Cars and Guitars

It wasn't all "cruisin' with the Wolfman." An occasional Saturday would find me at Fremont Dragstrip runnin' the old '57 through the quarter-mile. There wasn't any "bracket racing" in those days. Everything was "heads-up" within your class (which was decided by cubic inches-to-weight ratio. The class my Chevy fit into was "C" stock-modified.

I would play with it during the week, making adjustments in timing, tire-pressure, rearend ratios, etc. trying to find that "ideal set-up." Track and ambient temperatures were always unknown factors, so when you had to guess-------if you didn't "guess right", you might not make it through the first round.

I didn't make a lot of money working at St Regis, so I couldn't afford to run every weekend. High-performance parts COST!

At it's peak, my car could run in the low 13's at around 114 mph through the timing lights. Not fast by today's standards, but in 1969-70, it was "boogying" pretty good for a small block Chevy pulling 3,400 lbs!

I learned a LOT, drag racing, usually from some of the BIG teams that raced there. Sometimes you'd get to pit fairly close to some of the big names, and their sponsored cars......the guys with the five and ten-thousand dollar engines! I paid PARTICULAR attention to brands of oil, sparkplugs, ignition components, etc. And getting in on a lot of engine rebuilds, you learn what's good and what isn't------what stands up well to heat and stress, and what doesn't.

To this day, I still run the same brands of stuff in our family cars, as I did in my race car. Overkill? Not really. The engine in a NASCAR machine costs over $60,000. Those engines have to run at 7, 8 and even 9,000 RPM's at times, for FIVE HUNDRED MILES-------WIDE OPEN! These guys will beat an engine HARDER in those 500 miles than YOU will in a lifetime. The tremendous heat and friction build up, tachometer going crazy and speeds approaching 200 MPH lap after lap------you'd BETTER have some "pretty good" lubricants and coolants flowing through that engine block if it's gonna stay "glued together!"

So today, in our old Mustangs and air-cooled VW's, the stuff I use is actually BETTER than it needs to be, but I look at it like this...........I'd rather spend a few extra bucks for the BETTER oils filters, anti-freeze and grease, ignition components, etc-----------because I ALSO know how much it costs to replace an engine!

And they never seem to break down in the driveway. They will invariably wait until you're a hundred miles from someplace! Anything mechanical is NEVER perfect, and sometimes even the best-maintained vehicles will bite you unexpectedly...........But GOOD car care DOES put the percentages on your side.

I've owned 63 cars in my lifetime to this point, so you'll hear about a few more as we go along. Never owned anything newer than 1986, and the newest one I CURRENTLY own is the '73 Beetle I usually run around town in. I LOVE old cars. So does my wife, whose "daily driver" is a 67 Cougar, and she also has a freshly-restored 66 Mustang and a 72 Olds 4-4-2. My own "pride & joy is a black '56 Olds "88" that I keep in hard storage across town, and it only gets out on the "prettiest" of days.

Back at Camp Margarita, there were a pair of Lance Corporals, Hawkins and Hopkins, who thought they were gonna be the next "Everly Brothers" and sang a lot in the barracks after hours while they strummed their guitars.

My Dad had an old Harmony Guitar in the closet. He played and sang in his earlier years, and during the fall of '69, I got the notion that I TOO wanted to play and sing. He showed me a few chords, and I went on from there, but the old Harmony felt awkward at first, so I drove over to Montgomery Ward's and bought my first flat-top guitar for $35.00 brand new. This was in November of '69. I still have it.

I worked on it and practiced whenever I could, then started to learn songs and sang...................well...............we all sound different to ourselves, than we sound to others. I borrowed a tape recorder and "recorded' a few songs. Cassette tape is a cruel thing. It doesn't lie----and when I heard myself, it almost made ME sick!

You either have a voice or you don't. Period. I knew right then, that if I was ever going to get anywhere musically, (ie: playing in bands, quartets, etc), I would have to learn to actually PLAY this instrument! Well, that was something Dad COULDN'T teach me. Able to sing in his younger years, he never had to to LEARN the guitar beyond just strumming chords.

But all was not lost. The music I liked to listen to most of the time was what we now call the "oldies." I was NOT into country music at the time. (Even today, I don't care for what's being passed off as "country music.")

I'd heard OF Chet Atkins, but had never HEARD him. Dad had several LP albums of Chet. (To this day, I've never heard any guitarist in ANY field of music, who was/is anywhere NEAR as good as Chet. "Wow!...........I'd think to myself as I'd listen..........."I WANNA DO THAT!"

Nobody can. Chet died a few years ago, and there's never been another. Never WILL be. But I sat down and I worked hard on it, way back then. 41 years later, I'm STILL "working on it." I'd had these early visions of serenading some beautiful damsel in distress below her balcony, but the way it sounded those first few years, if I'd found the girl, her father would probably have thrown a bucket of water on me, down from that same balcony!

Talking to fellow musicians today, Ive always said that I thought I wanted to play guitar, until the first time I heard Chet Atkins. Then I KNEW I wanted to play guitar!

As these blogs go by, I'll be able to share some memorable musical moments with y'all. The guitar has been a big part of my life. John Denver wrote a song called "This old guitar"........it's a song I wish I'D written.

Till the next post.............