Have you ever owned a car so horrible that the first beater you come across begins to look like salvation? Under normal circumstances, one would realize that any such car is bound to be trouble. But on that day in the early spring of 1993, I didn’t care. The Olds From Hell had depleted both my savings account and my sanity. All I had left was a desperate gamble.
I had been looking at the classifieds for some weeks, but having continuously thrown money into a black hole for almost two years to keep the Olds running, I had none left for its replacement. That day, on my way home after work, I drove past something green with a For Sale sign in its window. I pulled over and dejectedly beheld a dented old Pontiac with rust streaks and a bad case of vinyl roof dandruff. And I laughed, because that rusty hulk looked absolutely ridiculous. Ha! Imagine owning something like that. I’ll bet that as ugly as it looks, it cannot possibly be any worse than the Olds. Ha! A Wide-Track Pontiac! In high school, I dreamed of those GTOs and Bonnevilles, well, look at my dream now. But how about I take a look anyway, just for laughs?
“… I drive a ’69 Pontiac Catalina,
The ugliest car you’ve ever seen-a…”
Up close, the car looked even worse. This was no Bonneville, but a plain-Jane Catalina four-door. A hardtop at least, rather than a sedan. But a ’70. Ugh. Like someone once cool but now a bloated, miserable shadow of their former self. Wrong year, wrong model, wrong condition, wrong number of doors. That awkward transitional face, destined to look even worse next year. What happened, Chief? Look at you, down on your luck. Busted shocks and dented corners. But the interior’s pretty clean. Hmmm, it’s registered and inspected. What’s that price on the sign there? $150? Oh, hell, why not? I had wasted more than that on any one of a zillion repairs on the Olds. If I spend just a little bit on this one instead, I can probably fix it up pretty nice, and it’ll be much more fun to own. I always liked older cars. Two more years and it’ll be 25 years old, that’s a bona-fide vintage classic… yeah, OK, I’m gonna do it!
“… Twenty feet long with a big 350
And the rust forms a pattern that’s pretty nifty…”
I copied the number and called it once I got home. Mom tried to talk me out of it. Why replace a problematic car with one that’s much older and likely to be even more problematic? I know I’m doing something impulsive and stupid, Mom. But I had bought that Olds because I was trying to be all responsible and adult, and look where that got me. For $150, I can afford some impulsive stupidity!
Next day, cash in hand, I stood in the driveway of a neat little house on one of Brooklyn’s tree-lined streets, across from where the car was parked, waiting for the little old lady to come out. She was the Pontiac’s original owner. “It’s a ‘69”, she insisted. Her memory was very clear on buying that car in 1969 and she was not about to be contradicted by facts. She took good care of it over the years, always had the oil changed regularly and all that. But twenty years of driving in New York City took its toll. Parking a big car on the streets resulted in numerous scrapes and dents, and age had crept up on both the car and the owner. She was selling because she could no longer drive.
The car started right up and went around the block without complaint. The interior was absolutely mint, literally spotless. The rear seat looked like it had never been sat on. The only sign of use was two decades’ worth of candy wrappers stuffed under the front seat. The lady liked her caramels. I popped the hood. The engine was clean, all the fluids at their proper levels. The trunk was full of all sorts of stuff – dishes, knick-knacks, books, lamps, toasters, some extra wiper blades and hubcaps and other small parts. The lady took a couple of random items from the top of the pile and told me I could discard the rest at my leisure. Normally, I would have taken a prospective car to be checked out by my mechanic, but it all looked really good, so I didn’t bother. I tend to bond with cars from the inside out. I’m a sucker for a clean original interior, and this one, in nice vintage green cloth-and-Morrokide, totally suckered me in. Would you accept $100 cash, ma’am? Sold!
“…Some old lady was selling it for one-fifty,
I got it for a hundred ‘cause I’m so thrifty…”
The first thing I did after driving the car home was to scrape the remaining crusty shreds of peeling vinyl off the roof. Two hours later, the car’s appearance… improved slightly. I decided that once the bodywork was done, it would get painted without replacing the vinyl. What bodywork? I didn’t have any money! But I was already thinking in terms of a gradual rolling restoration, fixing the car up as I drove it. The engine was nice, the interior was super-nice. Just some bodywork, and I would have a very cool car. Oh, sure, it would need a few things, but it was so well-maintained that I was pretty confident it would not take much. I vacuumed out the candy wrappers and started on the trunk. Much of it went into the trash, but there were quite a few useful or saleable items as well. The next time Mom held a yard sale, I cleared about fifty bucks.
“… It had a trunk full of junk, broken toasters and such,
Eighteen old umbrellas, man, just too much…”
The next evening, I tried to turn the headlights on for the first time, and the foot switch went right through the floor. A week later it rained, and I discovered that the rear window leaked badly. There were rust holes in the trunk floor under all the junk. And yep, it would definitely need those shocks. While my initial enthusiasm dimmed somewhat upon closer inspection, I still loved that beautiful green interior, cruising around pillarless with all four windows down, guided by the tiny glowing Chief Pontiac on the instrument panel (Who put in his final appearance that year). Behind the wheel, I could forget about the car’s pitiful exterior and if I squinted just right, I could almost imagine myself in a Fitzpatrick and Kaufman ad, piloting the Wide-Track beauty that haunted my dreams in high school.
Oh, those diminished expectations. This was the dream:
This was reality:
Note: this one above is the only photo of my actual car. All the others were found online. My mechanic, standing next to it, is quite amused to see what I brought in.
My most fervent dream just then was to finally get rid of the Olds, but I needed both cars because they were never completely operable at the same time. Still, between the two, I could now usually manage to get to work with a minimum of drama. The plan was to save some money to fix up the Pontiac and then sell the Olds, but something always happened. Eventually, the Olds went away following an episode of fear and loathing in New Jersey – I was too disgusted to fix it up yet again when it failed for the umpteenth time, and junked it. Transportation duties now fell solely to Mr. Catalina, whether or not he was ready for prime time.
Incidentally, while most people, including myself, tend to anthropomorphize machinery in the feminine, this car, in my mind, was never a “she”. Despite its feminine name, it always had the personality of a grumpy old man. “You want me to start in this weather, you putz? What, you can’t wait for my ignition to dry? Fuhgeddaboutit!” If it could actually speak, I imagine the Chief would have sounded like Walter Matthau.
At the time, I had a punk band called The Hazmats. We played all the clubs in Manhattan for about five years in the mid-1990s and had a bit of a following, but, like most bands, eventually imploded without getting anywhere. Going against every popular trend of the day didn’t help. In the immediate post-Nirvana era, we were probably the only ones that refused to have anything to do with grunge. I was feeling totally alienated from that whole cookie-cutter Pearl Temple Alice wannabe flannel thing. Nobody seemed to be playing music that had any kind of fun, rebellious energy anymore; it was all serious, depressing and depressingly predictable. Once it became clear that Nirvana spearheaded a whole new genre that had little to do with the indie punk that I loved, I realized that this simply wasn’t my g-g-generation anymore. So The Hazmats remained an alternative to alternative music, sticking with the MC5 and Eddie & The Hot Rods type stuff that we did best.
In other words, my music was as retrograde and unhip as my ride, though the Pontiac fit the punk aesthetic much better than the Olds ever did. At 2 a.m., loading out gear after a gig, the nice clean Olds was an interloper on the grimy, garbage-strewn streets of lower Manhattan. But the ugly old Pontiac owned them. It looked intimidating enough to get respect from other drivers, because the biggest, oldest, cheapest and most beat-up car always wins. It had presence and an appearance that sneered utter contempt at anyone who might disapprove. I never had to worry about some crackhead trying to break into it or steal it, and any additional scrapes and dents simply didn’t matter. Beater ownership can be totally liberating.
Parking the big green barge in the Village was a pain, of course. But like most New Yorkers, I could fit into just about any space, by pushing other cars apart if necessary. You backed in until you hit the car behind you, and if your front bumper cleared the car in front by even a quarter of an inch, you were in. Today one sees parked cars with rubber bumper protector thingies hanging down like a saggy diaper to prevent scuffs from such maneuvers, but to me, that’s such a cheap cop-out. Nobody who owned a car in NYC since before Williamsburg got invaded by hipsters would be caught dead with one of those. Your street cred would be just as forfeited as if you had called Houston Street “Hews-ton” instead of “House-ton”. You expected a few scrapes on New York streets, and you didn’t whine about it. Bumper protectors. Sheesh. Fuhgeddaboutit!
Little by little, I was sorting the car out as I drove it. I put in those shocks, fixed the footswitch, had my mechanic give it a good tune up, caulked up the leaky rear window, did some Bondo repairs in preparation for its eventual repaint, replaced a few things with junkyard parts, including a nearly new pair of those orange Sparkomatic speakers. In retrospect, my experience somewhat paralleled Murilee Martin’s, whose ’65 Impala project was happening concurrently on the opposite coast. I lacked Martin’s level of mechanical skill and didn’t set out trying to make some sort of post-apocalyptic art car statement. But the overall trajectory of incremental low-budget upgrades to a beat-up old car while navigating crappy jobs and other realities of Gen-X post-college life during the recession 1990s was about the same. It was the same basic car, too, the 1965 – 1970 GM B-body. Martin’s Chevy was a first year model of that generation, while my Pontiac represented the last of them.
“…Busted shock absorbers all around,
Ridin’ ‘bout two inches off the ground…”
After two years of Oldsmobile-induced despair, I was finally beginning to enjoy myself behind the wheel again. But it couldn’t last. You just go on with your life, all busy with whatever preoccupies you at the moment, until one day you turn around, and it’s not there anymore. Spiral, Lion’s Den, CBGB, Rodeo Bar, all the clubs I used to play – all gone. Record stores, little mom-and-pop shops and other favorite spots where we used to hang out, the band, that old guitar, that new girlfriend, that New York full of grime and crime that belonged to us and not to all those bright young kids taking selfies everywhere – all gone. That sense of infinite possibilities in your early twenties – gone. The days when you could buy a decently running car from its original owner for $100 – gone. And the car itself, gone, too.
In late fall of that year, I was taking the Pennsylvania Avenue exit off the Belt Parkway, the last exit to Brooklyn before the Queens border, as I did a zillion times before. Coming off the exit, I heard a loud metallic noise and the Pontiac grounded to a halt. I walked around the car, then opened the hood. The engine appeared to be sitting lower in its bay than before. My mechanic arrived with a jack and a two-by-four, having confirmed my diagnosis over the phone. We jacked up the engine, put the board under it, and the car started right back up. The frame under the engine had rusted out completely. I knew the car had some rust issues, but I didn’t realize that I had been driving on borrowed time all along. I thought I’d deal with that stuff once I had some money for bodywork. The end arrived before the money did.
“… I’ll fix it up some day, without a doubt,
I just hope the engine don’t fall out…”
There aren’t too many options when you live in an apartment building with alternate-side street parking, winter is coming on and your stepfather absolutely refuses to let you park a car with a broken frame in his driveway until spring. I could not even keep it long enough to sell it or part it out before it would get ticketed and towed. An old car gathers no moss on the streets of New York, once it stops rolling. A few years later, with the benefit of off-street parking and the Internet, I have operated as a temporary, single-car, used auto parts dismantler on several occasions. But that came much too late for the Catalina.
With a heavy heart, I drove it to the nearest junkyard under its own power, that beautiful super clean interior and good low-mileage 350 and all. I hope somebody got them before the car was crushed. The Sparkomatics, rescued from one junkyard, ended up at another. For junk thou art, and unto junk shalt thou return. End of the road, Chief. They paid me fifty bucks, for many years the standard price one could expect for any junked car in New York. So between the yard sale proceeds and the scrap price, the car basically ended up being free and after almost a year of service owed me absolutely nothing.
There were no regrets about taking this impulsive detour into beater ownership and crossing Wide-Track Pontiacs off my bucket list. But the experience taught me that while I can handle some simple repairs on an old car, I’m really no restorer. I realized that I lack the skills, the time and the means to fix up old cars, with far too many other interests and responsibilities to distract me. I’m much better at dreaming about it. It was a discouraging but valuable lesson. When buying my next old car some years later, I had far more realistic expectations. I made sure to buy one in the best condition that I could find, have a garage ready to receive it, and a reliable daily driver to take the pressure off.
I have also learned not to judge too hastily those dreamers who still see innate virtue and potential in an old car that exists on a desperate edge between survival and oblivion, held together only by hope and force of habit. I know how that dream feels.
Does someone still see the beauty below in the beater above, still hope for a someday that will never come? Is it just some smug satisfaction with owning a car that presents a big middle finger to the world? Or a bit of both? It takes a certain defiance to stick up for a no-future underdog like that, and that defiance is as punk as it gets.
But for me, that dream is over. To date, I have restored a bunch of vintage guitars and drums as well as some bikes and Victrolas and antique briar smoking pipes, but not a single automobile. At least my wife can tolerate my smaller projects. A 1966 Sonor drum set in pieces taking over the living room is manageable to her, but if I were to bring home a car like the Catalina today, I’d be sleeping in it. I have learned to choose my battles, too.
“…Catalina, Catalina,
Catalina, Catalina…”
Shortly after junking the Catalina, I found myself on the same street where I had bought it. The house was deserted, with plywood over the windows and trash in the driveway that looked like it had been there for months. Selling me her car must have been one of the last things that little old lady did.
The Hazmats never released a record. But in 1995, we recorded a demo cassette. One of the songs on it was “Catalina”.
Today’s Curbside Retro Punk Rock Jukebox selection has been brought to you by:
The Hazmats – Catalina
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1968 Pontiac Catalina – Let’s Go Wide Tracking
I don’t think it is a bad looking car, not beautiful, but relatively clean with a distinct front end.
72 must have been the last year for attractive American cars, those from the 80 and 90s are particularly hideous in my opinion.
Also I like 4 doors, it works well on cars of that length, the US collectors seem to be obsessed with 2 doors, there must be a lot of unloved 4 saloons about that deserve renovation.
You’re right, in many cases four doors do look better. It befits the length of these cars. Many 2-door/coupe models of the era look strange with their far too long rear decks and ditto quarter panels. The 4-door versions usually have a much more coherent design.
More rock and roll then punk, but not half bad!
And the car looks cool just as it was.
Squint a little and you see a ’58 Edsel
Saw a lot of these 1970 Pontiacs up here in Canada those days. Not as nice as the 1965 & 1966 Pontiacs, which collectors prefer, but distinctive styling nevertheless. In Canada, names were Laurentians, Parisiennes, and had full-size Chevy frames and engines.
A great story told poetically. Mark me down as another person who actually likes the look of the ’70 Pontiacs. I’d never call them attractive, but they still carried a swagger and confidence that would all but disappear in the coming years.
I had a beater brown over brown ’83 Olds Delta 88 that I bought during the tail end of college in the late 90s. Mine was the polar opposite of your ‘Olds From Hell’ story: with my Delta being the equivalent of your Pontiac. My Olds had a 307 instead of your 3.8, but it served me faithfully and reliably at a time when I could least afford any financial contingencies. It cemented my love for full-sized beaters, which persists to this day.
Great story and a good song. Has a bit of a Chuck Berry sound to my ears. And your post prompted me to look up Sparkomatic, that once-ubiquitous brand to see if it was still around. The company was purchased by Altec Lansing which in turn was bought by a private equity firm in the 2000’s. Altec Lansing now seems to specialize in “party speakers”, that scourge of peace and quiet outdoors. As I age I’m OK with loud music in a club or my own car but I hate to listen to other peoples’ tunes. Or, as is often the case, beats.
X!
You just needed Exene and John Doe!
Huge X fan – I would have loved to see you guys perform.
You can’t get more honest than this.
Good story. My grandparents had this car. It was a sweet ride in 1970-1974, but it was ugly even when new.
Great story! I personally really like the 1970 Catalina’s and Bonneville’s and Executive’s. Your car was a survivor to be sure. Original condition!
This was a great story to read, in every respect. And the photo of your actual car is priceless. Really, for a $150 car, this was better than being just a case of impulsive stupidity.
And I also didn’t realize that Pontiacs still had the glowing Chief Pontiac on the instrument panel at that time. That alone would have made me love this car.
I was going to note this too. Supposedly for copyright retention reasons (to prevent another company from using the logo). Cadillacs also had high-beam indicators shaped like the Cadillac crest around this time, though that was their current rather than former logo. My dad’s ’66 Dodge Polara had a red indicator in the middle of a sunken Fratzog centered between the two huge round gauge binnacles, maybe the coolest part of the whole car. Anyway the ’71 Pontiacs had a generic rectangular high beam indicator, fitting since the whole interior looked rather generic, a far cry from the distinctly Pontiac (and distinctly excellent) dashboards in their 1965-68 cars.
Great read and feel-good punk.
Somewhere between “Mercury Blues” by David Lindley and “Boss Hoss” by the Sonics.
Someone who lived across the street and a few doors down from where I grew up had a ’70 Catalina like this one, light brown, always parked front-outward in the suburban driveway so that odd front end with those two round mini-grilles surrounding the main grille were in my face as I walked or biked by. The owner was the only close neighbor I never saw or knew, which made the car seem even more mysterious.
The Hazmats sound pretty good. Wow, you played CBGB’s? Instant respect! My bands rarely got further than playing a friend’s backyard or basement. When I was in university I wanted to play in a punk rock band too. I realize now looking back that I never really liked punk all that much; rather I just thought it was cool to play in a punk rock band and would by association make me look cooler too. I quickly got bored of playing those same three chords. And it felt so already done; the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks did it decades before we did, and did it better. So I left the punk scene and tried to start up a late-’60s style sunshine-pop band, all pretty melodies with luscious five-part harmonies and lyrics about simple pleasures. That proved much more difficult to pull off than punk rock, especially since it was very unfashionable at the time, but that only made it more appealing to me. I too wanted an alternative to “alternative rock”, in a time when the most mainstream of bands with million-selling records were routinely labelled “alternative”.
Great story!!!! Funny I was in a little band in the early 90’s in Melbourne Australia, we did the same kinda stuff as these Hazmats you speak of, and got nowhere save for a 1994 demo and a bunch of memories. Guess what I’m trying to say is the Gen X experience seems so similar and familiar. Thanks again for sharing the memories.
Good write up! My parents had a 4 dr. sedan, black top/ int, gold exterior. Oh was it ever butt ugly, but one helluva reliable car. When home on break from school, Dad would let me borrow it when I took my gal on a date: Plenty of room.
After 10 years of reliable service he gave it to my sister as a grocery getter and kid hauler. They were able to get another 5 years out of it.
Put into context, in 1970 the big Pontiac got a big nose. In 1969 the Grand Prix got one too. The GP wore it better. The 70 was just keeping up the family tradition.
I had a friend in the 80s who was handed down the 2 door version of this from his mom. It was a great car with a 400. The interior of your car looked awesome! I liked the song as well!
Great narrative with an interesting slice of history. My math teacher at Seton Hall Prep had one these circa 1979 in the same color and condition. Fit Father Foran’s personality perfectly. Stern with an odd sense of a forgotten style. Owning a beater can be very liberating as long as you have the patience and wherewithal to not get bogged down under the strain of intermittent repairs. Glad to read your music was out of the mainstream and neat that you played at some of the legendary clubs.
Great story! I agree: Beater = Freedom.
I think that by 1970 most people who wanted a 4 door GM full size car stuck with Chevy or moved up to Olds or Buick as the cost difference was minimal. Catalina buyers were most likely people who “always bought Pontiacs”, someone who fell in love with a particular color and/or feature, or someone who got a great deal.
Sparkomatic, the quality goes in before the name goes on! (Or was that Motorola?) I worked at Grand Auto back in the ’70’s, and that was one of our “premium” brands. Kraco was the cheap stuff! Thanks for the great story.
Of course who can forget those great Travelin’ Man Ads?
If you haven’t read “Last Exit to Brooklyn” by Hubert Selby, Jr. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Just say’n. Really enjoyed your article. Thanks!
Another well written story, I still love beaters, rust is less of a problem here .
-Nate