My World

The Great Car Adventure

For the last few weeks there has been a commercial on television that has a group of older men holding their Super Bowl tickets. It seems that they have been to every Super Bowl. This year is the 40th Super Bowl. I remember the 1st Super Bowl. I was 28 years old and I remember listening to it on the radio. This commercial has made me think about my age. I do think about think about it once in awhile but I have been thinking about it more often in the last few weeks.

I know that I wouldn’t go back. I don’t want to be 25 or 35 or even 45. I like being 68 years old. Over those years I have had a lot of experiences and some of them come back to me in random moments.

Here is one that I have been thinking of for a few days. I have a cousin that lives in Los Angeles. He is a couple of years older then me. When he turned sixteen he got a job and saved enough money to buy a very old car. I really didn’t know how old it was but this was 1956 and the car was built before WWII. You have seen them in the movies; it was black and very square. I think it was a Chevy. Well one day he decided to go into Hollywood and watch a radio show. It was a talk show with a band. He invited a few of his friends and me to go with him. The whole idea of going somewhere without any adults and with 3 older guys was very exciting.

Well the day arrived and he and his friends picked me up and we started our trip. We got to Hollywood and found a place to park. We then went into the CBS studio to watch the show. It was just as exciting as watching a live television show in person. The place filled up and the show started. The band played and we had a great time. The band was a well-known band called Les Brown’s Band of Renown. They had been around for many years and had traveled across the country to play for dances and in nightclubs. My uncle was a professional musician. At one point he had been in this band. It was a long time ago. So my cousin went up to Les Brown and introduced himself. He asked if Les Brown remembered my his father. Well he didn’t. Steven wouldn’t give up. He kept pushing and pushing. It was embarrassing. Finally we got him to give up and we were going to go home.

We got to the car and piled in. The car started up and we went about 4 miles. We were out of Hollywood and there weren’t very many businesses around. The car just stopped and none of us had any idea of what to do. We all agreed that we couldn’t call home. That would be childish. We were going to solve this ourselves. So our first idea was to push the car and then pop the clutch so it would start. You can do that with a manual transmission engine. We pushed and pushed. We kept trying to get it to start, but it just was not in agreement with us. We had gas and the battery was working, that was the sum total of what we knew about cars. After awhile we sat down in the car to get our breath.

It was getting dark and we knew that if we didn’t get home soon our parents would be worried and of course not happy when we did arrive. We still didn’t want to call them. Just then my father showed up. He knew where we were and also knew that we would only know one way to get home. He was a little upset but he lifted the hood and began to laugh. He did something and then looked at us and said, “it doesn’t matter if the battery is good if both cables are not attached.” We finally got going and my father followed us the whole way. We got to my house and he told Steve to wait. He went in and called my aunt. He came out and followed them home.

I had a great father. When he got home he called me in and told me to sit down. We had a pretty good talk about not calling home. He told me that if we were adults then we would have found a pay phone and called home. He asked me to think about it and then with a big smile we went in to dinner.

That is the story of my first adventure on my own. Oh yes, the car fell apart about three months later. My father told me it was built in 1932, and it was amazing that it still ran at all.

Have a good evening.

Peace, howie