It Looked Like a Classic To Me

It was a weak moment. I had been driving by it for several weeks on my way to Elkhart (Indiana) and barely slowed down. Then one day I stopped.
Assuming the price was out of my range, I walked up to the trailer and knocked on the flimsy door.
“How much for the old Buick?” I asked.

“I’m asking $400 and it’s in running condition,” he said. “You won’t find another one like it. Not much else I can tell you about it.”

His hard sell tactic worked and I bought myself a faded green 1953 Buick Special.

Let me insert a little background information here. I had owned a 1957 Chevy through college in the late 1970’s and wanted to relive that fun ten years later with this old Buick. It was one of several miscalculations I made in purchasing the roadside dream.

A 1953 Buick 4-door sedan weighs 4,315 pounds and is a 17.5’ long. Once it rumbled up to 55 mph the only thing that could stop it would be a 53 Cadillac or a train.

If the car seemed a little rough during the test drive, I failed to notice. After all it was a classic, a collectable. I might even drive it in the Mishawaka Fourth of July Parade someday.

I stopped for gas along the way home and was disappointed when the car wouldn’t restart. I called the previous owner who offered little sympathy and muttered something about flooding the engine.
I opened the hood and stared blankly at the engine. It was an inline or straight 8 engine that was massive by today’s standards. I pulled off the peculiar air filter and promptly spilled motor oil on the engine. It was my first experience with an oil bath air filter.

The car eventually started and I drove the behemoth home to show my wife. She was more bewildered than angry and I later agreed that calling her before buying the car may have been a good idea.

Over the next two weeks I came to realize that owning a 1953 Buick Special was not a good idea either. It smelled badly of motor oil that had been spilled on the old carpet. The exhaust system was exhausted and the brakes were shot. The car had great curb appeal – it just drove like a tank.
I swallowed my pride and parked the car out front on our country road. A few days later a gentleman and his son rolled away with a $300 bargain.

The lesson in all of this is that one man’s dream car may be another man’s nightmare. Leave the classic car restoration to the experts or at least to the guys with lots of tools in their garage.
Speaking of classic cars, the Foundation for Allen Schools hosts Allen’s fourth annual Customs and Classic Car Show this Saturday at the Village of Allen Shopping Center outside Dick’s Sporting Goods store.

The show, which is free to the public, is a drive-in event for custom and classic car owners who compete in numerous categories including a People’s Choice Award. Bring the family and cruise the car show on May 21 from 10 am – 2 pm (weather permitting).

The ABC's of 45's

Buried deep in my old stereo cabinet is a tattered red portfolio full of 45 rpm records. Each page is a sleeve that holds one record with a 3” hole to reveal a colorful label.

Thumbing through the book I can name almost every record without reading the labels because those labels are so familiar. The odds are good that orange and yellow swirls on a Capitol Record label means Beatles or Beach Boys. The solid red Columbia label belongs to my oldest record: The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton. The record is completely unplayable but I can’t let it go.

The light blue pattern signaled the Rolling Stones on London records and the solid blue label with the white whale was undeniably Happy Together by the Turtles.

Something I never realized about record labels was how often they changed in the early days of rock and roll. The most striking example was Elvis Presley who began his career on the colorful Sun label but hit his stride with the black label of RCA Victor Records. RCA was one of the five major labels in the 50’s along Decca, Columbia, Capitol and Mercury Records.

Beyond the big ones were hundreds of small labels owned by companies that came and went and merged throughout the early 1960’s. Anyone who owned a stack of 45’s will remember some of the more familiar ones like Bell (Box Tops, Delfonics), Roulette (Tommy James), Dot (Pat Boone), and Scepter (BJ Thomas).

Teenage record buyers weren’t all that concerned about who owned what but many new labels in the 1960’s were derived from bigger companies. Columbia Records owned Colpix (later Colgems) the familiar label for The Monkees. Atlantic or Atco owned Stax Records and Kama Sutra Records (Lovin Spoonful) merged with Buddah (Melanie).

The 1960’s ended with many of the same big companies dominating record sales although Motown, MCA and the Beatles’ Apple Records gave them all a run for the money.

I didn’t start this column intending to lecture on record label history. I wanted to say that thumbing through the 45’s was like visiting with some old friends. These guys were played over and over and over again on a cheap phonograph that quickly gave them a scratchy background noise.
I asked for the record “album” one Christmas so that I could haul my collection of singles around to friend’s houses. We would sit and play take turns playing the new ones or if mom allowed, we would stack them on the grownup’s phonograph.

While the 45’s were gradually phased out by lps in the 1970’s we continued to have listening sessions in basements and attics and later dorm rooms. I can tell you where I was when I first heard many of the classic rock albums that now fill my IPOD.

Simply listening to a new recording is something that has been lost with the advent of digital music and headphones. Listening to a new song is more of a personal experience in earphones or the car although accessibility to music has never been greater.

My meager 45 rpm collection included 24 records. Today my IPOD has over 10,000 songs inside of it, including files for every 45 in that old collection. I’d love it if I could have some friends over and we could play them all. They just don’t seem to have the time. I understand though. According to I-Tunes, my collection is 23.1 days long.

Prom Drama Spells Proma

The tuxes have been ordered and the dresses fitted. Limo companies and florists are working overtime and openings at the hairdresser are hard to come by. It must mean that the Allen High School prom is approaching.

The anticipation and prom drama (let’s call it proma) reaches a fevered pitch in the days leading up to the prom each year. Face it, there is a lot of potential for disaster on a day that has such high expectations.

When you think about it, the prom is a great learning opportunity although kids certainly wouldn’t see it that way. It is a dry run for future class reunions and weddings and there are some good lessons to learn that mom and dad or schools can’t teach.

I learned a few lessons myself after attending two junior proms and two senior proms in my high school years. I share them now in the hopes that our prom-goers can learn from them.

Ask lots of questions before accepting a blind date for the prom. I attended a high school junior prom with a friend of a friend from another school. It was an awkward evening made even stranger by the large Polish family that greeted me at her home.

Seriously think twice about buying fashionable shoes. If you must wear platform shoes, borrow them since it is unlikely you will ever wear them again. I certainly didn’t.

The greater the number of couples in your group – the greater chance there will be proma. Two couples was the largest group I ever traveled with but Allen HS groups can exceed 20 people. That’s a lot of proma.

Don’t trust the guy at the tuxedo shop to tell you that you look great. That’s his job so get a second opinion. I chose yellow with a brown crushed velvet collar and wished I’d gone with the baby blue all evening.

If you borrow your dad’s car, stick to the planned driving route and clean out the car before returning it. We added an extra 60 miles on my father’s speedometer and never would have guessed he’d write down the mileage.

Getting pulled over for speeding isn’t cool – even if you’re wearing a tuxedo. Cruising 42 in a 35 mph zone with a carload of teenagers isn’t exactly risky behavior but it’s sure to attract the attention of police in the small town of Glen Ridge (NJ). Fortunately a written warning and well wishes for a great prom were all we received.

Buy a couple’s portrait and group picture at the prom. Thirty-seven years later I have two photos from prom nights – our portrait and group photo. If you plan to take your own photos, bring extra flash cubes and film cartridges.

Budget accordingly. It’s not your typical Saturday night date so bring an extra $3 for gas and $10 for dinner. Also keep a dime in your pocket for a phone call in case the car breaks down.
I hope this hard earned advice is helpful to prom goers this weekend and more importantly I hope everyone has a great proma-free prom.

Visiting Table Top Hockey Heaven

Halfway through the second period of last week’s Allen Americans game, a bunch of players got tangled up in the offensive corner. As I watched them push and kick and whack at the puck (and each other), a smile came to my face.

I was imagining a long metal rod protruding from behind the goal and a 12 year-old boy working that pole to free the puck from the corner. Another 12 year-old is pushing a metal rod at the other end of the ice trying to steal it back. Meanwhile, the players are just spinning in circles.

Despite the exciting game on the ice, my mind had wandered back to the days of playing Bobby Hull Hockey in my friend’s Gary’s basement. Bobby Hull Hockey was a table top hockey game that used rods to control players along a track in the “ice.” The playing surface was about 2’ x 3’ and included 5 players per team plus a goalie and a rolling puck.

I remember Gary calling me on his birthday to come over and play the shiny new game. A few kids had old hockey games with missing players and bent rods but a brand new game…well that could create a buzz in the whole neighborhood. The game lasted for years and filled many idle hours for us in high school.

Gary’s game came from the third generation of mechanical hockey games. The earliest model was built by Donald Munro in Toronto around 1933. The game was made of wood and was given as a Christmas present for his children at the time. Munro later built a small number of these wooden games for the Eaton's department store in Toronto. They were an instant success and stayed in production until 1955.

A plastic version was introduced in the early 1950’s and then the first “modern” version of the game was released by the Eagle Toy Company of Montreal, according to the fan website Table Hockey Heaven (www.tablehockeyheaven.com). Eagle Toys sold the metal games through the early 1960’s until the company was bought out by Coleco Toys in 1966. A big push for toy safety in 1971 spelled the end of the familiar tin men in favor of a mostly plastic game.

Like its cousin electric football, table hockey has never completely died out. The Table Hockey Heaven (THH) site lists over 60 tournaments in the U.S. and Canada for 2011 with the Stiga American Championships scheduled in late December. Stiga, a Swedish game manufacturer, is the official game of the NHL and only game to be used in most competitions although some U.S. tournaments allow classic games as well.

Serious fans of the sport on THH (and there appear to be many) have forums and online chats to discuss strategy and swap parts from old games. There are even music videos that feature close-up action and highlights.

No discussion of table hockey would be complete without mentioning bubble hockey games. These games were larger versions of the home games made for arcades. They were encased with a large plastic bubble or dome to keep the puck from getting lost or stolen. The most popular version made by Chexx in the 1980s recreated the Miracle on Ice between the U.S. and Russia.
With the realism of video games such as NHL 2011, Bobby Hull hockey is a dinosaur. Still, if I had that game today I am confident that it would only take a few phone calls to create a buzz in our neighborhood – at least among the fifty-somethings.

As for the Allen Americans, they won that game and the series and I look forward to seeing them again this weekend. How does Yellow Horn Table Top Hockey sound?

For Whom The Church Bell Tolls

I watched as several boys of about 9 years-old recently walked by the front of my house. One of them stopped, pulled out a phone and announced that his mother texted him that he has to go home. It didn’t surprise me that he had a cell phone since more and more youngsters carry phones. No, I was just surprised how convenient it was for mom to text message her kids.

My neighborhood in the 1960’s operated on two precise units of time measurement – the sun and the bells of St. Thomas The Apostle Church.

How much time kids got to play on school days was based on how fast they could get home, get changed out of the school uniform and meet back at the park which was adjacent to the school and church. The day’s activity would be based on the current sports season – football in the fall, basketball in the winter and so on. The pick-up games included all those kids who could get back to the playground before sides were picked. Late comers may or may not get into the game depending on their popularity and skills.

One big variable in the after school race to play was mom. Working mothers were still a novelty in our neighborhood so they were home each day and kids who hadn’t raked leaves or cleaned their room would be snared by moms. Even a 20 minute chore was enough to blow the whole afternoon. Games ended when the church bells rang at 5 or 6 o’clock. Picking a football squad required extra strategy when half the team might go home for an early dinner. The 6 o’clock dinner kids, including me, squeezed an extra hour of play but the rosters were limited.

The church bells rang every hour and could be heard for blocks away. When the bells chimed, I had 5 minutes to be home for dinner. It was that simple and I tested the system many times.

Sunset was the other limiting factor of course. Touch football games in the late fall would be played until the ball was almost invisible. Clever quarterbacks would toss the ball above the streetlights and it would reappear somewhere down the street. The local park called Vasser Field only had tennis court lights and their glow was just enough to dimly light a basketball court in the winter. There were only a few rules for after school play around the neighborhood. Listen for the bells, watch the sunset, stay clear of high schoolers who smoked cigarettes and hide if any nuns come by. Nuns were usually looking for a few strong men as they would say to carry groceries or move plants around the convent. Once asked by a nun there was no way a Catholic School boy could say no. An easier strategy was to hide in the wooden fort.

Unlike today’s hovering parents, mothers rarely came to Vasser Field. In fact, when one showed up we knew a kid was in trouble for something like missing a piano lesson or stealing fifty cents from his brother. Kids would walk right off second base and head towards the gate when their moms showed up – arguing was pointless.

One afternoon though, I got hurt playing football and there was my mother. Someone had texted her (just kidding) run home and told her I was hurt. I should have been embarrassed but instead I was grateful. Sometimes you just need mom.

The Price of Journalistic Freedom

The first Flipside Column appeared in this newspaper on March 30, 2007. My journalistic aspirations go back much further though. 

The first column I ever wrote appeared in the January 1970 issue of the Troop 22 Tooter. The Tooter was a publication that I wrote and published for Boy Scout Troop 22 in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Once a month I would pound the typewriter keys into the wax stencil and print the latest troop news. 

Each issue featured breaking news, merit badge tips, a scoutmaster’s corner and an editorial. Flipside readers are probably not surprised that I have a stack of Troop 22 Tooters stashed away in my filing cabinet next to The Camp Crier and Cold Turkey but I am getting ahead of myself. Alongside the Klondike Derby results and merit badge tips (“Home Repairs has only one requirement: need I say more.”) was my first column called Get It Together Guys. In the column I implored my fellow scouts to be prepared. “If a patrol leader fails to plan correctly for the canoe trip, the whole patrol goes hungry.” Frankly, I am surprised they didn’t publish that nugget of wisdom in the next edition of the Boy Scout Handbook. During the summer of 1972 I served as publisher and editor of The Camp Crier, the voice of Camp Christ The King in Blairstown, NJ. The mimeographed staff newsletter featured the lyrics of camp favorites like On Top of Spaghetti and jokes like this winner: “What did the hippie paper say to the pen? Write-on!” Captivated readers also learned that Cabin 8 was first in line for breakfast for the first time this summer and Sister Christine took two campers and a counselor to the Newton Hospital this week. My column in the one surviving issue of The Camp Crier offers tips for fighting off mosquitos which was a relevant topic in the Jersey woods. The third newspaper I was responsible for never bore my name. It was an underground newspaper called Cold Turkey that was distributed in 1974 among the young men of Essex Catholic High School in Newark, NJ. Cold Turkey was more of a silly satire piece than a newspaper. Instead of preaching anarchy or revolution, it offered record reviews, fake letters to the editor and weird school news. Freshmen were bribed with a free lunch to pass each issue out in the halls. “Dear Cold Turkey,” says one letter. “I am offended by your suggestion that Led Zeppelin IV is the best album ever. What about the new Osmond’s single or the greatest rocker ever, David Cassidy? – Signed Brother Dagwood, Principal.” My column in the spring of 1974 focused on the closing of our senior smoking section. It seems unbelievable by today’s standards but Essex seniors could smoke cigarettes in one section of the school cafeteria. The administration finally saw the error in that policy and moved the senior smoking section to the student parking lot. Journalists around the globe have been jailed for reporting the truth. My friend Jim and I received a few days of detention for reporting absolutely nothing important – a small price to pay for journalistic freedom. Thirty-seven years and hundreds of columns later, I am not sure if the quality of my columns has improved much but at least I can sign them with my real name.

My Old Kentucky Road Trip

I had a lot of time to think about cold weather last week. Locked up for most of four days by a crippling ice storm and thundersnow, I kept saying "it's not that bad."

Actually it was pretty bad and many Texans were unjustly mocked by out of towners from Pittsburgh and Green Bay for their reaction to the storm.
I ventured out each day and managed to get home without a dent but the odds were against me. It wasn't the first time I challenged those odds.

On a Sunday afternoon in January of 1978 I set out from Bloomfield, New Jersey for the 21-hour trek back to Murray, KY - my old Kentucky (college) home.

First let me explain a few things about my car. It was a faded green 1957 Chevy that came pre-dented and pre-rusted when I bought it two years earlier. The engine was smooth but the big car bounced along on worn shocks and ball joints that made it drift across the lanes. This forced the driver to constantly adjust the steering wheel to keep it aimed straight down the highway.

The flurries started about 20 miles into the trip but returning home would have been a defeat for this college senior. I was soon climbing hills in eastern Pennsylvania as the flurries turned to snow. I swung up north to the gritty town of Scranton to pick up a passenger and before we hit the next town south, the blizzard hit.

About the car again... the windshield wiper operated off of a vacuum pump that would lose pressure when the engine was stressed. In other words, accelerating up a hill would cause the wipers to stop until I released the gas pedal.

Facing near white out conditions, my passenger was leaning outside the window wiping the windshield with a snow brush while I slammed on the gas and let go intermittently. There was only 16 hours to go.

At the bottom of a long mountain hill outside of Wilkes Barre on Interstate 81, I did a 360 and fortunately struck nothing but snow. We shook it off and then caled it a day at the next exit. We stayed at a nearby relative's house and started out after sunrise for the other 917 miles.
The sun was shining but the temperature hovered near zero and the highway was covered with deep snow. We followed in the tracks of tractor trailers although we saw more than a few rolled on their side in the medians. Thirteen hours later we had travelled about 450 miles on snow covered roads. We called it a night in Columbus, Ohio.

One final word about the car - the floorboards in front had rusted out and only the original thin floor mats protected our feet from the cold air and moisture. The breezes were enough to numb the toes down there.

Tuesday morning we found the roads similar to our Texas roads last week - covered with ice. We rarely found dry pavement and crept 330 miles across the Western Kentucky Parkway in 10 hours - that's an average of 33 mph.

The 19-hour drive had taken 27 hours and still ranks as the toughest road trip I've ever endured.
As a footnote - we arrived in Murray, Kentucky just in time to enjoy several weeks of ice covered roads and cancelled classes. The winter of 1978 had just begun.