(first posted 1/25/2018) I did not have a perfect childhood. Does anyone? But a few months ago I stumbled across this pretty yellow GTO and memories of my childhood came flooding back. It may not have been perfect, but in retrospect and from the vantage point of a car-crazy kid, I guess it wasn’t so bad.
The sporty coupe may have been the Crossover of the mid 1960’s. By that, I mean that it was what stylish and fashionable housewives were driving then, at least those who were able to avoid the dreaded station wagon.
I grew up in an upper middle class suburb in the northern Indiana city of Fort Wayne. There were quite a few kids my age and most of our fathers had white collar jobs and could afford fairly frequent new cars. By 1965 or so the concept of a “good car” for Dad and a “second car” for Mom had gone pretty much out the window in my neighborhood. I am not saying that we were the first on the street to break the pattern, but maybe that is what happened when, in the summer of 1964 our family traded Mom’s daily-driver ’61 Olds F-85 station wagon for a new Oldsmobile Cutlass.
The author between his mother and sister at a Wisconsin motel. Summer of 1965 on a trip to California by way of Minnesota. The Cutlass was an extremely dark green which Oldsmobile called Jade Mist. An uncommon 1964-only paint color apparently offered only on Chevrolets (as Bahama Green) and Oldsmobiles.
In 1964 most A body Oldsmobiles were still called F-85s. The Cutlass was restricted to the top line hardtop and convertible. Ours included bucket seats, a console which contained a tach and a shifter for the automatic, and the 4 bbl/premium gas version of the Oldsmobile Rocket 330 V8. I did not understand at the tender age of 5 that Oldsmobile claimed 290 horsepower for our Mom-mobile. I just knew that she raved about the “pick-up” that it had. That car’s acceleration probably had something to do with the “Super Shell” that she asked for at the gas station. To me, it was just another dull, boring Oldsmoble (albeit a shiny, new one).
On one side of us lived Mr. Johnston. I think he owned a paint store and was a diehard Mopar Man. For those familiar with the old Dennis The Menace comic strip, Mr. Johnston was my real-life version of “Mr. Wilson”. Fortunately, he was not as cranky and always seemed able to find some candy in the house when I would come ambling over. Which was often. The Johnstons had an only child and, as successful parents of only children sometimes do, they bought him a car. I think this happened after he dragged a derelict ’55 Chevy home to “fix it up.” I was fascinated by the old Chevrolet, but his parents were definitely not. A new navy blue ’65 GTO was evidently the price to be paid for getting the embarrassing antique Chevy out of the driveway.
The author (in the football helmet) along with his little sister and neighbor Jon Crist. Wasn’t Kodachrome amazing?
This is the photo that made me decide to reconsider whether my childhood had achieved perfection after all. Jon Crist lived across the street and came over to play this particular evening. I think my father may have taken this picture because he was so excited to see a football helmet on my head, something that may not have ever happened again. My head was into cars, not football, and this picture shows the nearly new Next-Door-Goat in all of its glory, right down to the redline tires. I am not sure how we let my little sister talk us into letting her play.
Photo source: newoldcar.com
I knew that it was similar to our Cutlass but also knew that it had a stick shift and black seats with diagonal pleats, which were way cooler than our own dark green seats with straight pleats. I experienced those when another kid and I somehow talked him into driving us to school one morning. His next car would be no less cool: a ’68 Plymouth Satellite GTX. But I never got a ride in that one.
Kevin Bordner was my next door neighbor on the other side. Kevin’s father was an attorney who had gone to law school a little later in life. Kevin had two brothers who were in college by the time we were in grade school, so he was pretty much an only child. Was it a coincidence that the hot hardtops down the street led directly to Mrs. Bordner’s blue VW Beetle being replaced with a 66 GTO? This may not have been about keeping up with the Cavanaughs, but when the Johnstons’ teenage kid was driving a nicer car than you have, well, things must be done I suppose. I will add that my father had not upped the bar one bit by getting a 289-powered ’66 Country Squire the previous December. No Mom trying to hang onto her youth would feel the need to go that direction.
I had a fair amount of seat time in that ’66 GTO. I remember being wowed by two things. Woodgrain and FM. The woodgrain on the dash was something completely lacking in our ordinary old Cutlass. And the woodgrain steering wheel was da bomb. An expression I would not hear for another few decades, but it fits.
Photo source: Hemmings Motor News.
I had only seen that combination in my other friend Tim’s father’s ’64 Avanti. I knew that the Avanti was a rare exotic, so if a car had a woodgrain steering wheel, it was really something to fuss over.
The GTO also had an FM radio. Normal people and normal cars all had AM radios. Because everyone listened to WOWO, “the big 50,000 watt voice of farming in the midwest!” FM wasn’t something for kids, of course, because the only FM stations in town played music with strings and bongos and exotic bird sounds. Look up Martin Denny’s Quiet Village if you don’t understand what I mean. Which didn’t seem to go with that GTO. But then neither did Mrs. Bordner. The beige GTO also had a black vinyl top. Only the coolest people had black vinyl tops. Well, only the coolest Moms. They would never get convertibles because it would have tripled each family’s expenditure on aerosol Aqua Net.
I didn’t know that the GTO packed nearly sixty more cubes into its V8 engine than Oldsmobile could get into our Cutlass. I just knew that the GTO had to be faster because it had wheels with exposed lugs and those redline tires again. Also, Mrs. Bordner was workin’ a 4 speed where my own mother was evidently incapable of such things. The automatic shifter on the console suddenly seemed so . . . matronly, in comparison.
One time I got a little too up-close and personal with Mrs. Bordner’s GTO. Do you know what happened when a guy rubbed the black handgrip from a Schwinn Sting Ray along the side of Pontiac’s shiny non-metallic Mission Beige lacquer paint? A big long ugly black streak along the car’s flank, that’s what. Kind of like the way our dress shoes used to leave black heel marks on linoleum floors. Mrs. B was none too happy with me and spoke to me in the same tone of voice that mothers everywhere have mastered when it comes to realizing that they just can’t have nice things. It did, however, buff out. So I was eventually allowed back. And about that color, I don’t think anyone has chosen to paint a GTO in that nondescript beige ever since.
Really, were there better surroundings for a kid who was nuts about cars than what I had? A premium gas Cutlass, a pair of GTOs and a freaking Avanti (supercharged and three pedals, no less). But I was somehow nearly immune. Sure, it was interesting to discuss the cars’ top speeds. We knew that Tim’s father’s Avanti was faster than Kevin’s Mom’s GTO because the speedometer in the red Stude went to 160. The GTO was probably really no faster than our Cutlass because both speedos topped out at 120. Although the Pontiac’s round one was probably good for maybe 5 mph over the strip readout in our Olds. Tim’s father tried to tell us that the GTO was faster, but we thought he was just being polite.
Photo source: Wikimedia Commons.
My real love was the unusual stuff. Like the pink and white ’55 DeSoto that my Grandma would drive when she visited. I wish I had known then that that thing had a Hemi, it might have given me another contestant in the neighborhood theoretical speed wars. Or not. Because a fat old DeSoto was the opposite of cool in 1966. Especially a faded pink one.
In my mind the cars of the mid 1960’s represent an apex of style and performance that has been tough to beat. Many of my own favorite cars have been from that period of time. But as much as I found a home in the products of Ford and Chrysler, I have been coming more and more to appreciate the stuff coming out of the General’s five car Divisions in the years of my childhood. It is easy to see why Pontiac owned the 1960’s, if not in sales, at least in influence. If this is not the most perfect iteration of that mid-’60s GM A body, I don’t know what would be.
I shot pictures of and wrote up another ’66 GTO a few years ago. But for some reason, that one did not remind me as strongly of my childhood. Perhaps the color combo of this pale yellow one that was so close to the beige one that lived next door in 1966? Or perhaps it was this car’s console, 4 speed and proper wheels that strapped me into the Wayback Machine, features missing on that turquoise car.
The author at the rear (with his hand in the marshmallow bag), doing his very best impression of a seven year old Thurston Howell, III.
My parents would separate in late 1966 and Mrs. Bordner would get two more GTOs (a ’68 4-speed and a ’71 automatic) before my mother would replace our Cutlass with a new one in 1972. Life would get more complicated and the cars would seem somehow less appealing, like the series of Grand Prix’ that Mrs. Bordner would drive through the ’70s. Maybe this is because I was getting older and was looking at things differently, starting to understand the things that the older kids had been understanding for a while. In 1966, however, I was still seven and still able to look at that beige GTO as somehow being both normal and a little magical at the same time. And looking at these pictures of this yellow Goat I still feel the same way. If not a perfect childhood, it was a pretty good one in that long ago summer of 1966.
Further reading:
1965 Pontiac LeMans – Paul Niedermeyer
1966 Pontiac GTO – J P Cavanaugh
1967 Pontiac Tempest Custom – Paul Niedermeyer
1967 Pontiac LeMans 389 (Capsule) – Paul Niedermeyer
Sorry off topic but the first thing I thought of was that the rear end of that Caddy sticking out of the car port in pic 3 makes me think of a MAD Magazine satire on low budget status products.
The product was the rear portion with the fins thar you could place just inside your garage door, making people think you owned one.
Ha! First thing that caught my eye too. 63?
I remember that–Plasti-Sham Tail Fins! IIRC they were the over-the-top 1959 fins. “Gee, Joe, you have that Caddy and you never seem to take it out for a drive!”
Some years ago Congress passed the Stolen Valor Act, later ruled unconstitutional, that criminalized claiming military honors one hadn’t actually received. If there were a Stolen Status Act, a lot of people would be in trouble.
Yep Kodachrome is amazing. Those childhood pics of yours just glow full of life JP.
What a beautiful car
Man, I shoulda had neighbors like yours.
Mrs. Morse drove a ’76 Cutlass Supreme; her husband the ’72 Cutlass she had previously driven.
Mrs. Vigenault drove a Jeep Cherokee, something like a ’79. Until he died, Mr. Vigenault drove a ’69 Ford wagon. Their one adult son who lived with them drove a Gremlin.
Mrs. Long had a ’69 Valiant two-door. She drove it until she died, sometime around 1990 if memory serves. Mom said it went to some kid at the estate auction for $500.
These were the cars typical of my neighbors.
My neighbours on each side had what I considered to be bad cars. On one side, there was a 1962 Mercury Monterey that looked like it had patina all over it from the day he brought it home. He never locked it, nor did it ever receive a wash beyond a rain event.
The other neighbour had an annoying green stripper 1971 Ford Maverick. John would get all juiced up on vodka, and then attempt to clumsily wash it. It had three on the tree, possibly the only car on the street, if not in the city with that non option.
For good measure, the next neighbour had a Mercury Cyclone that he would start up in the morning and let idle for a good 30 minutes. It must have had a big engine it in, you couldn’t hear the radio playing inside your own house over the din. I think the Cyclone was painted with rattle can Tremclad matte black.
Great story. When young, life comes at us so quickly, and ingrains itself so firmly in our memories, that those moments stay Kodachrome clear forever.
The box of 36-exposure Kodachrome 64 of course not available until at least a decade after that song was a hit. Concurrently it would have been Kodachrome-X with a maximum of 20 shots per roll. I know, I shot dozens of rolls of it, slides and movies.
Great write-up JP, especially the mention of Martin Denny’s “Quiet Village”. I have that 45 on Liberty records. Do you remember “Llama Serenade”? How about another Liberty records artist, Ross Bagdasarian, aka David Seville? The Chipmunks, “Flip Side” and “Mediocre”.
Thanks, Glenn. Haha, yes I was a big fan of The Chipmunks. Somewhere down in my basement I think I still have the LP I bought about that time – The Chipmunks Sing The Beatles’ Hits. I am not kidding. Early Beatles music has been a challenge to listen to ever since as I have Alvin and the Chipmunks competing with the Fab Four whenever I hear one of those songs. 🙂
True confessions: I sometimes bust out “Quiet Village” to evoke memories of 1958. I remember the neighbor girl was frightened by that tune.
Anyone else old enough to remember “Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley?
Oh, I remember “Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley quite well from 1958 even though it really dates me. And “Quiet Village” by Les Baxter. The local KPR station in Lawrence Kansas plays a program called “The Retro Cocktail Hour” every Saturday and Sunday featuring exotica music. I never miss it.
Retro Cocktail Hour from U of Kansas plays on NPR stations all over the US of A, our local station here in NY has it on 7 to 9 PM every Fridays. Darrell Brogden the DJ knows his Martin Denny, Robert Drozin, and Arthur Lyman… the Tiki music that for me recalls my parent’s cocktail and bridge parties: hello 1958!
Great story. Of my Dad’s many slides only a few rolls were shot in Kodachrome but they just explode with color.
I don’t think I ever encountered a real GTO until the mid 80’s when I surreptitiously took auto shop class at a different school, so I guess my childhood wasn’t perfect either 🙂
Wonderful, somehow I got flashbacks of watching “The Wonder Years”… your neighborhood was actually the one that people nowadays think every one was, with all cars featuring lusty V8’s and performance packages! No six cylinder Impala to be seen…
Jon’s poor mother was the only holdout (or perhaps it was Jon’s dad?). She was stuck with a strippo three speed 63 Chevy II until it got traded on an air conditioned V8 Impala in 1969. They got a new car every 3 years for a fleet turnover every 6. The silver-blue 66 Bonneville 4 door hardtop that Jon’s dad drove to work every day was quite a contrast.
This is a real issue for the people who do car-casting for period movies and TV shows. It gets worse as later periods have a more fragmented car market. I think I’ve mentioned the lack of Chevettes and K-cars on Stranger Things before.
I can believe it but some shows seem to do a great job – The Americans is always chock full of 70’s and early 80’s iron with some 60’s stuff mixed in, and in different states of cleanliness etc as well. Mindhunter (set in the early 80’s as well I believe) is pretty good except that EVERY car is way too shiny and one of their supposed rental cars seemed to have aftermarket wheels on it. Seeing them pick up cars at a fake Hertz airport location was an excellent touch though.
Excellent story. I was only 4 years old back in 1966, but I have memories of that time that come flooding back every time I listen to “Summer In The City” by the Lovin’ Spoonful. The 1965-1966 GTOs are among the cars that I have always wanted since I was a kid. I’m surprised that JP didn’t mention the fact that the rear end of the 66 looked like the Batmobile. I also noticed that the front end of the subject car had some work done to it, judging from the hood scoop & the fact that the grilles do nor fit exactly right.
I’m a couple of years older than you and grew up in the Detroit suburbs in the 1960’s, which explains my life-long car obsession. Dad worked for Chrysler and everyone’s dad in the neighborhood worked for a car company or supplier. New cars every year were the norm. Our next door neighbor had a 1966 LeMans, which I though was a very good-looking car, although I certainly couldn’t tell that to my Dad. My parents tended towards Mopar B-bodies, with Dad getting a two-door and Mom a four-door sedan (she hated station wagons). In 1968, Dad got a red Plymouth Belvedere which looked like a Road Runner but had a 318 under the hood. Good memories.
Wonderful writeup. My next door neighbors bought their kid a ’68 GTO. Ah the memories. I got my license a few years later.
Friends father, a prosperous doctor, bought a new Plymouth convertible with the biggest engine offered every year. The cars were always white with a white top. In 1966 Plymouth was running a big promotion selling white convertibles with blue tops and refused to sell him one with a white top. (I have a hard time believing this but that is what he said.) Anyway, Dr Kilbury bought a GTO the way he wanted and never looked back. I think I remember him getting a new GTO convertible for several years after that.
I am not going to incriminate anyone by telling how fast his son drove the car with me as a passenger but good judgement was not included in that decision.
Jim, thank you for this delightful look into your childhood and those wonderful machines that played such an influential part of it. It’s not easy to recapture just what it was like being a child, and trying to make sense of the world and its cars, but you really took me back there. And it was a real treat.
Nobody has a perfect childhood, but mine came closer than most people I grew up with.
That 1966 GTO, however, is the perfect design. One of the most beautiful cars ever built.
This kind of post is what makes come back to CC every day. Cars are just interesting machines unless they are contextualized with real lives. As to several others, I was reminded of the cars in my apartment building when I was also 6, in 1971….a 55 Ford Customline, Overdrive, green with white top, a 65 Peugeot 404, white, a 58 223 cid Fordomatic 4 door Custom 300 (Dad’s), a brand new Argentinian Ford Falcon De Luxe, 188 cid, three speed manual, red with black vinyl top, a brand new Opel Commodore 4 door sedan, white with black vinyl top, 2500 cc 6, automatic, and a 1965 Hillman Minx, red and white. And that was an upper middle garage in Montevideo, Uruguay, at the time.
Around the “5 or 6 years old” period in my life, we lived in an apartment building, so cars came and went with the frequent turnover of neighbors. However, I do remember a few clearly. As a 1980 model myself, this would be the mid 80’s. Susan in one of the downstairs units had an X1/9 in my early memories, though I cannot recall whether it had Fiat or Bertone badging on the hood. That one got traded on a white Civic sedan in maybe 1986, a clear step down in cool factor (though probably a revelation in reliability!). My friends’ next door’s Mom, Sharon, drove an ’81 or ’82 Escort 3-door in silver with a red interior. A group of college guys who lived in the unit at the opposite end of the building had a Gran Torino sedan in a very 70’s metallic brown. Someone in the building, I no longer remember who, owned a maroon Chrysler LeBaron convertible with a white top, one of the sharp-edged ’81-’85 models. K-car based or not, that was probably the nicest car in our building’s lot.
A far cry from new GTOs and F-85’s, but at least there were a lot of cars to look at–the complex had around 30 buildings, each with between 8 and 12 units. A few interesting things lurked about, like a Peugeot 504 (I remember being fascinated by the Lion badge and the drooping tail), a Karmann-Ghia (owned by my Dad’s manager who happened to live at the other end of the complex), a black late-run Vega Kammback wagon owned by another friend’s Dad (rode to school in that one a few times) and a huge derelict ’67 Bonneville coupe in baby blue that usually sat under a car cover but could occasionally be found seeing the light of day. Probably if the cover blew off in a storm. There was also, for a little while, an early 60’s Chrysler product with an imposing trapezoidal grille, that I *think* was a ’62 Newport. The off-center grille badge triggers a childhood memory. Oddly enough the canted headlight pods don’t register, but that’s memories for you.
I love that cream color of the GTO. The car is pretty long but the proportions are good and it is so sleek looking. The tail lights are one of the details that set it apart from most other domestic cars. “66 was a great year for GM. The Riviera was great that year and I’ve been lucky to have a few of those.
It’s funny that back then especially as youngsters, a car like this was all we wanted to aspire to. We didn’t know how wide the world of cars was and the nuances of status that the “foreign car’ invasion would bring. Great story!
I grew up in a working class neighborhood around this same time and nearly all of the cars on our street were from the “low priced three” and generally well used by the time they arrived. The only new cars I can remember were the Chevies that Mr. Gish across the street purchased every three years or so. He was a painting contractor and I suppose the new wheels were his reward for painting barns 10-12 hours a day in the hot sun. For work he had an ancient Ford pickup that was seemingly held together by the dozens of coats of red barn paint it displayed.
Ah yes, WOWO from Fort Wayne; that was one of the distant AM stations we listened to after midnight when the one local rock and stomp outlet went off the air. Along with WLS in Chicago, WABC in New York and some others they helped get us through the night. Of course it was around this time that eight track tape players started to become popular and that was a major game-changer for those of us out in the boonies.
Well done, JPC! Pure CC gold! 🙂
1966 was the year my muse showed up. Here it is in 1968:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-kids-yes-officer-he-does-look-a-bit-young-for-his-age/
Any chance for me having a decent childhood went south before I was 9, so I cherish the few moments I remember before then. There was nothing spectacular car-wise; my immediate neighbors had a late-’60s silver Buick Electra 225 later replaced by the first Cordoba I ever saw, and a blue and white Chevrolet Beauville Sportvan. Across the street was a misnamed dark blue ’66 Ford Country Sedan, a red-with-black-stripe ’71 Vega GT that amazingly turned to rust by about ’76.
Further up or down the road was a 1st-gen Corvair coupe, an early ’60s Delmont 88, a first-gen Z/28, first-gen Firebird, and a dark blue ’65 Mustang. If I ventured to nearby blocks I’d find a huge ’67 Imperial, a ’69 or ’70 Ford Club Wagon Chateau, and a dark blue ’64 Studebaker Lark Cruiser that later seemed to often be waiting to make a left turn at a light when i was walking or biking to high school. My favorite early-kid car was my friend’s dad’s ’73 Olds 98 Regency with the red button-tufted seats which was obviously the awesomest car interior ever.
Virtually nothing survives from that era except a few memories.
Oops, forgot that the family on the nearest corner with the Mustang also had a circa ’63 Mercury Montclair or Park Lane with the reverse-canted roll-down rear window.
Nice work as always, Jim. I know that shade of beige – – we had a 1966 Ninety Eight hardtop in that color. I’m surprised to find it on a GTO, though.
What an excellent post! I love seeing your pictures and hearing about the cars of your childhood. Like you, I knew all the details on the cars in my neighborhood as well as what all my friends’ families had. And there were definitely “good, better and best” rides to be savored.
It’s interesting to track changing tastes over time. Mrs. Bordner was arguably staying very current by getting into a Grand Prix, since muscle cars were “out” as the Seventies progressed. The “cool moms” of my formative years had personal luxury cars, or a nice downsized GM B- or C-Body in the 1970s, which changed rather abruptly to the nicer imports (MB, BMW, Audi, Accord, Maxima, Cressida, Legend, etc.) in the 1980s. Fifteen years later “trendsetters” had swung to SUVs, and that is seemingly still the case today. We’ll see what’s next…
Also love the call letters WOWO–as you know, that was what we called my Pop’s mother.
This is a great story. There weren’t any GTOs in our neighborhood, but I still saw some around our town. The unique taillights of the 1966 and 1967 models caught my eye even then. I was fascinated by the taillights of these GTOs, along with the “hidden” taillights of the 1963 and 1964 Grand Prix.
(It helped that Matchbox produced a miniature version of the 1964 Grand Prix, in an eye-catching bright red. Matchbox helped to cement the idea that Pontiacs were something special.)
There were some sharp cars owned by the families of friends – a 1969 Mustang Grande, a 1968 Impala Super Sport fastback coupe (complete with a console-mounted four-speed transmission) and a 1968 Malibu Super Sport hardtop coupe.
By the mid-1970s, all of those cars had been replaced – by a 1972 Ford Pinto Runabout, a 1976 AMC Hornet Sportabout and a 1972 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Luxury Sedan, respectively.
Great story JP. Reminds me of my uncle’s GTO, a turquoise ‘66 with the 389 trio carb and 4 speed. He acquired it having traded a ‘65 Mustang sedan 6 cyl 3 speed for it. It was quite a step up in power, and apparently too big a step up. Sadly, I only got one thrilling ride in it before he blew the motor. It languished for a long time in an old garage near downtown Fort Wayne, as he lacked the funds to repair it. I don’t know what became of that machine, but I hope it is still on the road somewhere. Having grown up in a Ford household, his next stop was a Comet GT. He had that much tamer car for many years.
Love this story, JP! I’m a little older than you but was not yet of legal driving age in 1966. The mid 60s remain my favorite era of American car styling, and GM, especially Pontiac, were the design leaders. I still have an AMT 1/25 scale model of a 64 Olds Cutlass convertible with the bucket seats, console, and the same wheel covers shown in your photo. I recall that back in the day, those wheel covers were not commonly seen on most F-85 variants.
” I recall that back in the day, those wheel covers were not commonly seen on most F-85 variants”
Good eye, and very true. I believe these were the same ones standard on 98s and were optional on 88s and F-85/Cutlass. These were a huge upgrade for the looks of the car. The basic wheelcovers were very plain.
Really enjoyed the first hand snapshot of an automotive-ly interesting time. As mentioned above, Consumers and Context add another dimension to our understanding and appreciation of Classics. Thank you.
Jim,
Loved this story and the Kodachrome! In the 1960s it was one hit after another for GM. We sure were fortunate to be car-crazy kids in the “wonder years.” Thanks for sharing these memories of the Great American Driveway.
Would this be the same Tony Hossain who wrote for a magazine called Car Exchange in the early 80s?
Thanks for the compliment, Tony! I suppose every generation finds cars to get excited about, but those of us who were kids in the mid 60s really got to feast at a buffet of coolness. Not everyone had stuff like this in the driveway or down the street, but for those who cared they were all around us.
A nicely-told tale that really humanizes all the cars within! As I think about my Cleveland suburb (mid-60s) I’m a little surprised at all the neighbors’ cars that I **can’t** remember for some reason.
Adjacent houses stand out the most. The tool-and-die worker had a ’61 Galaxie and then moved up to that one-year-only ’65 Fairlane (below–not much loved here at CC, but right-sized to me). The attorney (later councilman) had a ’62 Olds with those sculpted sides with the stainless steel insert–clearly a notch above all the Ford/Chevy family sedans. Oh, and there was the older couple (no children, kinda “keep off my lawn” though solid citizens) with the ’64 or ’65 T-Bird that was very distinctive in our modest suburb. Even then, the late-50s cars seemed “pretty old.” All of that said, JPC, I’m still a diehard Ford guy, but happily concede that the mid-60s Pontiacs were very sharp—though not at all bloated—cars. The advertising art made them look ten feet wide, but they never disappointed in person!
Wow those family photos! I’m all heart eyes for that football helmet pic, with the GTO and Stingray (the bike, not the car), the juxtaposition of red helmet/red sneakers/red flowers/redline tires, the way your sister’s hands form a heart; the poses. The two pics above it are A+ as well.
WOWO? Wow!
In the small town Northern Wisconsin of my childhood, it was sometimes possible to pick up their signal on 1190 AM. Hearing a passing teen driver loudly rocking out to Fort Wayne through an open car windows was guaranteed to spark a kid travel discussion.
In our world, someone who had been to Milwaukee was a kid to be reckoned with. Chicago was the Deep South. We could pick up WLS or WCFL, but none of us actually knew another kid who had been there.
Fort Wayne might as well been on Mars. So distant. So mysterious. One kid who claimed to know the place insisted it was full of palm trees. He was a bigger kid who had moved from a neighboring town. Some among us were skeptical he knew as much as he claimed, but the general kid consensus is we’d keep an open mind about the palm trees. For a few years, Fort Wayne became more than a place to us. It was an idea. It symbolized our collective desire to escape our small rural town and hit the road like Buzz & Todd in Route 66.
Eventually, I did get to see more of the world. The Army moved me all over until I retired. My 2nd career as a traveling salesman takes me to a lot of different towns. Yet I’ve still never been to Fort Wayne.
I’ll probably go to my grave with the palm trees in Fort Wayne firmly rooted in my kid’s imagination of the place.
Bucket lists are OK, but some dreams should be left alone.
Rob, your comment made my day! For me and my friends, it was the wilds of northern Wisconsin that seemed like the edge of the world. Burly guys in red plaid coats and those hats with the fold-down ears, spending their days chopping trees and hunting for a moose to haul back to the cabin for the wife to butcher and cook in the fireplace.
Fort Wayne was White Bread City where nothing interesting ever happened. We heard about people from great distances away picking up WOWO under the right conditions, but everyone I knew wondered why anyone would want to. Surely all the really good radio stations were somewhere else, somewhere that didn’t open the day with The Little Red Barn program.
I must also set the record straight on the palm trees. Fort Wayne is too far north for them to grow. The farthest north I have ever seen a palm tree in Indiana was out front of Palmer Dodge at 38th and Keystone. Although some say they were plastic.
These kind of write ups are what I love about CC. Every car has a story. Thanks JP!
JP, this piece had hit all the right notes with me: nostalgia, pictures, family references, and the cars themselves. I’m glad this was one you had chosen to repost.
Thanks, Joe, I appreciate the kind words.
I like the somewhat wry reference to the term “good pick-up” as one of the go-to terms that many non “car guys” ( or car people ) used. I used to hear it all the time but now when I hear the term it’s used by those many years my senior ( and I’m no junior ) or repeated by the scions of those mentioned.
Another one similar to that is calling any manual transmission a “standard”…and this, during a time, say, in the 80s or 90s when manual trans cars were still reasonably prevalent, if not dominant, no doubt harking back to when most cars had a three-on-the-tree. Another offshoot of that how those from a certain era would seemingly never say 1st, 2nd, 3rd or whatever when referring to gears like us motorheads would. They seemingly always referred to either “low” or “high” gear.
I also chuckled at the basic attempt at bench racing that youngster car fans engaged in, as did me and my friends back then: judging a cars performance status based on how high the speedometer read to.
Oh, and yes, beautiful piece that ’66 GTO. Wish its top were down.
JP, your assessment of how fast a car could go based on its wheel nut configuration was just right for a 7 year old.
As a kid, I would always think that older cars went slower than newer ones. The sportier the roof line meant to me that the car would be faster.
Great autobiographical piece.
A great article and great pictures.
As a kid, I too made a connection between what a car’s speedometer went to and how fast the car actually was. This all of course came crashing down in 1979 (just in time for me to become an actual driver) when in one fell swoop all new speedometers read a maximum of 85. Even I knew enough to know that this would have nothing to do with any car’s actual speed. Another childhood misconception dashed against the rocks. 🙂
Don’t think ‘Granny’s’ with Hemi Chrysler cars didn’t know what they had… Immortalized by Jan And Dean – The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena) Lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXHlZO9fMw
It’s the little old lady from Pasadena…
The little old lady from Pasadena
(Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!)
Has a pretty little flowerbed of white gardenias
(Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!)
But parked in a rickety old garage,
Is a brand-new, shiny red, super-stock Dodge!
And everybody’s saying that there’s nobody meaner,
Than the little old lady from Pasadena
She drives real fast and she drives real hard;
She’s the terror of Colorado Boulevard
It’s the little old lady from Pasadena…
If you see her on the street, don’t try to “choose” her
(Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!)
You might try to “go” her, but you’ll never lose her!
(Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!)
Well, she’s gonna get a ticket now, sooner or later
‘Cause she can’t keep her foot off the accelerator!
And everybody’s saying that there’s nobody meaner,
Than the little old lady from Pasadena
She drives real fast and she drives real hard;
She’s the terror of Colorado Boulevard
It’s the little old lady from Pasadena…
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
The guys come to race her from miles around,
But she’ll give ’em a length, then she’ll shut ’em down
And everybody’s saying that there’s nobody meaner,
Than the little old lady from Pasadena
She drives real fast and she drives real hard;
She’s the terror of Colorado Boulevard
It’s the little old lady from Pasadena…
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
Go granny, go granny, go granny, go!
Go granny, go granny, go granny…(fade)
—–
Notes from this Californian ([email protected]): “Colorado Boulevard” is the
main east-west thoroughfare through the city of Pasadena; many of you have
undoubtedly watched the famous “Tournament of Roses Parade” proceed down this
boulevard each New Year’s Day morning.
http://www.songlyrics.com/jan-and-dean/the-little-old-lady-from-pasadena-lyrics/
I don’t think there were any GTO’s in my entire town growing up, let alone in my neighborhood. I only knew them from car magazines and of course the song “Little GTO” by Ronnie and the Daytonas. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’ve never known anyone with a GTO in my 67 years on earth. But I do have that song on my phone. And I had a pretty good childhood.
I owned a 66 GTO convertible (bought it in 1978), sagebrush green metallic, black interior, 389 w/ Carter (?) 4bbl, Powerglide, bought chrome wire wheels for it. Sold it to pay for law school. Goats are now, quite pricey, I purchased a 2007 Civic Si coupe new in 2007, still have it, 77,000 miles. Not a GTO, but a pocket rocket nonetheless.
I remember street racing my other GTO a 1967 in Montana, back in the early 70s. Undisputed champ (but I cheated, it had a 454 Chevy LS5.
Quiet Village from Martin Denny ? I prefer Mambo miam miam from Serge Gainsbourg.of course to listen in a ’63 Renault Alpine.
Always enjoy stories of childhood memories and cars. I was fortunate to grow up upper middle class in the 50s & 60s, as an Air Force military brat. Parents always had two cars and Mom preferred convertibles. She always kept a silk headscarf in the car and would drive with the top down even when frost was on the ground. My parents divorced in 1959, so my childhood memories are pre and post divorce.
Pre-divorce, parents had matching his-n-hers turquoise and white 1955 Olds 98 2.-door hardtop and Starfire conv. At the time in California we lived off base, had a new home backing up to a canyon, and the house was white with turquoise trim (so 1950s). Neighbor lady to our left, Penny, had a pink 1957 T-Bird, neighbor lady to our right had a 1959 Buick convertible. Dad had affairs with both ladies which lead to the divorce. Buick lady was teaching me piano, end of my musical career.
Divorced, Dad went to Germany as a base commander, Mom went to San Francisco to go undercover with SFPD as a mob call girl. In Germany Dad drove a Mercedes and during visitations we had many Europe road trips. Compared to US autos I was not impressed with the Mercedes. Back to San Francisco, Mom bought a new 1960 T-Bird convertible, white with turquoise interior. A neighbor had a 1959 Ford Skyliner, triple black, the first all black car I remember. Mom had some nice boyfriends during this period. One, was a blond Navel officer who looked great in his Navel whites in her white conv. Then there was Tony, handsome Italian with a new 1960 Chevy convertible, white w/red interior. Christmas Tony gave me about 20 Matchbox cars, good stepfather material. Tony also had his own plane and we flew to Vegas once a month. I grew up in Casinos and funny I later became a casino designer.
My parents later remarried each other in the early 1960s, but that is another story for another time.
Dear J.P., what an essay! I have been laughing at your comments and enjoying your perspective on life as a child with automobiles. Tom
Aunt/Uncle got a “LeMans” coupe , new, in “65”. Dark red/black top/white inside.
Was just an awesome car! Auto on the floor, a/c bucket seats.
As our car was a “spartan, 65 Biscayne”. This thing was luxury in overdrive..lol
(only option I know of on our car was “auto trans”.)
I can recall many if not most of the cars from my neighborhood growing up and those on my paper route (’65-’68). I can even recall all the school buses I rode along with their engines/transmissions too. I had a good childhood by these standards.
Only one neighbor was into performance and/or sporty looking cars. He lived across the road and was into building hot/street rods. He had a sharp orange 55 Mercury hardtop when he moved in (1960). It was followed by a ’57 Merc, ’58 T Bird that he immediately added 1959 Pontiac tail lights to, a new ’62 Black Ford Galaxie 2 dr hardtop….352/3 speed, New ’63 Fairlane hardtop, new ’64 1/2 red Mustang, ’65 Impala SS hardtop in rosewood, ’69 Charger RT 440. ’71 Torino GT 351C/4 speed before settling into more mundane rides. All this time he was building and driving street rods too as were many of his friends.
One of his friends had a ’66 or ’67 Maroon Corvette, 427/4 speed. WOW!