Me and Heifer, early 1984. I still have that shirt.
To understand what you are about to read, some of which, seen in the glaringly unforgiving and harsh light of early 2017, looks mildly horrifying, it would probably be best if you had the right context. That means you ought to go to this LINK and listen to this song. Go ahead, I’ll wait right here, it’s only a minute long. Everything will come into focus, trust me.
Hums to himself while waiting…
Right! You’re back! Yee-haw!
This and “Hee-Haw” were our idea of highfalutin culture.
To call me a rusticated youth would be generous. Pure redneck would be more accurate. Growing up as I did on a small family farm plot outside Bakersfield, California explains it all. Huh, you think, but that’s in California, the sophisticated, urbane, cultured land of Malibu, the Oscars, Baywatch and the Bay Area, how could you be a Luke Dukeish Southern Good ol’ Boy growing up there?
Well…
Let’s suffice it to say that there are two Californias. Take a map, whip out your super heavy duty chisel, and hack off all the coastal counties. That’s California in all it’s mellow weather, brie and white wine glory. The rest of it? More than a little different.
California Cheeses
For example, my dad’s birthday gift to me when I turned 13 was a 20-gauge pump action adjustable choke shotgun.
Me age 17. Golly gee I was cool. Maybe it was the bangs. I still have that coat.
Indeed we were into guns in a big way, blowing stuff up was our raison d’etre. (giving aggie boys unfettered access to gasoline, black powder, acetylene and calcium carbide ain’t a great idea) Running dirt bikes, dune buggies, go-karts and hot rods came in a close second. Meanwhile we took our religion straight with no chaser, I went to church three times a week minimum. In high school, while kids in real California were learning existential angst and surfin’, I was learning how to castrate sheep using my teeth. (not kidding, an actual subject in class, the teacher brought in his own sheep for us to practice on).
You can’t be serious?!
So it was natural that as a teenager I wanted to own an all American ’57 Chevy, with the small block V-8, of course. It had to be red and white, 2 door, dual exhaust and a floor shifter. The greatest American car of all time; aw hell, it’s the greatest car of all time period. And I would own one! Scanning of the Thirfty Nickel classified began at once.
What I wanted.
I was 17.
’57s, I discovered, were cruelly expensive. Rats. I didn’t have that kind of money. Working at a plumbing shop a couple of hours after school for minimum wage wasn’t going to put a ’57 into my hot little hands.
But then I spied the next best thing, an ad for a 1960 Chevy. Said it was a Bel Air, “ran good”, and the asking price was only $450 smackers. Called the number, got the address from what sounded like a squeaky voiced 12-year-old, grabbed a pal to go along, and drove my ’73 Chevy pickup (ol’ Blue) over to take a look.
What I got. Not my exact car, but identical except for all the greenery, Bakersfield never looks this lush.
Yes, I was Chevy Man™ at that time. (Dad was a Ford Man™) Any “foreign job” was not only looked down on, but indicated that the owner was downright UnAmerican and suspect. Probably a commie. Certainly a pinko. No one I knew drove a foreign job.
What I figured the typical European drove.
Now why would you buy a car you don’t really want, you ask. Why settle for a ’60 when you really want a ’57? It’s kinda not the same thing, eh? Well, I was so crazy in love with the idea of rolling in a classic Chevy that it didn’t matter that the year was off by a few, meh, close enough for government work. I had to have something old, and Chevy, and finned and now!!
The ’60 Chevy from the ad was sitting in the driveway when we pulled up, and I felt a surge of excitement upon seeing it. You know the feeling, don’t you? It was amazing! the bat wings, the chrome, the stance, damn it was pretty! I already knew I was going to buy it, it would be mine before the sun went down.
Ah yes, the glory of America.
The car was “suntan copper” with a white top, and the paint was original. Some hater had recently mashed in the jet bulge on the drivers side, but other than that it was remarkably straight and clean. Inside there was no headliner, but the seats were fabulous; supposedly they were from a Caddy. Under the hood was the prince of engines, the small block! This was the 283 variety, 170 ponies, with a two-barrel carb and the goat head manifolds, backed up by a three on the tree. The hubcaps were off a recent model GMC pickup, odd, but they looked okay to me. (Lots of odd things look okay to me)
An Impala in it’s native habitat, open savanna.
And it had a radio, you know the one with the little triangle marks on the dial for where to tune in after the Soviets nuked us so you’d know where to go die.
And that was about it for options.
Glare on the gauges came standard!
The owner was not much older than I. Plinker, obviously, anyone who’d sell this sweet car was a fool.
I was young and dumb, no idea what I was looking at, just stupidly in love with an old car, or the idea of an old car. Today I recognize that it was a survivor car, probably one or two owners before an estate sale and it fell into this kids greasy hands. It was in very good shape, and finding such a car in 2017 would be a real coup. I was not worthy, as we shall see.
“Can I start it?”
“Sure, you, uh, don’t need a key”.
I gave the pedal a pump and turned the key housing; he was right that you didn’t need to slide a blade in there, and…
“BarrummMMMMM!!” it came to life. HOLY HELLCAT BATMAN, this thing has no muffler! Point of fact it had no exhaust system past the manifolds, it screamed like a banshee just at idle, what would it sound like under load? The Bakersfield Sound lives!
I was grinning.
Wait a minute, where’d all this smoke come from? Slowly a dense cloud of blueish smoke enveloped the car.
Houston, we have a problem.
“It burns a little oil”, pimple faced plinker said, trying to explain the 1-800-Gross Polluter problem.
Ah well, I’m sure I can fix that right up. Pep-Boys has stuff I can just pour down the crankcase.
Let’s take her for a spin shall we. Handling? Wallows like a sow in mud. Brakes? Uh, um, yeah I guess. Transmission? Yep, it works. And good Lord it roars like an incoming flight of B-17s, you can’t even hear yourself think it’s so loud. I love it! Behind us we are crop dusting the other cars, leaving a massive trail of oil smoke. Rolling coal? You don’t need a Cummins Ram to do that, just a ’60 Bel Air wth no rings or valve seats.
This one has the rare eco-friendly options of grass carpet and a vine on the door.
Upon returning to the kid’s house I began the careful negotiation process to buy it.
“I want it”, I proclaimed.
“Uh, I’m asking four fifty, but, uh, I’ll, uh…” plinker sputtered out.
“OK, I’ll give you that!” I proudly exclaimed with all the cocksureness of a 17-year-old aggie boy.
“Uh, you will?! Cool!” plinker replied, a big grin spreading over his face.
What I expected life with my ’60 Chevy would be like.
You dumbass, you’re thinking, sitting at your kitchen table with a cup of Joe as you read this on your smartphone, you probably could have got that turd of a car for 200 bucks. But that was me, naive, didn’t know how to horse trade and, in fact, thought it was morally wrong to offer less than the asking price.
Now that it was mine I had to get it home, so the buddy I’d keelhauled into coming along drove my C10 and I piloted the Bel Air, aimed for home. Would it make it? Ha, the first, and not the last, of many such drives home.
Back seat of a ’60, larger than the typical Paris apartment.
Made it home after oiling the asphalt all the way, and parked in the dirt that passed for our driveway, it basically don’t never rain in Bakersfield, and lovingly began to admire it for hours. Crawled under it, in it, around it, what a fabulous car. Felt very proud, I was not even old enough to vote and owned two Chevys, what a man I’d become. Later that day dad got home, he was a pipefitter by trade, and he drove up in his ’80 F-250 with a Douglass bed, and parked next to my Bel Air, covering it with a cloud of dust. Upon opening the door, he surveyed the ’60, and said, and I quote, “Ugly ol’ heifer ain’t it?”
Bah, what did he know? He and his Fords, bah, I say.
Heifer around the time of my 18th birthday. Do not try to adjust your screen, that dust brown color for everything is normal for Bakersfield.
I took Heifer around to show everyone, friends, church members, grandma, girls. The general consensus was that it was old, ugly, and weird and burned an unholy amount of oil. (“It’s not going to leak oil on my driveway?!”) I was more than a little butthurt that no one seemed to like my car. Ah, to be young.
Way nicer than the inside of mine was.
First thing I discovered was that Heifer, much like America, had an insatiable thirst for oil. Driving into town, about a 10 mile haul, puttering around a bit visiting my favorite haunts of Pep-Boys and the gun shop, then heading home took a full quart of oil. A. Full. Quart. At every single stoplight I vanished into the fog of oil smoke, and my new cologne was Eau de Pennzoil. A case of oil was kept stocked in the trunk and I learned to check it frequently or else.
Tools of the trade.
I drove it everywhere. Church. School. Social events. We’d pack Heifer full of like-minded redneck boyz and head to town on Saturday night to cruise Chester Ave, trying hard to impress the girls with the roar and the smoke and the bat wings. Cuz if I loved all that they certainly did too, right?
There’s probably an app for cruising now, saves the trouble of having to climb up on the roof of your Chevy LUV.
Fixing it up began at once. Sort of. I didn’t actually know anything, so my “improvements” were actually not. For example I was going to paint it Roman Red and white, like all real Chevys ought to be as decreed in the First Amendment by the Founding Fathers. So I started with the dash, natch, and painted that puppy with rattle cans. Yeah, it looked as good as it sounds.
And I poured pretty much every oil burning solution that Pep-Boys had down it’s gullet, all to no avail. If anything the oil burning got worse, and it was also leaking oil from everything and everyplace, including, ominously, the rear end. (Foreshadowing) I was singlehandedly keeping OPEC fat and happy and destroying the environment of the Central Valley.
I’d spend endless hours here, they should have just hired me.
Got some scrap irrigation pipe and bailing wire and crafted an exhaust system of a sort. Not to tame the noise, no, I loved the noise, the more noise the better and no mufflers for me. (I’d also made my C10 as loud as humanly possible as required by Article 4, section 2 of the US Constitution) My exhaust plumbing on Heifer was to try to get the oil smoke somewhat behind the car and out of the passenger compartment. Failed.
Bought a Hurst floor shifter for 70 bucks because I hated the grannylike three on the tree, and promptly never installed it and left it in the trunk forever.
Linda the Hurst Shifter gal convincing me that I need to buy their shifter.
Speaking of the cavernous trunk, we’d fill it with enough guns, ammo and black powder to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo and go out shootin’. (we called it The Arsenal of Democracy) Did you know that you can sit on the bat wings and shoot at thingies while someone drives it down a dirt road? Now you do. Don’t try that at home kiddos.
The tires were all mismatched and worn funky, someone said something about king pins or something. Whatever, I’ll get around to that.
The caption on the back of this old picture says this is Heifer in June of 1985. Note the wacky wear on the tire. Meh.
Down from our place was a fairly good dip/hill in the road, we used to have a name for it but I forget now that I’m old. (The Central Valley is as flat as a sheet of plywood) Anyways, if you got Heifer up to about 100 and hit that dip/hill you did an amazing semi-leap into the air like the Duke Boys in the General Lee, followed by a hysterical bottoming out upon landing. Good times.
Ain’t that sure purty hanging there like that?
One fine and glorious teenage day, you remember those, I was roaring down Stockdale Highway out in the middle of nowhere without a care in the world, pretending I was James Deen and John Wayne and Mr. Spock all merged into some sort of Star Trek transporter accident of ultimate coolness, when suddenly the rear end locked up tight! My go-karting era paid off as I slid Heifer right calmly off the road, as cool as a cucumber. It wouldn’t budge after we came to a halt. Hmm, this was bad, very bad. Luckily there was a house in sight, maybe a mileish away, and I walked over and did the ET Phone Home™ thing to dad. He came down, and after some fiddling under the car that involved disconnecting the drive shaft among other things, we were able to tow Heifer home. Of all the ignoble things, a Chevy being towed by a Ford. I was especially humiliated when we passed the place of a cute girl I had a crush on and she was out front riding her horse.
The 283 V-8 was a nice neat little engine. Look at that hilariously small and rusty brake master cylinder on the firewall, who needs to stop anyways?
Dad didn’t say much. He knew what went wrong, and probably knew it was coming from seeing those oil puddles from the differential. I never once checked the oil level and he never once told me to. That was his way, he was remarkably hands off, gave me a lot of rope to hang myself. Once, when I was 16, I was wandering around the property with my Carcano carbine shooting thingies with armor piercing WW2 surplus rounds when I ran into dad, he was working on some project in one of the barns. His chastisement to me was thus, “You be careful where you point that thing, that’s a high powered military rifle.”
Mind your muzzle!
Calling around to wrecking yards found me exactly one rear end that would fit, and the dude wanted 400 clams for it. No dice. The car had only cost 50 bucks more than that! The seller was a dirty weaseling crook!
So Heifer sat. Went out every week for a while to start it up, keeping things lubed cuz’ any day now I’m gonna fix it.
By now I’d graduated from high school and was messing about at the local Jr. College, I took an auto shop class and came up with the brilliant idea of rebuilding Heifer’s mill. Smart huh? “Hey maroon”, you are thinking, working on your second cup of Joe now, “The actual problem at hand is at the back of the car”. Yeah well, anyways, pulled the heads off, took them in and did a full rebuild, found that the valve seats were shockingly worn as was everything, but those heads sure were purty when done. Took them back home and placed them in Heifer’s trunk, right next to the Hurst shifter NIB and the remaining half case of unused oil.
Looks like this plinker actually installed his Hurst Shifter.
And lost all interest in the car.
Some time later mom and I pushed it out back to line up with another dead car we had, a 75′ Mustang II. (country people collect dead cars) Fitted blocks under Heifer so the tires weren’t on the ground, and that was about it. I moved on to other vehicular and/or female interests.
A few years later one of my relatives named Cookie, yes indeed my people have names like that, had a son who was over visiting and he, predictably, fell in love with Heifer.
Such a silly thing as bat wings on a car could never come back, right?
“You wanna sell that car?” he drawled.
“Nah, not for sale” I replied with my usual full and undimmed vigor. I was never going to part with Heifer, we’re going to grow old together, so back off dude.
“I’ll give ya 200 cash for it”.
“Sold!” I burst out.
Show me the money, I’ll give you the car!
And just like that it was out of my life. Last I saw of her she was being towed behind a beat-down early ’70’s El Camino headed for Wasco, California, so keep a lookout. Some years later when I was shilling for the Arcata Police Department I ran the plate to see what had become of her. Nothing. Heifer was still in my name and hadn’t had new plates in a decade.
Grandchild of the ’60 Chevy, the 2017 Prius with it’s baby bat wings.
Looking back I’m rather appalled with myself for my treatment of that classic car. (in fact I’m more than a little appalled at myself in general, though rather impressed as well) Ruined it I did, as Yoda would say in his awkward verbal format. The tragedy of waste. But I did enjoy the hell out of it for a couple of years, roaring about the countryside billowing smoke and thunder, afternoons riding around on the bat wings shooting at cans, my hapless misguided attempts at improvement in those sweet, sweet days of youth before the crushing smothering weight of grim adulthood bore down like a Sumo wrestler digging his knee into your chest. It had been good times, all good times.
In the sweet summertime…
The other night I dreamed about that car. I was speeding down a dusty country road, age 17 again, arm out the window, summer day, wing vent kicked open, exhaust at full cry, Huey Lewis belting out “The Power of Love” on the AM radio, and the future so bright I gotta wear shades.
I don’t have much to say about 60 Chevies or the time period, but this is one of the most entertaining reads I have ever seen on this site. More, please!
WONDERFUL ARTICLE! My first car was a 1960 Biscayne 4 door sedan! Red, gray interior, 283, powerglide. Bought in 1968, from a neighbor who owned the Ashland gas station in my little village in western Pa. Hard on the Ohio State line. Bought when I was 15, year before I could drive. Was so proud of it, wish I could replicate it now in my Sr. citizen years!
Agreed – great read!
And today’s kids will spend $450.00 on a freaking cell phone, and think they’re hot shit.
Something has seriously gone wrong in the world.
Wonderful story.
+1?
You ain’t kidding.
Right ON!!
And 50s GM ain’t got nothing on the cell phone manufacturers for planned obsolescence. My son’s Nexus 6P ($600) turned into basically a brick after 15 months. (The cell radio failed, which rather defeats the purpose of a phone…) “We did extend the warranty on these”, they said, “but you still missed it by 5 days. So sorry.”
And definitely a great story. A good way to start my day.
Yep! Most of the time there’s no obvious reason for them to “brick” themselves either. (like dropping them,ETC). In my experience price/brand makes NO difference in terms of longevity of a cellphone. That’s why I buy cheap ones knowing I’m just gonna havta get another one next year.
Don’t have to waste your whole paycheck at pep boys buying stuff for a cell phone. You’re not better, you’re just older.
I hang out with teens daily O, 8 to 3:15. Quite entertaining group. Sometimes I feel bad with how we’ve homogenized and pasteurized the world for ya’ll, but then the kids find a way to impress.
Very impressed you are drag racing the parents hybrids your krewe. When my old man found out I’d had his Caddy out dragging he was fit to be tied.
Are you a teacher?
I remember seeing the “Superlative 1960 Chevrolet” ad. I would have been in grade school. I think it was the first time I encountered the word “superlative,” and I was mentally pronouncing it “soo-per-LAY-tive.”
You were rolling coal when rolling coal wasn’t cool! You could have started a mosquito fogging business!
I grew up in a small town on the East Coast, and I can vouch that in the 1950s and ’60s California had an image as the promised land. Ca. 1969 I was at college in St. Louis, the farthest west I’d been until then, and I had a conversation with a middle-aged man who had lived in California. At that point my inage of California pretty much came from the Summer of Love and the rock and roll scene. I was certainly aware of Hollywood, but that didn’t enter into the image so much. Anyway, I asked the man, “How could such a turned-on state have elected Reagan governor?”
He said, “Your basic premise is wrong.”
I did live in San Francisco and Los Angeles from 1974 to 1981.
Something has seriously gone wrong in the world.
No, if anything, it’s a sign that nothing has really changed. If kids thought they were hot shit buying an oil-spewing POS car for way too much money ($1000 in today’s dollars), how is that really different?
I think you missed the whole point of the article. I don’t think the author thinks he really truly was hot shit, in retrospect. or that his overpaying for that car was a sign of brilliance, or at least being superior to today’s kids. But kids will be kids.
Would you really truly want your kid driving a broken-down, oil-spewing old heap today? Well, you don’t have kids, so maybe you’re not in a position to answer. But given the accident rate of young kids, I’d be quite happier to have my teenage kid prefer a cell phone over a blatantly unsafe and smoke-belching car, if that’s what it came down to. Of course, that’s not really a choice kids make, typically.
The reality is actually this: all the stupid shit we did back then may have seemed cool at the time, but in reality it really was mostly stupid shit. And actually most kids today get that, and have no desire to replicate our stupid shit. They undoubtedly have theirs too, but in some ways they really have learned from our mistakes.
I’d have a very hard time letting my kids drive the same cars I did. Thankfully, I guess, those cars are now considered classics and should be out of their price range.
I doubt they will care as much about cars as I did and still do today. Hard to be passionate about a 15 year old Camry…and not going to learn much either when it doesn’t take much to keep it going. It’s a piece of our culture that is being lost, for better and worse.
I know heaps aren’t what they used to be, but there’s a lot to be said for starting at the bottom automotively and working your way up. Builds appreciation when you get something nice.
OTOH, No one 30 years from now is going to have fond (or at least humorous, anyway) memories about an overpriced peice of portable electonics they had at 17. I couldn’t possibly write a “Transitor Radio of A Insignigficat Lifetime” (TRAIL) of a 1976 GE AM/FM. ??
That’s not the point. And I can assure you my younger son is going to be able to write some epic stories 25 years from now about the stupid shit he did other than with cars.
Exactly. Yes my parents have a Civic Hybrid and a 2nd gen Insight. They’re lame. I’ve still drag raced them with friends, did handbrake slides in parking lots and other stupid stuff. I didn’t want to buy a car of my own after seeing all my friends in auto shop get stuck with cool but rusty heaps that never ran right, yet still cost them ridiculous amounts of money.
I went on a geology field lab the other day, and one of the kids that helped drive people out there had a Japanese import Mitsubishi Delica 4×4. Everyone in the class had to check it out and everyone could not stop talking about how cool it was. Maybe the reason you guys think teens don’t like cars is because you haven’t hung out with any in (I’m guessing) 50+ years?
I also have a cell phone so I guess I’m an idiot.
I never said or implied that having a cellphone makes anyone an idiot…
Of course, That’s a part of growing up. (or after, how many “first house” tales there are?) Definitely memories of how much I blew on records,etc, I just was referring to the fact that cars are more memorable and emotionally attached than electronic devices are. Without reference to any generation or era. I just asked a young friend (30) what was his first cell phone was. He can’t remember the brand, let alone have memories or stories about it. His first car, OTOH, Many humorous tales and minute details!
The things that satisfied us when we were kids . . .
My grandma’s neighbor had a 60 Bel Air that was like the opposite of your car. It was a green sedan with a 6/PowerGlide. And it looked like new, except for a couple of quarter-sized rust holes low on the front fenders from northwest Ohio road salt. This was in the late 70s and the car had around 50k on it.
I was only half disappointed when I learned that she had replaced it with a baby blue Valiant sedan because I was really not into the 6 cylinders at that age.
And you have to admire a teenager’s brand loyalty to a car that makes you track daily oil consumption. “My (oil swilling) Chevy (with no exhaust system) is way better than your (perfectly functioning) Ford! A great read!
Go find her. Seriously.
Get thee behind me Satan!
Cool story to start the day?! PS: I’m glad there’s some parts of California that are normal! ?.
Amazing story, Heath. This story really takes me back. Dad’s ’60 Impala Sports Sedan is what I learned to drive in, and I’ve already told that story.
I spent my 4 years in the USAF at Beale AFB, and you are so correct about the central California valley, very mid-western! I was there 1969-1973, and for this St. Louis area boy, I felt right at home, and the only things I didn’t miss was the humidity and ice & snow – well, snow, kinda – I just had to visit Donner Pass to find all the snow I wanted!
That area’s profusion of pickup trucks really was a precursor of what you see now.
Guns? You betcha! Lots of gun stores in Marysville/Yuba City and Sacramento, and I think I shopped in every single one of them during that time.
There is a wildlife refuge just outside the base with a shooting range and I spent many hours there enjoying blasting away at targets and cans with my small arsenal of a Ruger .22 RST 4″, a Remington C-stock 03-A3 and a Colt .45 auto – after all, that’s what single guys do when they don’t have a girlfriend…
The .30-06 ammo was free, BTW… Air Force match ammo.
Cars? Yes. I had my dream car back then. A yellow 1964 Impala SS convertible. I lavished (wasted) most of my money on that car, but I’ve never had anything since that has the panache of that car, and often wished over the years that I would have been able to keep it, but circumstances prevented that. Immaturity, mostly. Money, too. I lived “American Graffiti” long before the movie came out, for that was my off-duty life, cars, cruising and music!
Horses? Yes. The Sacramento area was and maybe still is huge horse country, and a sergeant in my office had a small ranch just north of Sacramento, in Elverta, and I spent some time there lettering his and his buddies’ pickup trucks for their side businesses of horseshoeing.
He also had a self-driving horse that once you climbed on, would just begin walking, and all you had to do was just go along for the ride, occasionally letting him know when you would like to turn. Actually trying to get him to stop was not up to you, but the horse!
This story brings back the 4 greatest years of my young, single life, so thank you very much!
Heath,
So the “learning how to castrate sheep (ones) teeth” as an actual subject in class — brought back some very bad memories.
I think my ex wife may have attended your school.
Ouch.
Great read; brightened my morning and recalled some similar “ominous signs” I ignored as a youthful owner of old heaps.
Bravo! Best COAL ever! Funny as hell.
To me, the 1960 Chevrolet will always mean the first time my father let his then-nine-year-old son pick out dad’s car for the coming year. And I actually talked him into an Impala convertible rather than the standard hardtop coupe. Black with a red interior and a white top.
Not that it did any good. We had the top down exactly twice in the following year on the weekly Sunday late afternoon/evening ride. And both times mom bitched like hell that it was: a. Too cold (we’re talking July and August), b. Too windy, c. Messing her hair (even though she was riding the entire time wrapped in a babushka), d. Too much dust and dirt (this was pre-A/C days, had it been a hardtop we’d have been driving with the windows down anyway).
And by the end of the year, she made damned sure that dad asked HER what his next car should be. The ’61 was either a two or four door hardtop Impala, I can’t remember which. This is because we ended up with a tan ’61 two door hardtop for some reason as I was about to turn 16, and there was some talk about keeping it for me. Never happened. Not even close. Just enough conversation to get my hopes up (which was a normal recurrence in our family).
That ’60 was the last convertible in the Paczolt family until I picked up that Solstice in 2013.
“And I actually talked him into an Impala convertible rather than the standard hardtop coupe. Black with a red interior and a white top.”
Holy grail car!
God, this dude can write! I might be late to work this morning because I just had to finish this article once I started. It was worth it!
Ha, your negotiating skills are on par with mine. I offered $1,100 for my TR4, which was advertised at….. $1,100
I think when we picked it up he handed me $100 back because I was such an idiot.
Too bad about Heifer, if it hadn’t been you it would’ve been someone else, with the same result.
I had the opposite situation when I bought my first car (the ’70 Coronet) from my cousin. Our parents sat in the other room and chuckled as we negotiated. She wouldn’t come down to $300 and I wouldn’t go up to $325. Eventually we had to compromise at $312.50! A year and half later I sold it for $395 to some guys who said they couldn’t find a $400 car that would run and go down the road. of course I put many hundreds into repairs, used transmission, power steering pump, timing chain and many more.
great story! and I haven’t even had coffee yet! a friend had a 60 Biscayne back in the day, it was optioned with power steering (slave cylinders suck!) rare for a Biscuit (that’s what we called her) air conditioning, 283/glide so i can really visualize being there! great story..
Great read, Heath! I nearly snorted my morning coffee multiple times!
I had a ’64 Biscayne that I bought for $160 in the early ’80s. It’s nickname was “Bisquick.”
6-cylinder with Powerglide.
It wasn’t quick, but it was damn reliable.
Ah, youth. So much to relate to here.
Me to a friend at 21, as we’re wrapping up a brake job on some or another barely roadworthy heap: “Beer run?” Friend in response: “Haven’t bled ’em yet” Voice of youth emanating from someone who’ll never live to admit it was his idea: “F- it, we only gotta stop twice, it’s fine.”
Great read. Thank you.
Great story, my first car in high school in the early 90’s was also a ’60 Bel-Air. I just had the straight six with three in the tree. Burned about as much oil as yours though until I rebuilt the motor.
She’s a beauty, One in a million…
A great read that really captures the spirit of being young and broke. Paying full price for your car wasn’t really too bad of a deal. You got the ownership experience which gave you the memories, and you got a lesson in Horse trading, which after you sold it, only cost you 200 bucks. You could have done much worse. Education ain’t cheap.
Great read! Reminds me of my own misspent youth, specifically the ’85 C20 that I could never get to run right despite trying six different carbs on it (always ran rich, in hindsight likely as much my fault as the carbs), and the ’98 Prizm that burned a quart of oil every 300 miles, despite never seeing any blue smoke.
This was a really great story!! I can definitely identify – I brought home a ’60 Chevy just like this, white though – 4 doors and all, but a hard top which was cool, when I was 16. I said “Dad I found the car I want!” and he said “No, you didn’t.”
That was that.. ended up with a ’79 Olds with a rotten frame (they all did this in my part of the country) so the rear bumper was always threatening to fall off at every bump. The Impala would have been way better…
A classic tale of untamed rural youth. I think I’ll read it again.
Taillight question. The ad shows a Bel Air with 2 amber taillights but the pix of the actual Bel Air shows only 1 amber light. My 58 Biscayne only had 1 amber light and the other “white” light was non-functional. I don’t know year back-up lights became standard.
Great story BTW.
Interesting, it looks like Heath’s Bel-Air had backup lights. Mine did not, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen another 4-light one that did. I wonder if they were optional or if somebody did that.
You don’t realize how much those help you until you don’t have them. I used to have to hit the brakes while backing up to see anything behind me, which didn’t work overly well, especially with a manual transmission.
I had completely forgotten about that until your post.
I think the backup lights were stock, they came on when I hit reverse, but maybe someone added them. Well, one of them came on, never could figure out how to fix them both.
Excellent read Heath, one of the most entertaining articles I have read on CC. Your writing reminds me of C/D’s Exra Dyer.
Ezra Dyer sorry for the typo. Why can’t we edit posts anymore?
I’ve edited every post I made this morning – had to! Maybe this function’s only available in the Southern Hemisphere?
Nope, I’m in the Northern Hemisphere, and regularly edit mine to make up for my iPad’s stupid tendency to Autocorrect to the wrong word. Drives me nuts, even though it has saved my bacon from misspelled words quite often.
Fortunately, the Grammar Police don’t patrol this forum like they do on some other sites I visit.
Great story! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for this wonderful multi layered story and cultural viewpoint =8-) .
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Much of California is still rather conservative once you get away from the coastal cities .
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Me, I like Bakersfield, Buck Owens too .
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-Nate
I love seeing that photo of a Pep Boys storefront the way it should be, before they took away Manny’s cigar and the art-deco typeface. Central and eastern CA sounds pretty cool. It’s unfortunate that the crazies on the coast dominate the state. (From the rest of flyover country the entire state of California appears to be an asylum run by the inmates!)
Damn, what a read. Loved it!!!! Having lived in both the Central Valley (Atwater/Merced) and San Diego, I know exactly what you mean about the two different Californias.
Very well written, Heath!
I had a ’59 BelAir wagon in 1974 when I was 17. Never got it on the road, I forgot to test the coolant and froze up that 283…which had 29,000 original miles.
I think it was the same shade of copper…
“I think it was the same shade of copper…”
I looked that up when I wrote up the 59 Pontiac on Monday. I thought I had remembered my aunt and uncle’s 60 Catalina being a different shade of copper – I turned out to be right.
The 1959 and 1960 colors were different codes per paintref.com. In the real world, the 59 was a little more orange (DitzlerPPG 21723) while the 60 was more subdued (DitzlerPPG 21841). Every GM division changed the name of the color from 59 to 60 also.
Also, those copper paints were more susceptible to sun fading than most others (and also appearing different with differing lighting) so an image search of copper 59 and 60 GM cars will spew shades all over the spectrum.
Excellent COAL — thanks for sharing.
Your negotiation skills as a teenager makes me thankful that my father insisted on accompanying me when buying my first car. I would have overpaid for the first car I looked at if it weren’t for his presence.
But ultimately, you did get several years’ worth of use and enjoyment from your Bel Air, which is more than a lot of folks can say after overpaying for a First Car.
Wonderful story! My dad also wished for a 57 Chevy back then. One of his first cars was a 58 Ford Fairlane instead – which looked great but wasn’t very reliable. Afterwards we were a GM family for a long time.
I must repeat what others have said, that this was a fine read and very well written, and full of clever and surprising details, For example, given the setting I was expecting Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” reference to his ’60 Chevy, and seeing Snoop Dogg’s Gin n Juice instead induced a grin.
A funny coincidence that made this story even more relatable is that although I had my first car experience on the opposite coast, in a polar opposite suburban area, mine also ended with a locked up differential because of ignoring the rear end. In my case I could blame my father for never checking the rear end for a decade before handing the car down to me, but he rejected that argument just as yours apparently would have.
Great story Heath. I am older than you (I’m 65), and yes, we did a lot of those same things growing up in small town Kentucky. I can remember shooting at unwanted records with a .22 rifle; if you were good enough you could send the bullet cleanly through the spindle hole. I almost spit my morning tea all over my computer reading about your do it yourself exhaust system repair. When the exhaust finally rotted off on my Rabbit we tried “fixing” the problem with something called muffler bandage. It didn’t work, the only thing that really works is springing for real exhaust parts.
My friends and I did all sorts of “field expedient” repairs on our cars back in the day. When one of the wheel cylinders failed on a friend’s ’59 Chevy he simply disconnected the brake line and crimped it shut. This actually worked for a couple of weeks until he could afford to buy the necessary parts to fix it correctly. Cars from that era were really, really prone to rusting, and for some reason the floorboards were one of the weak spots. The accepted repair was to find a piece of sheet metal more or less the appropriate size and then tack weld it over the rust hole; good as new 🙂
“The accepted repair was to find a piece of sheet metal more or less the appropriate size and then tack weld it over the rust hole; good as new”
Seems like the right fix to me! Beats the piece of plywood I used for my VW Bug.
“You dumbass, you’re thinking, sitting at your kitchen table with a cup of Joe as you read this on your smartphone”
Wow! How?
A fun, well written story. I also owned a second old car, not in daily driver condition, upon exiting high school in 1983. It was a 1965 Buick Riviera. The lack of planning for how to restore a car sounds familiar as I had no space and limited funds. The reality of time and priorities when I entered college meant it was sold with probably under a year of ownership. Luckily, my fussing over the detailing on the car meant I came out a few hundred dollars ahead when all was done.
I did get to drive the car enough over a summer that I had fun with it – much as you had fun with your Chevy.
A neighbor that recently moved away had a 1960 Bel-Air four door sedan in pretty good and mostly original condition. It was a sharp car.
The cultural references are also excellent by the way. If Waylon Jennings didn’t actually say “Ain’t that sure purty hanging there like that?” it definitely fits the writing for “Dukes of Hazzard”.
It’s a direct quote.
My friend grew up in Galt, CA in a very religious and anti-LGBTQ family then my friend fled to one of Cali’s more accepting enclaves before moving to the Portland, OR area. Because of those facts it is easy to paint with too wide a brush and view this article with jaded eyes. I still would like to visit the Central Valley again and see more of the place.
Nice article and having grown up in West Danby, New York I was surrounded by all manners of country folk myself included and I too have done some interesting shenanigans. I like living in Tualatin, OR decently enough since there is a mix of rural and urban elements, but I do not know if I truly fit in.
Vancouver is pretty nice too. We need a PNW CC Meet
Agreed, but the traffic would drive me bonkers
I think I found your Chevy… /snark
I cringe every time I see that. Some dumbass wrote off a classic Chevy to prove what? Nothing we didn’t already know.
Should be made to restore it. Without power tools.
Big deal, some shitty old bottom line sedan. Is the world really worse off? I for one shed no tears.
I’m certain that whatever car you find desirable, someone else finds shitty too. I for example think Type 1 Volkswagens are highly overrated ugly deathtrap crapmobiles, But intentionally destroying a nice restorable ’59 VW just to make a self satisfied,pointless clickbait video “statement” would have been just as wastefull and disgusting. ?
And in case anyone deludes themselves into thinking the IIHS is a warm fuzzy group that is concerned for your welfare…HA! It’s an industry organization who’s goal is to save their patrons money. ??? (with no reductions in rates.)
The 59 still sits in the lobby of the IIHS, out of the elements, waiting to be fixed one day!
FWIW ;
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In 199? when my Son got his Driver’s License he had already decided he wanted a 1963 VW Sun Roof Beetle as his first car ~ I said O.K. but that’s _he_ would have to pay for it and insure it fully, so forth and so on so he’d understand the responsibility .
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I found him the car but he bought and took it from there, yes I wasn’t super pleased he’d chosen a death trap as his daily driver but he’s my Son and knows full well the dangers and what mangled dead bodies look like, the car was fitted with safety belts and he used them .
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I agree, one’s first car (mine was a rusted out ex USAF ’59 Ford F100 pickup) is always felt to be the best and oh so wonderful even if it’s a junker because it’s your first freedom .
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-Nate
My Uncle had a green 1960 Bel Air 4 dr, 6 cyl, stick, no A/C as a company car. I never heard that it gave any trouble at all and he drove 25,000 miles/year. His company replaced cars every three years so he got a 63 then a 66.
Terrific. Well-lived and well-told story. Thanks, Heath.
I did have a 1957 Chevy Convertible as my second car. I paid $70 and drove it home. It never got much better. My friend’s 1958 Ford smoked like a freight train. Maybe because it got topped up with “re-refined” motor oil. This was just used oil in a glass quart container. 35 cents, and you picked the best looking quart. That’s probably $3 now.
It went though many used Fordomatics. Manual steering with a “necker knob’ from Western Auto. While parallel, parking it broke and took the skin off the inside of his wrist.
My older cousin had a 1959 Impala convertible with a 348 and 4 speed. He wrecked it often. I’m sure it was wrecked and repo’d.
Great article Heath, and I thank you for it. Change the names and country, and you have some of my teen years. No, I’m not going to say which ones.
And a good point about the two Californias. Something I only realised on my second trip there, and got past LA and San Francisco.
My first car in 1969 as a 17 year old was a ’60 Bel Air 4 door only mine was charcoal gray. I replaced the oil burning six with a 283 two barrel from a wrecked ’62 Impala. Somehow despite my lack of mechanical knowledge but with the help of a couple of buddies we got it done. The 283 was coupled to a Powerglide, so we had to get all the stick parts (flywheel, bellhousing, clutch etc.) as the 6 cyl. parts are different.. I drove it for most of my senior year in high school-fortunately I worked at a gas station where the better mechanics helped me keep it running. Sold it when I got a ’56 Bel Air 2 door sedan which I put a 327/300 in-much (in my mind) cooler. BTW, I think I paid $35.00 for the ’60.
On older cars, what sort of advantage was there to having the body so much wider than the track?
You get to use the same underpinnings as last year’s skinnier model. And save on material costs.
That’s why Pontiac, and only Pontiac at the time, moved the wheels farther out and created Wide Track!
Those wheels on the Chevy do look silly recessed so far inside the bodywork.
I am pretty much your age and isn’t it interesting that some of us have similar stories? Different America and different kind of car but similar stories.
Probably one of the top five posts ever here at CC. If I had a cup of coffee in hand? You bet, and people around me at Tim Hortons were wondering why I was laughing out loud.
Very entertaining and funny. Really captures the deluded state of mind that a young, (and sometimes even not so young ) car guy can convince himself is reality. Good Job!
Great write up!
Awe shucks Heath don’t be to hard on yourself. It ain’t like ya turned 21 in prison doing life without parole like that other famous good ol boy from Bakersfield.
Well his Mama Tried!!
This post sounds like MY car yearning early years.
I’ve had a soft spot for ’60 Chevies since I was in elementary school.
A classmate’s older brother had a dark blue 2-door sedan. It looked cool. I have no idea what was under the hood.
Sometime in the early 70’s, Monogram Models came out with their ‘Bad News’ 1960 Chevy sedan delivery model kit. I fell in love! I bought the kit, and did one of my better jobs putting it together. That particular Chevy became one of my dream cars.
A few years later, a friend located a real sedan delivery for sale. He bought it and I bought it from him. It had EVERY Midwest rust and rot issue that a ’60 ends up with if it’s not kept up. It had been wrecked, so it had a different color front end.
My brother and I installed a 3-speed floor shifter (linkage was missing from the column shifter). We push started it and it actually ran for a short distance (with no radiator).
And then it sat. I was in my 20’s and had no money. I sold it for half what I paid for it.
Great story and funny also!
The 60 Chevy was my favorite in grade school. I used to draw them all the time. This was kind of ironic, in that my aunt had a 59 Bel Air 4-door sedan and my mother purchased a 61 Bel Air 2-door sedan.
Maybe it was because I had a promo model of a 60 Impala convertible in the same olive color shown in the next-to-last photo. Or that I thought the 61 was kind of retrograde, ditching the cool wraparound windshield and those outrageous fins.
Regarding the current Prius, yes the thought had crossed my mind that those coves in the rear quarter panels (and the pointy tailllights) are reminescent of the 59-60 Chevys.
Last summer, I came across this 60 Bel Air for sale in the highlands of Bedford County, PA. It was still there this past January, and I bet it’s going to be there forever, unless one of us wants to relive the dream!
It’s probably all for the best that this car is on the other side of the continent from me.
»stands, applauds«
Bravo, Mr. McClure. This is a highly entertaining, illustrative, and fine piece of writing!
To much Shit slinging read here, some might say you’re full of shit ! LOL
Great write up, really did hit close to home in the “stupid shit we did and somehow got away with category” when 17.
My ’65 C10 was the counter part to your ’60 Chevy, actually my 3rd vehicle after a briefly owned ’66 Beetle (totaled it in 6 months), replaced by a ’63 Beetle which I sold to buy the pickup from Dad, who replaced it with his new ’74 Duster stripper he bought in the winter of ’73. It was in Portland (we lived in SoCal) we drove up to Oregon in the new Duster and I drove the C10 back to LA.
Where I lived in (the foothills of the San Gabriels above Glendale) in the early ’70’s our little community was an upper middle class area. Many of the kids were at the time what could be best described as “rednecks on LSD”.
The pickup’s 283 used less oil and smoked less than the ’60 Chevy, but I fixed that by installing a junkyard 4 barrel carb and manifold. When you opened up the secondaries it did a great job of rolling blue smoke, sounded great and emptied the gas tank quickly. I fixed the too quiet single exhaust by scaring people going up a steep hill by rolling downhill in gear, turning off the ignition and turning it back on as we passed and split the muffler apart at the seam, giving it the desired noise it really needed.
I would Hazzard jump it on the local fireroads, I got good at replacing the lower control arms which would be smashed flat by the sometimes 2 bounce landings done during the weekends in auto shop during the week. I stocked up on them at the local junkyards.
I installed a Hurst “Indy” (the cheap version) floor shifter, but it had the short handle for a car, fixed that problem with a piece of broom handle and a couple of hose clamps. At first I hooked the linkage up wrong and had a backwards shift pattern, drove it that way for a while but eventually hooked up the linkage correctly. Always hated the fact I had the non syncro 1st, got good at rebuilding the 3 speed in auto shop as well.
It had an aftermarket steering wheel with an aluminum adaptor, the 3 bolts that held the wheel to the adaptor sheared off when the center nut came loose, big wheels, no power steering and bouncing along fireroads caused this to happen. We were way up near the top, at least a thousand foot drop off when the steering wheel broke loose and spun uselessly on the hub, we were heading right off the side of a deadly drop when I stood on the brake pedal. The fact that the defective brakes pulled sharply to the left kicked the wheels over and we hit the mountainside instead. I drove very carefully after finding vice grips on the floor and tightened the steering wheel nut back down.
I wished it was 4WD and always took it where it shouldn’t go with 2WD, got it stuck at the top of a mountain and exploded the transmission trying to get unstuck, after a 2 hour walk down the mountain the tow truck driver was pissed as hell as I directed him up the fireroad. He was yelling the whole time “You stupid shit, what the hell are you doing on this POS fireroad, if I screw up my towtruck on this shitty road your gonna pay to fix my truck, etc.” I paid plenty for that tow.
Finally after getting busted for jumping the truck on a side street and the cops finding a bag of weed in my pocket I began to realize the error of my ways. Sold the truck and bought a ’65 Westfaila Bus, having no power or front end protection really calmed my driving habits.
Sort of. I built an 1835 cc engine for the Bus and tried to do a wheelie in front of the High School, the reduction gears (which always caused the rear to lift if going around a corner a little too fast) did a reverse wheelie, the swing axles tucking under and causing the rear of the Bus to hop off the ground with a loud bang as one of the axles broke, leaving me sitting on the street in front of a few highly amused classmates.
Once again, great read Heath.