Monday, February 18, 2013

What's A "Maaco"?

The Old Man is going to have a sort of a "make over" in a few weeks.  A fellow who's been a little further in school than I have is going to perform some cutting, splicing, and welding on my lower back.  I think the official word for it is "fusion" which, while it sounds like a fruit drink, probably feels more like a freight train hitting a stalled bulldozer.  At any rate, I'm optimistic that the back problems that have plagued me for nearly 3 years will become a memory, and I'll emerge from the "body shop" new and improved.

Over the years, I've had a degree of experience with auto body stuff.  I've done a little work with Bondo, and even painted a couple of cars along the way.  My efforts have met with mixed results but never measured up to the professionals.

Miss Alma was a different matter.

Mom was an adventure looking for a location.  She was never reluctant to tackle a project, heedless of its complexity, and she always gave it her absolute best efforts.  One of the things that Mom loved to do was paint.   She would paint inside, outside, or in the yard.    She painted furniture, appliances, walls, porch railings, you name it.  Had I stood still, its quite possible she might have painted me.  She even painted an old buggy that we had in our side yard for a few years.  A brilliant white and red, it caused traffic to slow when each year Dad would fill it with pots of flowers.
One summer morning when I woke up, I asked, "What are we going to do today, momma".  She answered in her matter-of-fact way,  "I figured we'd paint the car".

It was shortly after WW II.   So many things had been rationed or even unavailable during the war, so this was a period of awakened consumption.  We had an old Dodge coupe that we'd had for a while, but had been very limited in the time it could be driven.  All around Bedford, folks were emerging from the wartime mists and beginning to refresh, renew, and starting to move ahead.  I guess Mom was caught up in the movement.

I was just a little kid and didn't know anything about painting a car, but I was a willing accomplice.  So I obediently "heeled" and we headed out into the back yard.  Mom had laid in her materials and supplies.  She had a gallon of enamel, some of Dad's old undershirts for rags, a can of turpentine and two brand new brushes; no masking tape, no drop cloths, and what's a spray gun?

Between the two of us, we painted that old Dodge.  Mom figured how to thin the paint so that it leveled out pretty well, and she was smart enough to limit my painting to a few inconspicuous areas.  Dad was still walking to work then, so when he came home, Mom beamed with pride at her work.  He just grinned at her and pulled it into the ramshackle garage to keep bugs and leaves from settling into the wet surface.  Mom was not a complicated person.....simple problem, simple solution.

We kept that Dodge for several more years, and the paint job was just as sound when Dad traded it in as when it was new.  Fishing trips, daily use, visits to family, and church were all conducted in what became known as "Babe's chariot".

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

"And They Come Roaring Out"

The Old Man caught one of those 1950's hot rod movies on TV the other night.  It sent the memory wheels spinning and I dredged up thoughts of The Roadmasters.  During the '50s, the Hollywood flick de jour was heavily weighted toward low-budget productions that pandered to teen interests;  girls, hot cars, girls in hot cars, hot girls in cars, monsters being fought by boys while protecting girls in hot cars, and girls in poodle skirts dancing with boys in leather jackets and ducktail haircuts while their hot cars lined up around the drive-in restaurant.  Bedford was about as far removed from that Hollywood characterization as Idi Amin is from Mother Teresa.  None of my friends had what could be termed a true "Hot Rod".  Most of us drove the family car and spent more time in denial than someone with a Donald Trump comb-over.

Kenny and I were a couple of good examples.  I drove the really 'screaming' 53 Dodge that served as our family car.  This monster would only "get a wheel"  before the chains were put on in a snow storm.  The "super powerful" 6-cylinder engine was coupled to some monstrosity of a transmission called "Fluid Drive".  To get it to change gears, you had to take your foot off the gas and allow a momentary hesitation during which you would hear a "clunk" indicating the gear had changed. Speed-shifting in it meant you could get from the front seat to the back seat quickly. I'd usually get customarily quiet when the guys would talk about going out to The Lake stretch for a 'run'.  That Dodge would have fared poorly on the stretch against even a 3-legged mule.

Kenny occasionally had access to a sweet little old lady's Pontiac.  Still following some inner urge to hear tires screech, he developed a technique that amazes me to this day.  Kenny would put the car in reverse, back it up, and then quickly jerk it into Drive.  As we were scraping ourselves off the ceiling of the car, we could count on the rear tires spinning a bit with that satisfying squeal.  His technique failed us only once that I can recall.  While making one overly ambitious move, the rear end sounded as if it were disassembling itself, and Kenny drove the car home accompanied by whangs and bangs mixed with clicks and clucks.

Tucker and a couple of other guys came up with the idea of forming a car club.  They called it The Roadmasters and we met in a room over Tucker's family's garage.  It was a worthy club.  We even had jackets.....white jackets with "The Roadmasters, Bedford, Va" printed on the back in bright red. We looked at ways to do community service; parked cars at events, that sort of thing.  At our meetings, we discussed cars, projects, automotive dreams, girls in hot cars, and who'd been out to The Lake stretch lately.

Kenny and I usually rode together to the meetings.  We'd be in either the green bomb (Dodge) or that wild-ass Pontiac.  Every time we'd leave, Kenny would pick up a line from the hot rod movie trailers and say, "And they come roaring out".  It just seemed to cap off the evening.

I don't know how many of The Roadmasters are still around these days.  Kenny is gone, and with him, a boatload of talking about good times.  Tucker is gone, his existence stolen in a Southeast Asian cess pool.  Others I just don't know about.  But whenever I run across one of those movies on late-night TV, I usually manage to raise a glass to the "back then" in all of us.