Piloting The Sedan deVille

A rare but exciting experience in my house was helping my father shop for a car. It was rare because he squeezed a lot out of his cars. We bought a 58 Chevy in 1962 and a 1962 Chevy in 66. By 1972 he was shopping around again.   
It was exciting because the thought of a new car got everybody in the house excited. It must have been a torment for my dad though as each family member had their own opinion about what was cool and what he could afford.

Having read numerous Hot Rod and Car-Toons Magazine, I was an expert in cars by the age of 13. I thought a GTO or Challenger would make a great family car. Instead we bought a 1970 Chevy Impala. It turned out to be the car I learned to drive in but we came close to buying a real beast that year.

For some reason, my father had his eye on a 1969 Pontiac Bonneville. It floated down the road like an airplane and we all got excited about it. On the test drive we took it home and imagined it in our driveway on a permanent basis. Fortunately my father imagined it in our garage and was wise enough to measure it. The signature Pontiac nose wouldn’t fit in the garage unless we poked a hole in the back wall.

I was reminded of that massive Pontiac this week when I came across a 1970 Cadillac Sedan DeVille for sale in our neighborhood. The car isn’t eye catching in the classic car sense but you could say it has curb appeal if you could see the curb.

The car is not the biggest modern Cadillac– that honor goes to the 1976 model – but it is massive in every way. It is more than 6’ wide and about 19’ long. The 472 cubic inch engine could power a fleet of Hondas and the 26 gallon gas tank suggested that fuel efficiency was probably not its strongest selling point.

“The first time I saw the car I thought it would be fun to own,” said Jeffrey Criss, the car’s most recent owner. “My friend was driving it and I suggested we trade. About a year later he came back and swapped the Caddie for a small Ford pickup.” “I think I liked it because it was so long,” he added. “There weren’t many of them around and it certainly caught people’s attention."

After comparing the car’s handling to a boat, Criss let me take the behemoth for a spin. I slid onto the 6’ bench seat and under the thin steering wheel (no adjustable steering wheels here). Just like big dogs take their owners for a walk, the 1970 Sedan DeVille takes its driver for a ride. I barely touched the gas pedal and the car rumbled away.   

My short ride brought back more than a few memories of old cars where half the electrical switches didn’t work and the smell of exhaust subtly filled the car.   

Still, the 26 year-old Criss says it will be hard to see the car go. “It’s just funky and fun but not the most practical for transportation.”   

Anyone who ever pushed and jumped their old, fun and funky car would probably agree.

Sixties Hits and Misses

   Every now and then you hear a song on the radio that makes you cringe.  You’re embarrassed that you know every word and you think to yourself “how did a song like this ever become popular?”

   It might be fate or mass hysteria but now and then songs just catch on and years later they just don’t sound as good. Each decade has its moments of weakness like Achy Breaky Heart or Mambo #5 but the sixties are a goldmine of hits that could have easily been misses.

   The best example is a 7-minute epic called MacArthur Park. The song was written by famed country songwriter Jimmy Webb for a vocal group called The Association.  They passed on the opportunity and the actor Richard Harris of Camelot fame picked it up. Harris was far from a rock star at the time and the song about leaving the cake in the rain made little sense to people but something about it clicked. It reached #2 on the radio charts in June of 1968. Disco fans might also remember Donna Summer’s snappy version in the late 70’s. You might not like it, in fact it was voted among the worst songs of the 60’s, but if it comes on the radio you will know almost every word.

   That same year Herbert Khaury, a street performer from New York City, pulled out a ukulele and sang Tiptoe Through The Tulips as Tiny Tim. It was a big hit for Tiny Tim who apparently died of a heart attack in 1996 while performing the same song. If you remember it, you probably hated this song but you could also find yourself softly singing along in the privacy of your car

   One song you may not know the words but could still sing along with is Dominique, a #1 hit in 1963 sung by a Belgian named Sister Luc-Gabrielle or The Singing Nun. Even though it was sung completely in French, the song became a hit and prevented the classic song Louie Louie from reaching #1. 

   Lyrics were clearly not the lure on Sukiyaki either. The 1963 song by Kyu Sakamoto is sung in Japanese. According to Billboard Magazine, the song’s original title was Ue O Muite Aruko (I look Up When I Walk). Record producers changed the name to Sukiyaki, a title easier to pronounce but totally unrelated to the song. We have no idea what it means but we still know the words – sort of.

   When I think of bad songs I couldn’t get out of my head, the song Spill The Wine comes to mind. Like it or not, I heard it every 20 minutes on AM radio during the summer of 1970.  It wasn’t the worst song on the radio that summer. That distinction goes to a band called The Pipkins and a weird song called Gimme Dat Ding. The song defies explanation for its popularity.

   My personal torment is a song that begins with “breaker 1-9 this here’s rubber duck.”  I simply hate this song but could sing it blind in a karaoke bar.  As a country music DJ in the mid 70’s the song couldn’t be avoided. It played over and over and over again on the top forty station between Crystal Gayle and Tanya Tucker.

   So how about you? Is there a song you know too well and hate too much? If so, drop me an email at flipside@tx.rr.com and we will revisit our history of bad music later this summer.  Until then – let those truckers roll 10-4.

The Honeymoon's Not Over

   As the youngest in my house, I headed to bed long before my parents and older brother.  Each night I fell asleep to the familiar sounds of the shower water running and my parent’s casual conversations and the song “You’re My Greatest Love” rising up the stairs from the living room television.

  You may know the song by its more common name as “The Honeymooners Theme Song” but either way, it was a late night lullaby for me.

   The popular 1950’s show had been in reruns for years on New York City’s WPIX television and my parents watched it almost every night after the early news.  Because it came on late, I almost never saw the show but I heard it from my bedroom at the top of the stairs.  When I was older I learned that my parents rarely saw it either – they usually fell asleep on the coach and recliner – then went to bed when the closing music credits came on.

   Over the years I have seen many of the Honeymooner episodes and have enjoyed clips on various TV specials but I never seriously watched them – until recently.

   Last December I received a box set of the “Classic 39 Episodes” of The Honeymooners as a gift and recently finished watching them in order with my wife Ann.  We were surprised at what we saw.

   First, let’s start with a history lesson.  The first Honeymooner’s sketch aired in 1951 on a show called Cavalcade of Stars that was hosted by Jackie Gleason.  Gleason got his own show a year later and the Honeymooners bits were regularly featured as part of the show through 1954. Jackie Gleason and CBS debuted the standalone sitcom on October 1, 1955 and the series ran for 39 episodes.  Gleason supposedly pulled the show when he felt the storylines had run their course but competition from the top rated Perry Como Show probably helped.

   Honeymooner sketches were part of later Jackie Gleason television shows into the 1970’s although the Classic 39 are considered the best and most original.

    What surprised us most was how well the shows hold up.  The writing is tight, the production quality is good and the comic timing of all four main characters makes each episode a pleasure to watch.

   I admit the plots are predictable but most 1950s television was. Each episode features bus driver Ralph Cramden inserting a foot in his “Big Mouth” but the supporting characters of his wife Alice and upstairs neighbors Ed and Trixie Norton always help him pull it out.

   An interesting footnote on watching the shows was the cast of actors who appeared in episodes as different people to move the story along.  One actor, Frank Marth, was a member of Ralph’s Raccoon Lodge, a bank robber, a news photographer, a bus driver and an employee at the animal shelter. 

   Watching The Honeymooners made us realize that all of the sitcoms and cartoons (Flintstones, for example) that imitated them may have been slicker but it all started in that apartment at 328 Chauncey Street in Brooklyn.

   Back at the Carroll household, we may go back and revisit episodes 18 and 26. It seems that, like my parents, the two of us dozed through a few shows only to be awakened by the sounds of “You’re My Greatest Love.”  Some things never change.

Running Full Speed On Kid Power

Different state - same theme. The Brownrigg kids and friends
prepare for a kid-powered go cart race in Clifton Beach (Cleveland), Ohio.

   Some of the nuttiest things I ever got involved with took place during those years before girls and summer jobs filled the time. For most of those nutty activities, I had a partner named Gary Costa.

   We constructed extravagant slot car layouts, took adventurous bike rides, built car models and learned how to play Risk – sort of. One of our most memorable activities was building a homemade go cart.

   Some of the older neighborhood kids had go carts powered by upright lawn mower engines. We would see and certainly hear them in the empty church parking lot. It looked like so much fun that one day Gary and I decided to build our own cart.

   There were no sponsors for our racing team so spending money was out of the question. The cart would need to be built from materials scavenged from our own garages.

   We started with an old ¾”sheet of plywood that weighed much more than it needed to. A crude seat was built from thinner plywood and an old 2 x 4 would hold the front axle.  The wheels and axles were scavenged from an old go cart and clothesline was tied to the front axle for steering.

   We hammered it together with a box of roofing nails we found and Gary’s father offered advice and hardware for attaching the axles to the cart. We borrowed a half empty can of house paint and ruined a few of my father’s brushes as we painted the entire cart gloss black.

   Before the cart was ready for racing, we needed two more key pieces – an engine and brakes. I am sure the vehicle would have been faster and safer if we included those but unfortunately that never happened.

   Instead we ran and stopped the cart using kid power.  I would push it down the block and Gary would push it back. Stopping was avoided as much as possible. Since running the cart down the city street was not a good plan, we pushed it along the tree lined sidewalks.  If we were lucky enough not to hit a tree, the cart would usually coast to a stop on someone’s lawn.

   On those few occasions where one of us would push the other into a tree, the driver would slide across the splintered sheet of plywood like a test dummy. Later we installed a rope behind the seat that tied around the waist to ensure the driver’s complete safety.

   We knew the go cart wasn’t fast since it was almost as heavy as an SUV and we saw the flaws in an engine-less vehicle.  Still, we were proud of the cart and it filled a lot of time during the summer and fall of 1968. It also filled up Mr. Costa’s garage as he was quick to point out from time to time.

   The best and last time we ran the cart was after a heavy snowfall. The sidewalks had been shoveled but ice covered everything. The pushing was a challenge but the driving was a blast. The car spun and slid on the ice until it struck a large tree at a relatively fast speed. The front end broke and Gary was lucky not to lose a kidney to our rope seat belt system.

   A few years Gary and I would be driving real cars. Fortunately we never slammed into a tree but there was one day when the engine with on his Triumph Spitfire stalled. Just like the old days, I found myself pushing Gary and his car down the street. You know I think the Spitfire was actually lighter than that go cart.