White and Silver and Red and Cool as Hell

White and Silver and Red and Cool as Hell

I think the old man really did want me to be cool, and maybe to live out his dreams through me. He had to give up school in the 8^th grade to help support his family, so never experienced the highs and lows of high school. At any rate, there I was, as a JUNIOR no less, with what is still one of the coolest rides ever...a white 57 Chevy Bel Aire convertible. The interior was done in red and what seems weird today...silver. The seat cushions and backs were silver while the surrounding bolsters were red.

This thing screamed sex...not that I ever got any in it. It replaced my 54 Dodge, whose V8 was getting very asthmatic and wheezy. That car looked actually pretty presentable after the respray. I didn't get laid in that, either.

What girl could resist this?
Apparently...all the ones that would date me

What happened was someone rear-ended me, and we managed to get the entire car repainted as part of the settlement...in the original dark and light blue two-tone. Well, after, that is, I tried to do my own body work. I had no idea you did not just slather on enough bondo to fill in whatever size crunch you had, and then smooth it off. Of course what resulted was a baroque looking mess that hardened into a lump that was beyond any sculpting, shaving, sanding, or grinding.

After the respray it looked really presentable, if still pretty much an old lady's car...except no old lady would continue to drive anything that allowed you to see the road go by underneath through the rust holes in the floor. Despite the V8 it's acceleration was leisurely at best, and it finally showed signs that it was not even going to keep that up for much longer...hence the replacement with the Bel Aire.

As usual this was not the #1 condition version of the model...but so what if the tonneau cover had shrunk so much it almost took two people to stretch into place. It was red, man! And looked cool as hell. And what if the top struts leaked and were so anemic you had to help raise the thing by hand? And while a white car with a white top was not the sexiest color combo I could think of, that was more than made up for by that screaming interior.

It was the small block 283, which I was fine with. I could have cared less about acceleration at that point. We'd put the top down and ride all over South Florida and, at last, I had what my son called a “posse” when he was growing up.

Among other innocent gags we'd pull was the car phone gig. One of us had gotten hold of a phone handset, likely cut from a phone booth but what do I know? We'd pull up next to someone at a light and one of us would yell “RING, RING” and put the thing to his ear. The he would shout to the car next to us, holding out the headset...”It's for you!”

Most folks would just stare. A few would laugh and shake their heads. But one guy sort of stopped us cold.

“Tell them I'm on the pot,” he shouted as he pulled away from the light.

Two of us, of which I was one, also had the ability to do a very credible imitation of a siren. It was high, and it was loud. It also was quite successful in making cars ahead of us to pull over to the shoulder, allowing us to motor by collapsing with laughter.

When I left for college I took the Chevy with me. As a freshman I was actually not supposed to have a car...in those more paternalistic days universities wanted to do their best to help eliminate distractions which might contribute to a higher dropout rate.

But I found that I could make money giving kids rides back and forth to Miami. I had a high school sweetheart down there who I was trying to keep up a relationship with, so the idea of taking kids back and forth and more than covering my out-of-pocket expenses to drive down and see her was quite appealing.

For some reason dad did not object. The problem was that, of course, I cold not get a permit to park it on campus. I guess I could have left it on some side street during the week (I only drove it on weekends and then only down home and back)...but I don't think the thought ever occurred to me.

In those innocent times campus police departments did not have to deal with much...no sexual assaults, mass shootings, or even much in the way of radical demonstrations or office takeovers (those came later). We used to call them “kiddie cops” and other than parking violations I have no idea what they did. But the parking lot in front of their office seemed, crazily, to be the ideal place to leave the car. Sort of “hiding in plain sight.”

I got away with it for almost the full year. Finally, one day as I was opening the door to start another run down to Miami, a cop stopped me.

“We've been wondering whose car this was,” He said.I guess accessing the DMV records in those largely pre-computer days never occurred to him. The car was registered to my dad, but it would not have taken much to then find out if there was a student with the same last name and home address. Brilliant.

The car, like all the ones dad had, finally got too expensive to maintain, and was replaced with a monster...a 59 Biscayne with those huge rear wings...a downscale version of the equally 'over the top” 59 Cadillac.

But one of the final memories of the car is not a happy one. It was during a top down run to Miami for Thanksgiving with four other kids in the car that I learned of the assassination of President Kennedy.

I had stopped for fuel outside a little town called Leesburg, and when I walked out one of the kids said “Kennedy has been shot.”

I thought it was a joke...she had hear the news from the radio in another car which had left.

“Turn on the radio,” she said.

The rest of the trip, the days following, and even the return to school, were both a blur...and a horror. Truly the end of an innocent age and an unreal sense of “this can't be happening here.”

I truly hated the Biscayne. And then one day it showed it felt the same about me.