildmons would take care of the damage on the 57. I think they put the fear of God into Tom. At least for a while. After being grounded for a few months he got his driving privileges back and drove pretty calmly after that.
At least we thought so. Neither DeeDee, me or the cops ever saw Tom crank it up in town after that little escapade.
Tom had one other car related incident while still living at home. This one fell into the stupidity arena or simply the bad luck bit. Take your choice.
One of the local radio stations was on a long straight two lane on the outskirts of town. A street that used to see a lot of illicit drag racing, but when the town started growing toward the east, that came to a halt and other roads much further out were used. It got popular to cruise out to the radio station, wait down the road a bit and once the DJ started with a live commercial and the mike was open, it was great sport to light em up and go through the gears. Best done with the radio volume turned way up. You could hear your car winding through the gears, catching second gear rubber and fading off into the distance on the radio.
We’d hear other guys do it as well. It got to be great sport for a while. Some of the real characters made their runs with the cutouts open. That really drowned out the DJ since the road was only fifty feet or so from the DJ’s not so well insulated from outside noises studio.
It worked best in the summer. Most times the DJs would have the windows open, so they were well and truly screwed when a strong running car went by. The evening DJ probably sealed his own fate and started the whole darned thing when he started responding on the air to people who drove by and gave a couple of toots on the horn. I guess he thought he was helping to make the station more popular, but it didn’t take long for the kids to figure out the running through the gears bit.
Tom’s illustrious career as a short time 57 Ford driver was cut short when he stopped outside the radio station, nailed it in low, absolutely fried the tires, over revved the Y-Block and tossed a rod. Locked the engine up tighter’n a drum. I helped him pull the engine and we took it in to one of the local auto machine shops for a rebuild.
He’d really destroyed the engine, but mostly what he destroyed was his driving career. I don’t think he ever drove another family car, 57 or not. He walked until he got enough money together for his own car.
Sometimes enough is enough I guess.
-<>-
Life cruised along pretty smooth for a while. As usual, Whiny was the one who stirred it up a touch. It wasn’t too bad for us cuz when Whiny screwed up, he was the one most affected.
This time around, Whiny was down the street from his house visiting a kid named Dave. Dave, a sophomore didn’t really run with our little gang. He was just someone we saw now and then. Since he and Whiny were darned near neighbors, they knew each other fairly well. Dave’s dad was a city cop and all round nice guy. We all knew him, liked him and he treated us well. He’d give you a ticket if you deserved it, that was his job and he was good at it. Best thing though, he didn’t hassle us like a few others had done. There were a couple of cops who just hated hot rods, surfers and anybody else they felt didn’t fall into the mainstream of society. Funny part here was when our dads told us the two draconian officers were a bit out of the mainstream themselves when they were younger.
Anyway, Dave’s dad being a cop and all was like most other cops in that he had an interest in firearms and had a small collection of pistols. Including a pair of 38 Special revolvers that he was especially fond of. Dave, like any other kid knew where everything in the house was and how to get to it. Locked or not. He could access it with no problem.
Dave drug out the pistols to show them to Whiny and it wasn’t long until he had the holsters and belts out too. Then they ended up trying them on. Before too much time had passed, they were doing the fast draw bit. Assuring each other the pistols were unloaded, they decided to go up against one another in a fast draw contest. First time around, Dave got the pistol out first, pulled the trigger and you guessed it, he put a 38 Special wadcutter right into Whiny. Whiny went down in a heap and Dave thought he’d killed him. Whiny sat up right away, but it was apparent he wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t take long for the blood to start running down the left side of his T-shirt. Dave had popped him right under the collarbone just inside the shoulder. A little lower, higher or inside probably would have killed Whiny.
Dave was calm for a few minutes, he got Whiny a dish towel, saw the blood soak through that pretty good when the bleeding wouldn’t stop and then he panicked. Running out of the house, apparently headed for Whiny’s house he got there about the same time Doofus pulled into the driveway with his 41 Ford coupe. After Doofus got him to calm down and tell him what happened they ran the coupe back down to Dave’s house. When Doofus got inside and saw Whiny, he stuffed a couple more dish towels inside Whiny’s T-shirt while Dave was grabbing a bunch of the dish towels. The two of them stuck Whiny in the coupe and took off for the hospital.
By now, Doofus was an old hand at the pressure bandage bit. He had Dave slide a couple more towels under Whiny’s T-shirt and hold pressure on them. By the time they got to the hospital, Whiny was semi-conscious and blood was pooling on the seat of the coupe. They were lucky this time around although I’m not so sure that having to go to emergency is such a lucky deal. There were no other vehicles in the parking spots next to the emergency room doors when they pulled up. A couple of nurses and a doctor came out with a gurney and between the five of them they wrestled Whiny up onto it and rolled him inside.
Doofus and Dave headed for the restroom to wash the blood off. On the way down, they ran into the nurse who did the triage and pressure bandage bit on the floor of emergency last time they had Whiny there.
She didn’t say much, took one look at Doofus and Dave and their bloodstained shirts, looked at Doofus and all she said was, “Again?”
She didn’t even wait for an answer. She just shook her head and headed down the hall to emergency.
Once again, Doofus had to call Whiny’s folks and tell them what happened. Once again, Whiny was lucky. Once they got the bullet out and got him patched up, it was a couple of days in the hospital and out. Gotta admit though, Whiny was getting one heck of a scar collection.
Now we had two Ford coupes in our group with serious bloodstains in the interior. All of it Whiny’s. Must have been good quality stuff, it never did wear off and Doofus and I ended up taking the cars to Tijuana the following year for tuck and roll upholstery.
We’d of went anyway, that was just part of being a California guy and owning a hot rod.
The bloodstains made a good excuse though.
-<>-
With Murgy as the starting quarterback on the football team and the second string quarterback, darned near as good as Murgy filling in at halfback now and then, our team did well.
We got to be regular spectators at the Friday night football games. We figured we had a vested interest with one of our own playing.
Murgy was one heck of a quarterback, one of the very best the school had ever seen. Interesting part was the second string quarterback. A guy named Bo Randall. He was just about the fastest guy on the team and threw as well as Murgy. The track coach clocked him at 10.7 in the hundred yards while Bo had all his football gear on. He could really haul the freight. The only failing with him, if you could call it a failing at all was his decided lack of height. At 5'6" he couldn’t hardly see over the line and was at times, at a disadvantage. It was one heck of a sight to see when Bo played. Darned near every pass got launched while he was in the air. He must have been an ex-ballet dancer or something. When he’d go up, he’d just kind of hang in the air, maybe look around if he had to, decide and throw the pass.
Now and then, he paid the penalty. Especially so when the other team caught him in the air right before he got the pass off. It was a long way down and with one or two big guys going down with you and usually on top, it made for one heck of an impact. He was a tough-minded kid though. He bounced right back and it never really slowed him down. In our book, he was either lucky or tough. We figured tough was it, sometimes when he went down with three or four guys on him, the earth shook.
Once in a while, Murgy got tagged pretty hard, but it didn’t seem anything like what Bo got. Course Murgy didn’t end up falling as far as Bo did. Murgy was usually on the run when they got him, Bo would sometimes be four feet in the air. Maybe higher, the guy could really jump. If he’d of been 6'3" or so instead of 5'6" he’d been every basketball coaches dream. Didn’t make any difference, football was what he loved and football was what he played.
It all came to a head during the last regular game of the season. An especially hard fought one as the last game was always played against our traditional rivals. Oxnard. This time though, for both teams, winning meant a trip to the league playoffs and from there, who knows where.
It was a hard fought game with the score constantly seesawing back and forth. The scores weren’t that high, just that neither team ever got more than a seven point advantage. Near the end of the game, it looked like we were going to lose. Oxnard scored a field goal and had a three point lead with only a couple of minutes left to play.
Our team marched right down the field, picked up a couple of first downs, got to the 11 yard line and were stalled at third down with 10 seconds to play. The last time out was called and the field goal kicker came out on the field. This time though, instead of one of the big line guys who blocked for the kicker, Bo came out and took his place. It was really obvious, but the other team didn’t seem to notice.
The ball was snapped, the guy doing the holding, instead of putting the ball down for the kicker simply held it up and Bo swept by from the right side going left at a dead run. Gotta give the other team credit, they caught onto it right away and had the left end well covered. What they missed though was the right end. He crossed the goal line, hooked a hard left and ran for the left side. With three lineman closing on him and Bo darned near to the out of bounds line, he launched into the air, spun to his left like a skater doing a jump and after he spun almost all the way around he threw the ball sidearm right into the hands of the right end who was darned near out of bounds himself.
It was spectacular. The stadium absolutely erupted. On both sides. The Oxnard fans couldn’t believe it and neither did we. That had to be the greatest play we ever saw in high school football. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen much to top it. The little fact that Ventura won the game in the last few seconds wasn’t lost on either side.
For the losers, dejection. You kinda had to feel sorry for them. An almost assured victory snatched away from them at the last second. For the winners, utter jubilation. We figured, fair is fair. Our school hadn’t been to the league playoffs for a long time. Beating Oxnard to get there was especially sweet. It wasn’t often that we did beat them, but this was the time to do it for sure.
Oxnard was a larger school than ours and had seen more than their share of trips to the league playoffs. It was our turn now. All the players rushed onto field, followed by the coach, the assistant coach and anybody who was involved with the team and had the good fortune to be on the sidelines. The players started to hoist Murgy up, but he declined. He’d led the team to a victorious season finale, but the hero of the hour was Bo. Murgy was the first one to start the hoist and the others soon followed. They carried Bo off the field, down the track in front of the spectators, back across the field and down the hill to the gym. They were clear out of sight when they finally put him down.
Bo was truly the man of the hour. Without his spectacular pass, part football and part ballet, they’d have been dejectedly walking back to the gym instead of being in the high spirits they were. Next stop, the playoffs. Eagerly anticipated by every football enthusiast in town. Tickets were darned near impossible to get, but we had ours and joined the other students on the school busses down to the L.A. school where the first game of the playoffs was held.
After the spectacular win at home, the playoff was a bit of an anti-climax to say the least.
They just drove us into the dirt. It would have been 35-0 if the other coach hadn’t pulled his first stringers off at the start of the third quarter. I think they were getting a little embarrassed too.
It was obvious we were sorely outclassed. The other team was composed of big guys. Really big guys. Darned near in the monster class. I don’t think we could have stopped them if we’d carried 2 x 4's onto the field. It was a total rout. Final score, 41-6.
Our guys played their best, but when every guy is outweighed by 30-40 pounds, in football at least, the game is a foregone conclusion. We found later that the school tended to hold their promising players back a year for academic reasons. Yeah, right. Kinda funny what one more year of growth can do and some of the guys on the other team looked like they’d been held back 2 years. First high school team I ever saw that had in effect a five year curriculum. Not to mention 19 and maybe 20 year old students.
The team, the fans and all of us in the gang were a touch dejected when we left. Once home though, we realized we really did have a pretty good year. No one had anything to be ashamed of. Course, as the coach put it, it was sorta like going to a gun fight with a knife.
Our Senior year finally came to an end. You’d think that this is the part where everyone scatters to the winds. Maybe for some, not so for us. The whole gang was still around, still hitting the beaches and still fooling with cars.
-<>-
I still had my black 53 Ford coupe and it was pretty much stock as it always had been.
Ok with me though, it was a dependable, nice looking little car. Bloodstains and all.
Doofus was still running his 41 Ford coupe, equipped pretty much the same as mine. Stock flathead engine, duals, dropped axle, big & littles. Pretty much the typical high school hot rod. Whiny one-upped us all. Darned near right out of school he fell into a pretty good job working in a bakery.. We didn’t see him around the beach for most of that summer. Seemed like he was always working. It paid off though. He bought a brand new 57 Chevy two door 210 with the 270 HP dual quad engine and four speed transmission. It was a sweet, sweet car. He got a killer deal to boot. Since it was a 57 sold after the 58's came out it was heavily discounted.
The 57 was painted white, but that didn’t last long. He had it about two months and it went into the body shop where the dual gunsight hood ornaments got filled in, the big Vs on the hood & trunk were removed, the holes filled and an anodized aluminum side trim panel along with the chrome spear off a Belair installed and the car was painted a bright orange. That, combined with a subtle lowering of the front and even more subtle lowering of the back, the original stock little hubcaps, chrome wheels with blackwalls and Whiny had a knockout of a car.
We were amazed at how fast it was. It was fair to say that it just scorched the asphalt. He stuck a pair of glasspacks on as well as a pair of under the car cutouts and headed for the drag strip. The tech guys at the strip weren’t too wild about letting it run. They’d had more than one of the high winding Chevrolet’s blow a clutch with pieces going everywhere and really wanted Whiny to have a scatter shield on it before they would let him run. They relented a bit after Whiny had done a touch of whining - he wasn’t called Whiny for nothing - and let him make one run. That was it. Fini, no more.
The little Chevy cranked off a 101 mph with a 14.31 et. On street tires. Granted fat and soft ones, but street tires nevertheless. Impressed the heck out of us. Any street car that surpassed 100 in the quarter was big time fast in our book.
That was the one and only time that Whiny ran the Chevy at the strip. He figured owning a genuine 100 mph in the quarter car was good enough for him. Nothing more need be done. He drove the Chevy like a little old lady for a long while. He’d very seldom get on it. About the only time he did was when he passed someone. Made sense I guess, at the end of the year he still owed 30 more payments on it. Made no difference, as far as he was concerned it was his, all his. It was quite the love affair.
When the year ended, Doofus and I decided that we were spinning our wheels and getting nowhere working at the Circus Burger. Too many weekend evenings at work were creating havoc with our social life and the weekdays at work were screwing up our surfing. This working for a living stuff was interfering with our lives for sure. We weren’t making much money either. We figured we didn’t have much to lose, worked for another week, took a look at our bank accounts and figured we could run for a couple of months with what we had salted away and in the meantime we could look for a real job that paid real money. Regular working hours would be a decided bonus.
We both got lucky about the same time. Since we figured we knew a lot about cars, at least I thought we did, we went looking for car related jobs. Doofus in truth was the mechanic in our group. He had most of it figured out pretty well and we relied on him for a lot of the stuff. Whiny was a pretty good mechanic too, darned near as good as Doofus. He’d have been even better if he wasn’t so busy whining all the time. Sounds bad, but it wasn’t. We’d learned to tune him out long ago and most of his complaining just didn’t bother us. When it did, a simple “Shut up Whiny!” would do the job and he’d be over it for most of the day.
Doofus and me applied at various parts houses around town as well as at Mickey Merc’s Ford dealership and for good measure, applied at the local Chevrolet dealer too.
As fate would have it, I got hired at the Chevy garage and Doofus got a job at Mickey Merc’s.
The real paradox was that I still owned my 53 Ford coupe and worked at the Chevy garage. As it turned out, not too bad a paradox. For Doofus, he was entranced with Whiny’s 57 Chevy two door and first chance he got he bought a very clean, about a year old black 57 Belair hardtop. Standard single four barrel V8, automatic trans and all. A bit of a paradox for Doofus, owning a Chevy and working at the Ford garage. In a small way, it ticked Mickey off to see one of his employees driving a Chevy into work, but he figured, and rightly so, Doofus was a good dependable worker who was becoming more valuable every day. At least that’s what he said for public consumption.
Every morning when Doofus drove in with the Chevy and Mickey thought no one was looking, he’d give the little hardtop a fierce glare. It got to the point that the secretaries and the phone girl - who were usually the first ones to arrive and being first, got to park closest to Mickey’s office - would make a point to park further away and many times Doofus got the spot closest to the office. They could tell it ticked Mickey off when the Chevy was parked right next to the office. They did enjoy their little bit of psychological warfare. Mickey tended to holler and get mad now and then. He didn’t abuse the girls, but they didn’t care for the way he acted at times. Just their smooth running and subtle way to get back at him.
Doofus still liked his 41 Ford coupe and wouldn’t part with it. He ran it out to the barn at his granddads citrus ranch, pulled the battery, drained the radiator, put it up on blocks and covered it with a couple of blankets and an old canvas tarp. He thought the little coupe would be there for a while, but the way things turned out, it wasn’t long until the coupe saw daylight again.
Things were looking better for me as well. In several areas. More money due to a good paying steady job. Working in the parts department was an education in itself.
I’d been thinking of an engine swap in the 53 for quite a while. The 371 inch Olds was the engine of choice for me, but I would have settled for one of the earlier 324 inchers. Either one with the preferred 37 Cad-LaSalle floor shift three speed trans. I’d seen more than a few of the Olds engines swapped into Fords and a couple of them that ran around town were strong runners. Especially so a 40 Ford coupe and a 50 Ford coupe. The 40 being darned near the fastest car in town for a while. Until he got cleaned out by a Chrysler powered Deuce roadster, but that’s a whole other story.
Being exposed to Whiny’s strong running 210 and Doofus’s nice Belair hardtop got me interested in the little Chevy engines. Both cars, especially so Whiny’s, were strong runners.
No doubt about it, the little Chevy’s ran hard. They cranked the rpms off too. Where 5500 and 6000 rpm were about it for the upper rev limit on the mildly built Olds engines and in fact for a lot of other popular OHV hot rod engines as well, the little Chevy’s that some guys revved to 8000 and above were just amazing. Even so, about 7000 rpm was considered the limit for most of the flat tappet motors including the Chevy. The flat tappet engines would run in excess of 8000 rpm, but it took some ferocious valve springs and some valve train modifications to do it with any degree of success. Use of a roller cam for the Chevy’s was a good idea. Especially so if they were slated for competition duty. Course, once you got the valve train squared away, you’d start having failures in other areas. Namely rods. They’d let go now and then with spectacular results.
What was especially appealing about the little Chevy’s was the small overall size of the engine and it’s very light weight. With all that in mind I started looking into what I could do as far as sticking one of these engines in the 53.
I figured getting hold of one of the not too badly broken warranty engines would work ok and if not, I could buy a brand new one through the shop. With the good discount I got, it looked like a do-able deal.
In the end though, I found a wrecked 57 Corvette with 283 in the local junkyard. The dual four barrel engine, four speed model. By the time I heard about it and got there the dual quad setup was long gone and so was the four speed transmission. The rest was all there so I couldn’t complain too much. A compression test showed the engine to be in good shape as far as rings and valves went. Spinning the engine over with the starter while it sat on a wooden engine stand showed good oil pressure. I was able to swing the price, no killer deals here, the junkyard owner knew exactly what he had and how much they were in demand. Regardless, it was still cheaper than buying a new one through the shop.
We did make a point to pull the pan once we had the engine home and check the bearings.
They looked plenty good, so we stuck em back in. Doofus found a single four barrel factory intake, little carb and all at an out of town junkyard, bought it and brought it in. I was glad he did. The price was right and now I had a complete engine ready to go.
The trans wasn’t too difficult. I didn’t want to use the stock 53 Ford three speed trans.
Those were kinda weak and a lot of them had come unglued on more than one guy running a stock engine, let alone one of the good running Chevy’s. A little more searching and we found one of the 57 Ford Interceptor three speed transmissions. Cool part about this one was, it was an overdrive model.
After a couple months of collecting parts, we yanked the old, but still good running flathead out on a Friday night, got the engine bay cleaned up, painted and the new engine with the Interceptor trans bolted on with an Offy adapter set in place. The very nice Hurst motor mounts for the Chevy into Ford swap were easy to do, just took drilling a couple of holes on each side of the front crossmember for the frame part of the adapter. The trans mount, just about as easy. We made a bolt-in extension to bolt the Interceptor trans to the original Ford trans mount.
Doofus removed the bibs and soldered a couple of blank off plates to one of the upper and one of the lower radiator outlets. Adapting the stock Ford throttle rod to the little Rochester carb was easily done and that was about it for the weekend.
The engine swap left me without a car for a while, but it wasn’t too big a problem. I just drug the old Columbia bike out from the back of the garage and rode it to work. Work was only a couple of miles away anyway, so no big deal. I’d put many a mile on the Columbia before I got the car and still rode it now and then. It was a neat old bike and I enjoyed it.
It took another week to get things to the point where we could fire it up. The part that took the most thinking was setting up the horizontally oriented Chevy throwout arm to the Ford clutch pedal tab that was set up to pull straight back on a throwout arm that came out of the Ford bellhousing at about a 30 down angle. Solved when Doofus set up a pair of pillow block bearings on a gusseted plate welded to the inner frame side near the steering box. The pillow block bearings carried a shaft with a down pointing tab that took a 3/8" pull rod from the Ford clutch tab that pulled at an angle. This same tab had a 3/8" push rod that pushed straight back on the Chevy throwout arm. All in all, a simple and classy answer to what looked like a tough problem.
We found we didn’t need the clutch equalizer bar due to the stiff motor mount setup.
Easiest part of the whole deal was changing everything to 12 volts. Doofus really knew what he was doing here. I was comfortable doing wiring and all, but Doofus truly knew how it all worked.
Doofus owned a gas torch and was a pretty good welder. He knocked out a nice set of exhaust pipes for the car as well as a pair of 2" side pipes exiting in front of the rear wheels. The old mufflers, a still in good shape pair of 28" glasspacks from the muffler shop were re-used. A local oil field machine shop cut the driveshaft down for us and with the exception of having the overdrive wired up, we were ready to go.
Firing up the engine was easy. More so than a couple of other engine swaps I’d been involved in. Mainly because we knew more now than we did a couple of years ago and the best part was, we had a little more patience and were willing to take the time to set it up right.
We pulled the plugs and spun the engine with a starter to get oil pressure up. Once we showed good oil pressure, we stuck the plugs in, ran the electric fuel pump long enough to fill the float bowl, checked for leaks, turned on the ignition, hit the starter and it lit off like it was run yesterday. We were stoked, at least I was. The little Chevy settled down into an on the choke idle and after a minute of warmup I tapped the throttle, the choke pulled partway off and the engine settled down to a nice 750 rpm idle. When it was a bit warmer, I tapped the throttle and it dropped off the fast idle cam and settled into a nice smooth 600 rpm idle.
It didn’t miss a beat and the little Rochester worked great. The glasspacks that sounded so good on the old flathead V8 really sounded good behind the quick revving Chevy engine.
Especially so with the short side pipes that Doofus built.
We shut the engine down and set the valves. They were pretty close to right on the money to start with, but setting them hot is the best way. A new set of rocker gaskets and we were ready for the first ride. Most times, around the block, but this time, around the block was not enough for us. We got in the car and headed out for Santa Barbara. Nothing like a full on road test running up the coast highway past some of our favorite beaches to get a good idea how good a job we did.
The engine swap turned out nice and it looked like the car was gonna be a runner. A Sun tach was clamped to the steering column off to the left side and the original Ford column shift was still in use. It had worked well for the stock flathead and trans combo and no reason why it wouldn’t work just as well here. We weren’t trying to build a sleeper, but it didn’t end up far from being one. Even though the car had screw on Moon discs, blackwalls, slightly lowered in front and a new pair of side pipes it looked just like a lot of other stock Fords running around the county. That and the still in good shape factory black paint made a good looking combination. I’d hoped it would be a good running combination and I wasn’t disappointed. The Chevy was a strong runner and a big improvement over the 239 inch flathead. You could tell the Chevy was, at least to our ears, under carbureted. It was obvious that next on the list would be a multi-carb setup.
The run to Santa Barbara went off without a hitch. Even idling through Santa Barbara’s perennial traffic jam on Hwy 101 where it went through town and hit several traffic lights didn’t even faze it. We figured the big and in good shape Ford radiator that did well in keeping the flathead cool was more than enough radiator for the cool running Chevy.
Since it was a Sunday and getting close to dinner time, it was obvious a trip to the Blue Onion was a necessity. The Blue Onion, a more than popular drive-in where a lot of Santa Barbara’s fastest and nicest cars hung out was always a must-stop whenever we went up there.
We weren’t looking for a street race and nobody asked us if we wanted to. It was just a small crowd of car loving guys and gals eating burgers and checking out the cars.
Two that I remember well were a tan 50 Olds coupe, dropped in front, shod with big and little blackwalls and apparently running a GMC 471 blower. It sounded quite different, but the dead giveaway was the single four barrel carb just barely sticking through a hole cut in the hood.
No air filter, no scoop, just the slightest hint of carburetor hanging out in the breeze. If it hadn’t been for the big cam and the blower noises emanating from the coupe, I don’t think I would have noticed anything other than it was a good looking Olds. The other car, which came in later was one you would have noticed when it was parked with the engine shut off. A black, full fendered very low 34 Ford Phaeton with chopped windshield and a white top. One of the locals told us that it ran a stroker Olds along with a chain driven blower. The big cam and what were probably glasspacks were noticeable enough, but what really caught your ear was the chain driven blower. You could hear it coming way down the street. It sounded like nothing we’d ever heard before. The occupants were a couple of older guys, 25 at least, they parked the Phaeton and walked inside, but not without noticing the blown Olds coupe..
Cool part with the Phaeton was when they shut the engine off. It shut down like right now. Sorta like turning off the radio. One second it was running and the next it was dead. We were definitely impressed. Just one more Santa Barbara legend to carry back home. Seemed like the Santa Barbara guys always had the most interesting and many times the best built cars around.
The basic rule about going to Santa Barbara and looking for a street race was - bring money and lots of it. For the most part, we didn’t actively go looking for street races. About the most serious thing we got involved with was the occasional second or high gear roll on with another hot rod looking car. We’d done a little bit of the street racing bit out of town, but we weren’t really involved with it to a great degree. We liked our cars pretty much like they were. Just good running and good looking little cars that were fun to drive.
It would have been nice to build a killer fast car, but like most guys, money was the tough part for us. Even with all of us living at home and paying moderate rent, cars like that were pretty much out of reach for us. Besides, we had girl friends, things to do and there was always surfing.
Doofus and I had steady girl friends, but Whiny seemed to have a new girl every summer. I’m not sure what the deal was there. He was a good looking guy, smart, patient enough for the most part and could carry on an intelligent conversation with the ladies. He had good manners and always made them feel at ease. I think what happened with most was, they soon came to realize that Whiny, under his scarred and beaten skin was a bit of a wild man. Kinda hard to tell since he kept it under control most of the time. In fact, darned near all the time. It only got away from him now and then and there was nothing dangerous about it. Sometimes though, you just couldn’t push him any further. Not that we pushed him. A few had tried and a few had paid the price. More than one guy had a funny looking nose courtesy of Whiny. He did ok in high school, never really had any problems there. Junior High school was another story though. One pain in the ass kid that thought he was going to push Whiny around ended up getting hit right square in the nose. Hard. I think his nose was broken, but it didn’t make too much difference. The kid was leaking blood like a fire hydrant. He and his would-be bully friend that put him up to it stumbled off to the boys bathroom.
We went in ten minutes later and the kid was still bleeding. In fact there was blood all over the bathroom floor. It was obvious to us that the bleeding wasn’t going to stop, so we dragged the bloody nosed kid to the nurses office leaving the other kid in the bathroom. The school nurse got the bleeding stopped and when she asked what happened, the bloody nosed kid told her that his friend got up quick while he was leaning over his back and hit him in the nose with his head. Kinda surprised us. We figured he’d started it all and now he’d rat Whiny out.
The bloodstains were in the bathroom for a long time.
Anyway, with the girls soon coming to the realization the perhaps Whiny wasn’t going to change anytime soon and that taming him looked to be a full time job, they simply gave up. Kinda too bad in a way. Whiny really was a good guy and we figured at the least he deserved a nice girl.
Even so, he didn’t have any trouble getting dates. To top it off, his sister was always dragging some girl home and playing the matchmaker bit. Matchmaking seems to be in the female genes.
For sure, many of them, all ages and from many walks of life had arranged something somewhere along the line for Whiny.
-<>-
Whiny’s mom, and Whiny, simply because he was who he was and went along with his mom most times, belonged to the nice Presbyterian Church up on the hill overlooking town. As did my girl friend DeeDee, her folks and my folks. Whiny’s mom insisted that either Whiny go to church with her on Sunday mornings or at the least go to the youth group meetings on Sunday nights. Youth group perhaps a misnomer since most of the kids were 16 to 19 which fit into our age range quite well. Whiny, deciding he’d better humor his mom started attending the youth group meetings pretty regular. It wasn’t long until DeeDee talked me into it and not long after Doofus and Dinah started coming along.
Mrs. Brown, a widow and the youth group advisor/teacher/organizer/all round take care of everything lady was thrilled to have five new members. Especially since we were pretty steady customers so to speak. Mrs. Brown was a much loved lady and worked hard at her beloved church. She made the whole thing go as far as the youth group program went.
It scared the heck out of us one Saturday when we found her Plymouth sedan rolled into a ditch just west of Santa Paula. The ambulance was just pulling away and we didn’t know what had happened. We went straight to the hospital and they wouldn’t say anything other than she would be spending the night there.
Sunday night came and you couldn’t have kept us away from youth group for anything. We got there early and sure enough, in waltzes Mrs. Brown. Waltz was the right word, she was a very graceful woman. Not a scratch from what we could see. Apparently we were the only ones who knew about the car wreck.
Whiny, not known for being bashful just straight out asked her what happened. Mrs. Brown smiled and explained that a bee got inside the car and she was trying to shoo it out when she went off the road and rolled the car upside down into the ditch. She’d been banged up a bit, but she was sorry she’d totaled her poor old 47 Plymouth. A good looking, light tan colored four door, well cared for low mileage car without a dent. At least it was until the bee introduced himself to Mrs. Brown.
She did ok though. Mrs. Brown, a widow as mentioned and perhaps in her fifties went down to Mickey Merc’s Ford dealership a few days later and bought a brand new 60 Ford Starliner coupe. The very good looking hardtop sported a nice dark metallic blue paint job and was equipped with the strong running 390 engine. We were a bit shocked when we saw it. The sexy looking Ford hardtop and our Mrs. Brown with her calm demeanor, didn’t, at least to our eyes, quite go together. Turned out Mrs. Brown was a bit of a leadfoot as well. We usually pulled into the church parking lot in our hot rods about the same time Mrs. Brown did and she pretty much knew what was what as far as the hot rod thing went. We’d made a point, at least a few times, to light up the tires leaving church. We thought the only ones who saw us were the other kids, but apparently Mrs. Brown had seen us too.
She never said anything though. She let us know that she knew what had gone on when she saw us standing in the parking lot talking after youth group one night. When she pulled out in her new Ford she lit the tires up big time. Even getting the good looking car sideways a touch. She handled it with no problems. We didn’t know for quite a while that the 390 engine in the 60 Ford was a somewhat special deal. Ford ran them in NASCAR races and finally had to release a number of them to the public for homologation purposes.
That was a side to Mrs. Brown that we knew absolutely nothing about. Not long after, Mrs. Brown showed up with a nice looking guy about her age to help with the youth group. We didn’t put two and two together until my folks got wedding invitations to Mrs. Browns wedding.
The light dawned, Mrs. Brown had a boy friend all this time. Not a surprise to mom. As she put it, it was obvious to anybody who paid attention. For a bunch of guys who had life all figured out, it sure did throw us some curves sometimes.
We all went to the wedding, a nice one with darned near the whole congregation there.
Mrs. Brown got married, we threw rice and watched the newlyweds drive off in the new Ford hardtop and kinda wondered about life.
-<>-
End of Part 3
Part 1 (http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=557476&page=1&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1)
Part 2 (http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=565969&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1&vc=1&PHPSESSID=)
Initial Intro (http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=557391&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1)
Doofus and Whiny - Part 3
At the start of our senior year in high school, a new kid showed up. Straight from the rainy environs of Washington state. He was tall, good looking and one heck of an athlete. Especially so in football. In short, every cheerleaders dream as well as the dreams of a few other young ladies once they got a good look at him.
He started off ok on his first day when he’d introduced himself to a few as Troy Mercury.
We didn’t meet him for a while, but we had to agree, it was a most cool name although a short-lived one as it turned out. We’d heard through the grapevine that his home room teacher introduced him as Murgatroyd Mercury. Murgatroyd . . . geez. No wonder the guy introduced himself as Troy. We found later that no one called him Troy, he just figured he’d give himself a nickname of sorts and pass up the Murgatroyd bit.
We’d heard of Murgatroyd before and always thought it was one of those jokes about a made up name. Maybe it’s a fine and respected name from the past, but to us it sure didn’t sound that way. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d actually meet a guy named Murgatroyd.
Things turned out ok anyway. Once kids at school got to know him he fell into a pretty cool nickname. He ended up being called Murgy. It worked well and rolled off the tongue just fine.
Murgy Mercury. Or Murgy Merc for short. Either way was ok with him and ok with us. I guess we could have gotten used to Murgatroyd, but we liked Murgy much better.
Thinking back on it in later years, it made me think of the Johnny Cash song about “A Boy named Sue.” It did seem that Murgy’s dad stuck him with the clumsy name so he would learn to stick up for himself. Maybe so, but Murgy was big enough and strong enough that picking on him was out of the question for most.
His dad had a cool nickname too. Although his true first name of Michael, always a good and dependable name, used by many and liked by all would have been the one to pass on to Murgy. Michael Jr. would have worked for us.
In any event, Murgy’s dad was known as Mickey to his friends. Now there was a cool name combo. Mickey Mercury. That rolled off the tongue easy enough. For us, we shortened it to Mickey Merc and applied it to Murgy’s dad as well as the Ford dealership he owned.
The Ford dealership was kind of a funny deal. Murgy’s dad had been a successful Ford dealer in Washington, sold out, moved south and bought the one in our town. Murgy told us his dad really wanted to be a combined Ford-Mercury dealer, but Ford wouldn’t let the Mercury franchise come into our town. Don’t know why, the adjacent town was the closest Mercury dealer and they were allied with Ford. In fact the out of town dealer had all three of Ford’s franchises and was the only combined Ford-Mercury-Lincoln dealer outside of L.A. that we knew about. The topper, at least for Murgy’s dad was when Ford let a new Lincoln-Mercury franchise get started in town about a year later. I can only imagine the phone conversations and the confusion that ensued when one of the office girls answered the phone with “Mercury Ford.” And the customer asking about Mercury’s only to find they didn’t handle them.
Murgy kinda had it made in our eyes. Along with being a handsome devil, a good athlete and driving a like new 56 Ford pickup, he had an after school and half a day on Saturday job at his dads Ford dealership. Course, once football season started, practices ran after school and Murgy’s dad - a sports nut of the highest order - had no problem letting Murgy out of work to play football. It was ok with us. With Murgy taking over the starting quarterback spot, it looked like we might get somewhere in the league.
None of us in our little surf rat, hot rod gang played football or any other sport for that matter. We liked cars and the beach too much and besides, most of us worked at an after school job to support our cars. None of it seem to bother Murgy. He joined our little gang and hung out with us in his free time. Which, with football, a girlfriend and work, there wasn’t a whole lot of time. He loved football, but cars ran a strong second. In a small way he lived the life of a rich kid, but he sure didn’t act like it. In fact, we didn’t seem to have the jock thing going on at our school. For the most part, we all got along pretty well and you’d find surf rats and motorheads hanging out with jocks and vice versa.
Maybe it was because it was a simpler time and maybe not. The town wasn’t too big nor was it too small. Just big enough to where you didn’t know everybody in town and small enough that the few cliques there were didn’t really create any problems. All in all, just a bunch of kids running with their friends and getting along with most others. That’s not to say there weren’t long standing feuds, mean kids and kids who couldn’t stand one another. That happens no matter what it seems. Just that it never really turned into a big problem.
Maybe a good illustration is what some of the guys on the Junior Varsity (JV) football team did. We had a new kid enter school that year. New kids not being too big a deal, they showed up, met some other kids, formed friendships and blended into the school right along with the rest of the kids. Before long, it was like they’d always been there.
This kid though, he was different. He had a learning disability and had gone to private schools all his life. At least that’s the way we heard it. There really wasn’t too much information available, but from what we did know, his folks decided that he had to take his place in society somewhere along the line and his sophomore year looked like as good a place as any to start. I’ll just call him Ronald here. As good a name as any other.
Ronald showed up at school the second day after it started. We saw him around and just figured he was an odd duck. He was friendly and smiled at everybody. It wasn’t long until the forces of evil, in the guise of a small band of neer-do-wells took it upon themselves to make him miserable.
It all came to a head when they stripped him of his books, pantsed him and sent him crying into the quad. He was embarrassed to tears and they were freely flowing. The girls who witnessed the whole thing thought the guys who pulled that little stunt were being mean. Seems like girls always had a finer tuned sense of justice than the guys did anyway. Or maybe it was just empathy.
What did happen was that a couple of JV football players went over to the flagpole where the dips who’d taken his pants were about to run the flag down so they could raise the pants up. When the JV guys asked for the pants back, the ringleader of the group, a bit of a bully, stepped out, put the pants behind his back and started to say something. One of the JV players hit him in the mouth so hard that he went down to his knees and now he was crying. Not much sympathy from the crowd. We’d witnessed an injustice and we were all for the guy who punched the pants thief in the mouth. Kinda funny too, the girls started applauding and it swept over the quad.
I saw a couple of teachers watching from a shadowed window, but nothing was ever done about the short and quick one punch fight. They’d probably seen, as we did, Ronald getting picked on and once the dust settled they probably figured that justice was served and not much more need be done.
The bad guys knew their number was up and in fact the way it turned out, their careers as a herd of pain in the ass jerks was over too. For us and especially for the JV football guys an injustice righted.
The JV football team took Ronald under their wing, made him part of the group and introduced him to the world of athletics. It wasn’t long until Ronald was the waterboy for the team, although the school called them team managers. Some felt that the guys that did the scut work didn’t deserve a letter, but we figured they did. Not many worked as hard at supporting the team as those guys did.
For Ronald, it was quite an experience. He fell into a nice crowd of guys that he could call friends and nobody ever picked on Ronald after the day at the flagpole. Ronald, for his part, never took advantage of his protectors or being protected. He truly was a darned nice kid. He talked a little slow sometimes, but all you had to do was pay attention and listen well.
Ronald did good in school, worked hard and got pretty good grades. The topper was his Senior year. He was elected head cheerleader. A position usually reserved for one of the most popular guys at school. Ronald fit the bill quite well.
Head cheerleader, not bad. We’d have been last cheerleader to be on that team. It was loaded with good looking girls.
-<>-
Somewhere in here, my girl friend - DeeDee Wildmon - started dragging her younger brother Tom along with her whenever she went out. Not on dates, thank God, but it did happen once. The deal was that DeeDee would take him into town and keep an eye on him. That’s what their folks thought anyway.
DeeDee would pretty much take him into town so she could meet with us, give him the car keys, shut her eyes, say a little prayer and send him off into the world. With the small knowledge that she expected him back at a certain spot at a certain time. As far as we knew, he was never late.
Tom was two years younger than DeeDee and had just started driving. He was a wild man though. DeeDee would never let him drive when she was along. It was enough for her to turn over the car keys and hope for the best. He got really crazy now and then, but to give him credit where credit is due, he could handle a car with the best of them. He was a natural and got out of some scary situations by simply driving out of them. I always thought it was because he got himself into so many scrapes when driving that he had to learn how to recover. Either that or die. Sort of the ultimate sink or swim school.
A few of us had ridden with Tom and after that first ride there weren’t many who got in the car with him again. Not unless he absolutely, positively promised to drive safe. Going through the gears and nailing the throttle was an expected part of driving for most of us. Thing was, we did it where we could do it safely. Tom did it anywhere the fancy struck him. To be fair, when he promised to be good, he was always good. Especially with us. With DeeDee, it was a different story though. I think he just liked to hear her scream.
She had it under control pretty well the night her dad asked how come Tom didn’t drive once in a while. DeeDee and Tom were in the family’s two year old 57 Ford hardtop and she was getting ready to back it out of the driveway when her dad walked over and asked DeeDee’s answer was most diplomatic. She said that she liked to drive and just hadn’t thought to turn the wheel over to Tom. With that, DeeDee shut the engine off, had Tom get out and walk around the car while she slid over to the passenger side. Tom got behind the wheel, all the while wearing his Mr. Serious face for dad’s benefit, backed safely out of the driveway, into the street and drove gently down the road.
DeeDee said she looked back and could see dad fondly watching them go down the road.
Once they were out of sight, DeeDee had Tom stop the car. Tom figured she was going to want to drive and darned if he would give her the wheel. What DeeDee did do, was to read Tom the riot act. Although in a calm and refined way. The basics were, that if Tom didn’t behave when she was in the car, she was going to gather up her girl friends for backup and report all his transgressions to their folks. A pretty good threat as far as Tom went and it worked pretty well.
All of Tom’s transgressions - and it was a long list - weren’t behind the wheel. The school was still looking for whoever put the firecrackers into the school dump truck. Said truck being used mostly for trash hauling. School wasn’t that big, but it was big enough to generate a lot of trash. Most all of it paper. The flammable kind. One thing Tom hadn’t thought of when he tossed the firecrackers into the trash laden bed. It wasn’t long until there was a heck of a blaze going. It was surprising the dump truck gas tanks didn’t catch fire. It was quite the lunch time show with the fire department showing up to put out the fire. Everybody, more or less, knew who the guilty party was, but nobody said a word.
That was just one of Tom’s little secrets and Tom knew DeeDee’s threat was a good one. Tom knew, if nothing else, DeeDee always kept her word.
After that short little sister-brother talk, Tom drove like a gentleman whenever his sister was in the car. Once she was out though, it was truly, hang on for your life. Tom got his nickname of “Wild Man” honestly. Not so much as a play on his name even though that worked pretty good. He truly was a Wild Man.
The topper to Tom’s short driving career came when he was doing a bit of drag racing on the city streets. Not one of the short and furious low gear blasts and maybe a shift into second that we’d all done somewhere along the line. These were bad enough in our little flathead powered Fords, we’d be doing 50 or so on a city street with a 25 mph speed limit. We quit that stuff pretty early in our driving careers. There were better ways to be involved in a race, with simply driving out of town being one way, but the best and most sensible was to travel to the drag strip that wasn’t too far away.
Not for Tom though, the family 57 Ford, a nice gray and white hardtop equipped with the Interceptor 312 Y-Block was a strong runner. Tom thought nothing about going through all three gears, in town, occasionally reaching some pretty ferocious speeds. All done on the 25 mph speed limit streets in the city. It wasn’t long until the cops started looking for him. In fact DeeDee noticed the cops giving her the eye when she drove the 57 through town. They never stopped her, but it was obvious they were looking.
It all came to a head after a short drag race on the edge of town. A plainclothes cop car dropped in behind the 57 and Tom was dumb enough to run for it. He knew it was a cop car, but he figured if he was caught he could claim that somebody was trying to chase him down and he was afraid. If nothing else, Tom had the innocence part down pat. He’d done well in his career as a little brother. He used to drive DeeDee nuts when he was little and he still did. She’d hoped he would calm down when he grew up a bit, but now she was wondering if she would live long enough to see it. It didn’t look like things were gonna change any time soon and she was beginning to think that the wild stuff would still be going on when she was an old lady.
Anyway, he ran for home, the cop car right behind. Tom slammed on the brakes in front of the house, the rear of the 57 swung out to the left and the car was lined up perfectly for the right turn into the driveway. A firm touch of throttle and the car launched up the long driveway of his folks house.
The cop was no dummy and he’d seen that one coming. Too boot, he was a darned good driver. He duplicated Toms maneuver, slid the cop car the required ninety degrees ending up right in front of the driveway and he gunned the throttle too. Problem for the cop was, he thought Tom had gone up a through driveway in an attempt to get away. Not so, the driveway was like most others and it was a dead end.
Tom slammed on the brakes of the 57 and the cop car, still under full throttle rear ended him a good one. The 57 went through the hedge on the left side of the driveway, right into the neighbors back yard with the cop car ending up where the 57 had been. Once the dust settled, guns were out, the two cops dragged Tom out of the 57, slapped handcuffs on him and tossed him into the back of the plainclothes car. It wasn’t long until a couple of black and white units showed up for backup.
Tom’s folks came out and didn’t understand what the heck was going on. All they saw was their used to be pristine and never been scratched 57 sitting forlornly in the neighbors back yard and Tom in handcuffs in the back seat of the plainclothes cop car.
Once the dust settled, they could see the cop car was undamaged for the most part.
The 57 wasn’t too bad off except for the sides being scratched up pretty good.
Tom got to spend the night in jail. Probably an interesting experience for a sixteen year old. At least he had a cell to himself.
In the end, the cops figured rear ending a car in a driveway was potentially embarrassing, and decided to release Tom and forego any damage claims on the cop car if the Wildmons would take care of the damage on the 57. I think they put the fear of God into Tom. At least for a while. After being grounded for a few months he got his driving privileges back and drove pretty calmly after that.
At least we thought so. Neither DeeDee, me or the cops ever saw Tom crank it up in town after that little escapade.
Tom had one other car related incident while still living at home. This one fell into the stupidity arena or simply the bad luck bit. Take your choice.
One of the local radio stations was on a long straight two lane on the outskirts of town. A street that used to see a lot of illicit drag racing, but when the town started growing toward the east, that came to a halt and other roads much further out were used. It got popular to cruise out to the radio station, wait down the road a bit and once the DJ started with a live commercial and the mike was open, it was great sport to light em up and go through the gears. Best done with the radio volume turned way up. You could hear your car winding through the gears, catching second gear rubber and fading off into the distance on the radio.
We’d hear other guys do it as well. It got to be great sport for a while. Some of the real characters made their runs with the cutouts open. That really drowned out the DJ since the road was only fifty feet or so from the DJ’s not so well insulated from outside noises studio.
It worked best in the summer. Most times the DJs would have the windows open, so they were well and truly screwed when a strong running car went by. The evening DJ probably sealed his own fate and started the whole darned thing when he started responding on the air to people who drove by and gave a couple of toots on the horn. I guess he thought he was helping to make the station more popular, but it didn’t take long for the kids to figure out the running through the gears bit.
Tom’s illustrious career as a short time 57 Ford driver was cut short when he stopped outside the radio station, nailed it in low, absolutely fried the tires, over revved the Y-Block and tossed a rod. Locked the engine up tighter’n a drum. I helped him pull the engine and we took it in to one of the local auto machine shops for a rebuild.
He’d really destroyed the engine, but mostly what he destroyed was his driving career. I don’t think he ever drove another family car, 57 or not. He walked until he got enough money together for his own car.
Sometimes enough is enough I guess.
-<>-
Life cruised along pretty smooth for a while. As usual, Whiny was the one who stirred it up a touch. It wasn’t too bad for us cuz when Whiny screwed up, he was the one most affected.
This time around, Whiny was down the street from his house visiting a kid named Dave. Dave, a sophomore didn’t really run with our little gang. He was just someone we saw now and then. Since he and Whiny were darned near neighbors, they knew each other fairly well. Dave’s dad was a city cop and all round nice guy. We all knew him, liked him and he treated us well. He’d give you a ticket if you deserved it, that was his job and he was good at it. Best thing though, he didn’t hassle us like a few others had done. There were a couple of cops who just hated hot rods, surfers and anybody else they felt didn’t fall into the mainstream of society. Funny part here was when our dads told us the two draconian officers were a bit out of the mainstream themselves when they were younger.
Anyway, Dave’s dad being a cop and all was like most other cops in that he had an interest in firearms and had a small collection of pistols. Including a pair of 38 Special revolvers that he was especially fond of. Dave, like any other kid knew where everything in the house was and how to get to it. Locked or not. He could access it with no problem.
Dave drug out the pistols to show them to Whiny and it wasn’t long until he had the holsters and belts out too. Then they ended up trying them on. Before too much time had passed, they were doing the fast draw bit. Assuring each other the pistols were unloaded, they decided to go up against one another in a fast draw contest. First time around, Dave got the pistol out first, pulled the trigger and you guessed it, he put a 38 Special wadcutter right into Whiny. Whiny went down in a heap and Dave thought he’d killed him. Whiny sat up right away, but it was apparent he wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t take long for the blood to start running down the left side of his T-shirt. Dave had popped him right under the collarbone just inside the shoulder. A little lower, higher or inside probably would have killed Whiny.
Dave was calm for a few minutes, he got Whiny a dish towel, saw the blood soak through that pretty good when the bleeding wouldn’t stop and then he panicked. Running out of the house, apparently headed for Whiny’s house he got there about the same time Doofus pulled into the driveway with his 41 Ford coupe. After Doofus got him to calm down and tell him what happened they ran the coupe back down to Dave’s house. When Doofus got inside and saw Whiny, he stuffed a couple more dish towels inside Whiny’s T-shirt while Dave was grabbing a bunch of the dish towels. The two of them stuck Whiny in the coupe and took off for the hospital.
By now, Doofus was an old hand at the pressure bandage bit. He had Dave slide a couple more towels under Whiny’s T-shirt and hold pressure on them. By the time they got to the hospital, Whiny was semi-conscious and blood was pooling on the seat of the coupe. They were lucky this time around although I’m not so sure that having to go to emergency is such a lucky deal. There were no other vehicles in the parking spots next to the emergency room doors when they pulled up. A couple of nurses and a doctor came out with a gurney and between the five of them they wrestled Whiny up onto it and rolled him inside.
Doofus and Dave headed for the restroom to wash the blood off. On the way down, they ran into the nurse who did the triage and pressure bandage bit on the floor of emergency last time they had Whiny there.
She didn’t say much, took one look at Doofus and Dave and their bloodstained shirts, looked at Doofus and all she said was, “Again?”
She didn’t even wait for an answer. She just shook her head and headed down the hall to emergency.
Once again, Doofus had to call Whiny’s folks and tell them what happened. Once again, Whiny was lucky. Once they got the bullet out and got him patched up, it was a couple of days in the hospital and out. Gotta admit though, Whiny was getting one heck of a scar collection.
Now we had two Ford coupes in our group with serious bloodstains in the interior. All of it Whiny’s. Must have been good quality stuff, it never did wear off and Doofus and I ended up taking the cars to Tijuana the following year for tuck and roll upholstery.
We’d of went anyway, that was just part of being a California guy and owning a hot rod.
The bloodstains made a good excuse though.
-<>-
With Murgy as the starting quarterback on the football team and the second string quarterback, darned near as good as Murgy filling in at halfback now and then, our team did well.
We got to be regular spectators at the Friday night football games. We figured we had a vested interest with one of our own playing.
Murgy was one heck of a quarterback, one of the very best the school had ever seen. Interesting part was the second string quarterback. A guy named Bo Randall. He was just about the fastest guy on the team and threw as well as Murgy. The track coach clocked him at 10.7 in the hundred yards while Bo had all his football gear on. He could really haul the freight. The only failing with him, if you could call it a failing at all was his decided lack of height. At 5'6" he couldn’t hardly see over the line and was at times, at a disadvantage. It was one heck of a sight to see when Bo played. Darned near every pass got launched while he was in the air. He must have been an ex-ballet dancer or something. When he’d go up, he’d just kind of hang in the air, maybe look around if he had to, decide and throw the pass.
Now and then, he paid the penalty. Especially so when the other team caught him in the air right before he got the pass off. It was a long way down and with one or two big guys going down with you and usually on top, it made for one heck of an impact. He was a tough-minded kid though. He bounced right back and it never really slowed him down. In our book, he was either lucky or tough. We figured tough was it, sometimes when he went down with three or four guys on him, the earth shook.
Once in a while, Murgy got tagged pretty hard, but it didn’t seem anything like what Bo got. Course Murgy didn’t end up falling as far as Bo did. Murgy was usually on the run when they got him, Bo would sometimes be four feet in the air. Maybe higher, the guy could really jump. If he’d of been 6'3" or so instead of 5'6" he’d been every basketball coaches dream. Didn’t make any difference, football was what he loved and football was what he played.
It all came to a head during the last regular game of the season. An especially hard fought one as the last game was always played against our traditional rivals. Oxnard. This time though, for both teams, winning meant a trip to the league playoffs and from there, who knows where.
It was a hard fought game with the score constantly seesawing back and forth. The scores weren’t that high, just that neither team ever got more than a seven point advantage. Near the end of the game, it looked like we were going to lose. Oxnard scored a field goal and had a three point lead with only a couple of minutes left to play.
Our team marched right down the field, picked up a couple of first downs, got to the 11 yard line and were stalled at third down with 10 seconds to play. The last time out was called and the field goal kicker came out on the field. This time though, instead of one of the big line guys who blocked for the kicker, Bo came out and took his place. It was really obvious, but the other team didn’t seem to notice.
The ball was snapped, the guy doing the holding, instead of putting the ball down for the kicker simply held it up and Bo swept by from the right side going left at a dead run. Gotta give the other team credit, they caught onto it right away and had the left end well covered. What they missed though was the right end. He crossed the goal line, hooked a hard left and ran for the left side. With three lineman closing on him and Bo darned near to the out of bounds line, he launched into the air, spun to his left like a skater doing a jump and after he spun almost all the way around he threw the ball sidearm right into the hands of the right end who was darned near out of bounds himself.
It was spectacular. The stadium absolutely erupted. On both sides. The Oxnard fans couldn’t believe it and neither did we. That had to be the greatest play we ever saw in high school football. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen much to top it. The little fact that Ventura won the game in the last few seconds wasn’t lost on either side.
For the losers, dejection. You kinda had to feel sorry for them. An almost assured victory snatched away from them at the last second. For the winners, utter jubilation. We figured, fair is fair. Our school hadn’t been to the league playoffs for a long time. Beating Oxnard to get there was especially sweet. It wasn’t often that we did beat them, but this was the time to do it for sure.
Oxnard was a larger school than ours and had seen more than their share of trips to the league playoffs. It was our turn now. All the players rushed onto field, followed by the coach, the assistant coach and anybody who was involved with the team and had the good fortune to be on the sidelines. The players started to hoist Murgy up, but he declined. He’d led the team to a victorious season finale, but the hero of the hour was Bo. Murgy was the first one to start the hoist and the others soon followed. They carried Bo off the field, down the track in front of the spectators, back across the field and down the hill to the gym. They were clear out of sight when they finally put him down.
Bo was truly the man of the hour. Without his spectacular pass, part football and part ballet, they’d have been dejectedly walking back to the gym instead of being in the high spirits they were. Next stop, the playoffs. Eagerly anticipated by every football enthusiast in town. Tickets were darned near impossible to get, but we had ours and joined the other students on the school busses down to the L.A. school where the first game of the playoffs was held.
After the spectacular win at home, the playoff was a bit of an anti-climax to say the least.
They just drove us into the dirt. It would have been 35-0 if the other coach hadn’t pulled his first stringers off at the start of the third quarter. I think they were getting a little embarrassed too.
It was obvious we were sorely outclassed. The other team was composed of big guys. Really big guys. Darned near in the monster class. I don’t think we could have stopped them if we’d carried 2 x 4's onto the field. It was a total rout. Final score, 41-6.
Our guys played their best, but when every guy is outweighed by 30-40 pounds, in football at least, the game is a foregone conclusion. We found later that the school tended to hold their promising players back a year for academic reasons. Yeah, right. Kinda funny what one more year of growth can do and some of the guys on the other team looked like they’d been held back 2 years. First high school team I ever saw that had in effect a five year curriculum. Not to mention 19 and maybe 20 year old students.
The team, the fans and all of us in the gang were a touch dejected when we left. Once home though, we realized we really did have a pretty good year. No one had anything to be ashamed of. Course, as the coach put it, it was sorta like going to a gun fight with a knife.
Our Senior year finally came to an end. You’d think that this is the part where everyone scatters to the winds. Maybe for some, not so for us. The whole gang was still around, still hitting the beaches and still fooling with cars.
-<>-
I still had my black 53 Ford coupe and it was pretty much stock as it always had been.
Ok with me though, it was a dependable, nice looking little car. Bloodstains and all.
Doofus was still running his 41 Ford coupe, equipped pretty much the same as mine. Stock flathead engine, duals, dropped axle, big & littles. Pretty much the typical high school hot rod. Whiny one-upped us all. Darned near right out of school he fell into a pretty good job working in a bakery.. We didn’t see him around the beach for most of that summer. Seemed like he was always working. It paid off though. He bought a brand new 57 Chevy two door 210 with the 270 HP dual quad engine and four speed transmission. It was a sweet, sweet car. He got a killer deal to boot. Since it was a 57 sold after the 58's came out it was heavily discounted.
The 57 was painted white, but that didn’t last long. He had it about two months and it went into the body shop where the dual gunsight hood ornaments got filled in, the big Vs on the hood & trunk were removed, the holes filled and an anodized aluminum side trim panel along with the chrome spear off a Belair installed and the car was painted a bright orange. That, combined with a subtle lowering of the front and even more subtle lowering of the back, the original stock little hubcaps, chrome wheels with blackwalls and Whiny had a knockout of a car.
We were amazed at how fast it was. It was fair to say that it just scorched the asphalt. He stuck a pair of glasspacks on as well as a pair of under the car cutouts and headed for the drag strip. The tech guys at the strip weren’t too wild about letting it run. They’d had more than one of the high winding Chevrolet’s blow a clutch with pieces going everywhere and really wanted Whiny to have a scatter shield on it before they would let him run. They relented a bit after Whiny had done a touch of whining - he wasn’t called Whiny for nothing - and let him make one run. That was it. Fini, no more.
The little Chevy cranked off a 101 mph with a 14.31 et. On street tires. Granted fat and soft ones, but street tires nevertheless. Impressed the heck out of us. Any street car that surpassed 100 in the quarter was big time fast in our book.
That was the one and only time that Whiny ran the Chevy at the strip. He figured owning a genuine 100 mph in the quarter car was good enough for him. Nothing more need be done. He drove the Chevy like a little old lady for a long while. He’d very seldom get on it. About the only time he did was when he passed someone. Made sense I guess, at the end of the year he still owed 30 more payments on it. Made no difference, as far as he was concerned it was his, all his. It was quite the love affair.
When the year ended, Doofus and I decided that we were spinning our wheels and getting nowhere working at the Circus Burger. Too many weekend evenings at work were creating havoc with our social life and the weekdays at work were screwing up our surfing. This working for a living stuff was interfering with our lives for sure. We weren’t making much money either. We figured we didn’t have much to lose, worked for another week, took a look at our bank accounts and figured we could run for a couple of months with what we had salted away and in the meantime we could look for a real job that paid real money. Regular working hours would be a decided bonus.
We both got lucky about the same time. Since we figured we knew a lot about cars, at least I thought we did, we went looking for car related jobs. Doofus in truth was the mechanic in our group. He had most of it figured out pretty well and we relied on him for a lot of the stuff. Whiny was a pretty good mechanic too, darned near as good as Doofus. He’d have been even better if he wasn’t so busy whining all the time. Sounds bad, but it wasn’t. We’d learned to tune him out long ago and most of his complaining just didn’t bother us. When it did, a simple “Shut up Whiny!” would do the job and he’d be over it for most of the day.
Doofus and me applied at various parts houses around town as well as at Mickey Merc’s Ford dealership and for good measure, applied at the local Chevrolet dealer too.
As fate would have it, I got hired at the Chevy garage and Doofus got a job at Mickey Merc’s.
The real paradox was that I still owned my 53 Ford coupe and worked at the Chevy garage. As it turned out, not too bad a paradox. For Doofus, he was entranced with Whiny’s 57 Chevy two door and first chance he got he bought a very clean, about a year old black 57 Belair hardtop. Standard single four barrel V8, automatic trans and all. A bit of a paradox for Doofus, owning a Chevy and working at the Ford garage. In a small way, it ticked Mickey off to see one of his employees driving a Chevy into work, but he figured, and rightly so, Doofus was a good dependable worker who was becoming more valuable every day. At least that’s what he said for public consumption.
Every morning when Doofus drove in with the Chevy and Mickey thought no one was looking, he’d give the little hardtop a fierce glare. It got to the point that the secretaries and the phone girl - who were usually the first ones to arrive and being first, got to park closest to Mickey’s office - would make a point to park further away and many times Doofus got the spot closest to the office. They could tell it ticked Mickey off when the Chevy was parked right next to the office. They did enjoy their little bit of psychological warfare. Mickey tended to holler and get mad now and then. He didn’t abuse the girls, but they didn’t care for the way he acted at times. Just their smooth running and subtle way to get back at him.
Doofus still liked his 41 Ford coupe and wouldn’t part with it. He ran it out to the barn at his granddads citrus ranch, pulled the battery, drained the radiator, put it up on blocks and covered it with a couple of blankets and an old canvas tarp. He thought the little coupe would be there for a while, but the way things turned out, it wasn’t long until the coupe saw daylight again.
Things were looking better for me as well. In several areas. More money due to a good paying steady job. Working in the parts department was an education in itself.
I’d been thinking of an engine swap in the 53 for quite a while. The 371 inch Olds was the engine of choice for me, but I would have settled for one of the earlier 324 inchers. Either one with the preferred 37 Cad-LaSalle floor shift three speed trans. I’d seen more than a few of the Olds engines swapped into Fords and a couple of them that ran around town were strong runners. Especially so a 40 Ford coupe and a 50 Ford coupe. The 40 being darned near the fastest car in town for a while. Until he got cleaned out by a Chrysler powered Deuce roadster, but that’s a whole other story.
Being exposed to Whiny’s strong running 210 and Doofus’s nice Belair hardtop got me interested in the little Chevy engines. Both cars, especially so Whiny’s, were strong runners.
No doubt about it, the little Chevy’s ran hard. They cranked the rpms off too. Where 5500 and 6000 rpm were about it for the upper rev limit on the mildly built Olds engines and in fact for a lot of other popular OHV hot rod engines as well, the little Chevy’s that some guys revved to 8000 and above were just amazing. Even so, about 7000 rpm was considered the limit for most of the flat tappet motors including the Chevy. The flat tappet engines would run in excess of 8000 rpm, but it took some ferocious valve springs and some valve train modifications to do it with any degree of success. Use of a roller cam for the Chevy’s was a good idea. Especially so if they were slated for competition duty. Course, once you got the valve train squared away, you’d start having failures in other areas. Namely rods. They’d let go now and then with spectacular results.
What was especially appealing about the little Chevy’s was the small overall size of the engine and it’s very light weight. With all that in mind I started looking into what I could do as far as sticking one of these engines in the 53.
I figured getting hold of one of the not too badly broken warranty engines would work ok and if not, I could buy a brand new one through the shop. With the good discount I got, it looked like a do-able deal.
In the end though, I found a wrecked 57 Corvette with 283 in the local junkyard. The dual four barrel engine, four speed model. By the time I heard about it and got there the dual quad setup was long gone and so was the four speed transmission. The rest was all there so I couldn’t complain too much. A compression test showed the engine to be in good shape as far as rings and valves went. Spinning the engine over with the starter while it sat on a wooden engine stand showed good oil pressure. I was able to swing the price, no killer deals here, the junkyard owner knew exactly what he had and how much they were in demand. Regardless, it was still cheaper than buying a new one through the shop.
We did make a point to pull the pan once we had the engine home and check the bearings.
They looked plenty good, so we stuck em back in. Doofus found a single four barrel factory intake, little carb and all at an out of town junkyard, bought it and brought it in. I was glad he did. The price was right and now I had a complete engine ready to go.
The trans wasn’t too difficult. I didn’t want to use the stock 53 Ford three speed trans.
Those were kinda weak and a lot of them had come unglued on more than one guy running a stock engine, let alone one of the good running Chevy’s. A little more searching and we found one of the 57 Ford Interceptor three speed transmissions. Cool part about this one was, it was an overdrive model.
After a couple months of collecting parts, we yanked the old, but still good running flathead out on a Friday night, got the engine bay cleaned up, painted and the new engine with the Interceptor trans bolted on with an Offy adapter set in place. The very nice Hurst motor mounts for the Chevy into Ford swap were easy to do, just took drilling a couple of holes on each side of the front crossmember for the frame part of the adapter. The trans mount, just about as easy. We made a bolt-in extension to bolt the Interceptor trans to the original Ford trans mount.
Doofus removed the bibs and soldered a couple of blank off plates to one of the upper and one of the lower radiator outlets. Adapting the stock Ford throttle rod to the little Rochester carb was easily done and that was about it for the weekend.
The engine swap left me without a car for a while, but it wasn’t too big a problem. I just drug the old Columbia bike out from the back of the garage and rode it to work. Work was only a couple of miles away anyway, so no big deal. I’d put many a mile on the Columbia before I got the car and still rode it now and then. It was a neat old bike and I enjoyed it.
It took another week to get things to the point where we could fire it up. The part that took the most thinking was setting up the horizontally oriented Chevy throwout arm to the Ford clutch pedal tab that was set up to pull straight back on a throwout arm that came out of the Ford bellhousing at about a 30 down angle. Solved when Doofus set up a pair of pillow block bearings on a gusseted plate welded to the inner frame side near the steering box. The pillow block bearings carried a shaft with a down pointing tab that took a 3/8" pull rod from the Ford clutch tab that pulled at an angle. This same tab had a 3/8" push rod that pushed straight back on the Chevy throwout arm. All in all, a simple and classy answer to what looked like a tough problem.
We found we didn’t need the clutch equalizer bar due to the stiff motor mount setup.
Easiest part of the whole deal was changing everything to 12 volts. Doofus really knew what he was doing here. I was comfortable doing wiring and all, but Doofus truly knew how it all worked.
Doofus owned a gas torch and was a pretty good welder. He knocked out a nice set of exhaust pipes for the car as well as a pair of 2" side pipes exiting in front of the rear wheels. The old mufflers, a still in good shape pair of 28" glasspacks from the muffler shop were re-used. A local oil field machine shop cut the driveshaft down for us and with the exception of having the overdrive wired up, we were ready to go.
Firing up the engine was easy. More so than a couple of other engine swaps I’d been involved in. Mainly because we knew more now than we did a couple of years ago and the best part was, we had a little more patience and were willing to take the time to set it up right.
We pulled the plugs and spun the engine with a starter to get oil pressure up. Once we showed good oil pressure, we stuck the plugs in, ran the electric fuel pump long enough to fill the float bowl, checked for leaks, turned on the ignition, hit the starter and it lit off like it was run yesterday. We were stoked, at least I was. The little Chevy settled down into an on the choke idle and after a minute of warmup I tapped the throttle, the choke pulled partway off and the engine settled down to a nice 750 rpm idle. When it was a bit warmer, I tapped the throttle and it dropped off the fast idle cam and settled into a nice smooth 600 rpm idle.
It didn’t miss a beat and the little Rochester worked great. The glasspacks that sounded so good on the old flathead V8 really sounded good behind the quick revving Chevy engine.
Especially so with the short side pipes that Doofus built.
We shut the engine down and set the valves. They were pretty close to right on the money to start with, but setting them hot is the best way. A new set of rocker gaskets and we were ready for the first ride. Most times, around the block, but this time, around the block was not enough for us. We got in the car and headed out for Santa Barbara. Nothing like a full on road test running up the coast highway past some of our favorite beaches to get a good idea how good a job we did.
The engine swap turned out nice and it looked like the car was gonna be a runner. A Sun tach was clamped to the steering column off to the left side and the original Ford column shift was still in use. It had worked well for the stock flathead and trans combo and no reason why it wouldn’t work just as well here. We weren’t trying to build a sleeper, but it didn’t end up far from being one. Even though the car had screw on Moon discs, blackwalls, slightly lowered in front and a new pair of side pipes it looked just like a lot of other stock Fords running around the county. That and the still in good shape factory black paint made a good looking combination. I’d hoped it would be a good running combination and I wasn’t disappointed. The Chevy was a strong runner and a big improvement over the 239 inch flathead. You could tell the Chevy was, at least to our ears, under carbureted. It was obvious that next on the list would be a multi-carb setup.
The run to Santa Barbara went off without a hitch. Even idling through Santa Barbara’s perennial traffic jam on Hwy 101 where it went through town and hit several traffic lights didn’t even faze it. We figured the big and in good shape Ford radiator that did well in keeping the flathead cool was more than enough radiator for the cool running Chevy.
Since it was a Sunday and getting close to dinner time, it was obvious a trip to the Blue Onion was a necessity. The Blue Onion, a more than popular drive-in where a lot of Santa Barbara’s fastest and nicest cars hung out was always a must-stop whenever we went up there.
We weren’t looking for a street race and nobody asked us if we wanted to. It was just a small crowd of car loving guys and gals eating burgers and checking out the cars.
Two that I remember well were a tan 50 Olds coupe, dropped in front, shod with big and little blackwalls and apparently running a GMC 471 blower. It sounded quite different, but the dead giveaway was the single four barrel carb just barely sticking through a hole cut in the hood.
No air filter, no scoop, just the slightest hint of carburetor hanging out in the breeze. If it hadn’t been for the big cam and the blower noises emanating from the coupe, I don’t think I would have noticed anything other than it was a good looking Olds. The other car, which came in later was one you would have noticed when it was parked with the engine shut off. A black, full fendered very low 34 Ford Phaeton with chopped windshield and a white top. One of the locals told us that it ran a stroker Olds along with a chain driven blower. The big cam and what were probably glasspacks were noticeable enough, but what really caught your ear was the chain driven blower. You could hear it coming way down the street. It sounded like nothing we’d ever heard before. The occupants were a couple of older guys, 25 at least, they parked the Phaeton and walked inside, but not without noticing the blown Olds coupe..
Cool part with the Phaeton was when they shut the engine off. It shut down like right now. Sorta like turning off the radio. One second it was running and the next it was dead. We were definitely impressed. Just one more Santa Barbara legend to carry back home. Seemed like the Santa Barbara guys always had the most interesting and many times the best built cars around.
The basic rule about going to Santa Barbara and looking for a street race was - bring money and lots of it. For the most part, we didn’t actively go looking for street races. About the most serious thing we got involved with was the occasional second or high gear roll on with another hot rod looking car. We’d done a little bit of the street racing bit out of town, but we weren’t really involved with it to a great degree. We liked our cars pretty much like they were. Just good running and good looking little cars that were fun to drive.
It would have been nice to build a killer fast car, but like most guys, money was the tough part for us. Even with all of us living at home and paying moderate rent, cars like that were pretty much out of reach for us. Besides, we had girl friends, things to do and there was always surfing.
Doofus and I had steady girl friends, but Whiny seemed to have a new girl every summer. I’m not sure what the deal was there. He was a good looking guy, smart, patient enough for the most part and could carry on an intelligent conversation with the ladies. He had good manners and always made them feel at ease. I think what happened with most was, they soon came to realize that Whiny, under his scarred and beaten skin was a bit of a wild man. Kinda hard to tell since he kept it under control most of the time. In fact, darned near all the time. It only got away from him now and then and there was nothing dangerous about it. Sometimes though, you just couldn’t push him any further. Not that we pushed him. A few had tried and a few had paid the price. More than one guy had a funny looking nose courtesy of Whiny. He did ok in high school, never really had any problems there. Junior High school was another story though. One pain in the ass kid that thought he was going to push Whiny around ended up getting hit right square in the nose. Hard. I think his nose was broken, but it didn’t make too much difference. The kid was leaking blood like a fire hydrant. He and his would-be bully friend that put him up to it stumbled off to the boys bathroom.
We went in ten minutes later and the kid was still bleeding. In fact there was blood all over the bathroom floor. It was obvious to us that the bleeding wasn’t going to stop, so we dragged the bloody nosed kid to the nurses office leaving the other kid in the bathroom. The school nurse got the bleeding stopped and when she asked what happened, the bloody nosed kid told her that his friend got up quick while he was leaning over his back and hit him in the nose with his head. Kinda surprised us. We figured he’d started it all and now he’d rat Whiny out.
The bloodstains were in the bathroom for a long time.
Anyway, with the girls soon coming to the realization the perhaps Whiny wasn’t going to change anytime soon and that taming him looked to be a full time job, they simply gave up. Kinda too bad in a way. Whiny really was a good guy and we figured at the least he deserved a nice girl.
Even so, he didn’t have any trouble getting dates. To top it off, his sister was always dragging some girl home and playing the matchmaker bit. Matchmaking seems to be in the female genes.
For sure, many of them, all ages and from many walks of life had arranged something somewhere along the line for Whiny.
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Whiny’s mom, and Whiny, simply because he was who he was and went along with his mom most times, belonged to the nice Presbyterian Church up on the hill overlooking town. As did my girl friend DeeDee, her folks and my folks. Whiny’s mom insisted that either Whiny go to church with her on Sunday mornings or at the least go to the youth group meetings on Sunday nights. Youth group perhaps a misnomer since most of the kids were 16 to 19 which fit into our age range quite well. Whiny, deciding he’d better humor his mom started attending the youth group meetings pretty regular. It wasn’t long until DeeDee talked me into it and not long after Doofus and Dinah started coming along.
Mrs. Brown, a widow and the youth group advisor/teacher/organizer/all round take care of everything lady was thrilled to have five new members. Especially since we were pretty steady customers so to speak. Mrs. Brown was a much loved lady and worked hard at her beloved church. She made the whole thing go as far as the youth group program went.
It scared the heck out of us one Saturday when we found her Plymouth sedan rolled into a ditch just west of Santa Paula. The ambulance was just pulling away and we didn’t know what had happened. We went straight to the hospital and they wouldn’t say anything other than she would be spending the night there.
Sunday night came and you couldn’t have kept us away from youth group for anything. We got there early and sure enough, in waltzes Mrs. Brown. Waltz was the right word, she was a very graceful woman. Not a scratch from what we could see. Apparently we were the only ones who knew about the car wreck.
Whiny, not known for being bashful just straight out asked her what happened. Mrs. Brown smiled and explained that a bee got inside the car and she was trying to shoo it out when she went off the road and rolled the car upside down into the ditch. She’d been banged up a bit, but she was sorry she’d totaled her poor old 47 Plymouth. A good looking, light tan colored four door, well cared for low mileage car without a dent. At least it was until the bee introduced himself to Mrs. Brown.
She did ok though. Mrs. Brown, a widow as mentioned and perhaps in her fifties went down to Mickey Merc’s Ford dealership a few days later and bought a brand new 60 Ford Starliner coupe. The very good looking hardtop sported a nice dark metallic blue paint job and was equipped with the strong running 390 engine. We were a bit shocked when we saw it. The sexy looking Ford hardtop and our Mrs. Brown with her calm demeanor, didn’t, at least to our eyes, quite go together. Turned out Mrs. Brown was a bit of a leadfoot as well. We usually pulled into the church parking lot in our hot rods about the same time Mrs. Brown did and she pretty much knew what was what as far as the hot rod thing went. We’d made a point, at least a few times, to light up the tires leaving church. We thought the only ones who saw us were the other kids, but apparently Mrs. Brown had seen us too.
She never said anything though. She let us know that she knew what had gone on when she saw us standing in the parking lot talking after youth group one night. When she pulled out in her new Ford she lit the tires up big time. Even getting the good looking car sideways a touch. She handled it with no problems. We didn’t know for quite a while that the 390 engine in the 60 Ford was a somewhat special deal. Ford ran them in NASCAR races and finally had to release a number of them to the public for homologation purposes.
That was a side to Mrs. Brown that we knew absolutely nothing about. Not long after, Mrs. Brown showed up with a nice looking guy about her age to help with the youth group. We didn’t put two and two together until my folks got wedding invitations to Mrs. Browns wedding.
The light dawned, Mrs. Brown had a boy friend all this time. Not a surprise to mom. As she put it, it was obvious to anybody who paid attention. For a bunch of guys who had life all figured out, it sure did throw us some curves sometimes.
We all went to the wedding, a nice one with darned near the whole congregation there.
Mrs. Brown got married, we threw rice and watched the newlyweds drive off in the new Ford hardtop and kinda wondered about life.
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End of Part 3