1976. I graduated college. My brother and I left campus on a lovely sunsetting early May day. He in his ’74 L-82 Corvette convertible, me in my ’67 427 convertible. I’ll never, ever forget the scene where my brother and I drive away while my lovely, 18-year-old girlfriend ran back to her dorm crying. I shouldn’t have ever left her that way. A couple hours later, I got pulled over by a shouting big cop for full-power, big-block launches from traffic lights as I neared home. See what I mean about not leaving my girlfriend that way? As Biden would say, “anyway…” the big cop let me off with a warning then — and years later we became friends. And so I moved back home. I started full-time in the family business. College over, adult life, day-one.
My best friend, Don, was going through some changes, too. Don’s ‘love of his life’ girlfriend left with her family, for Texas. I don’t think he ever saw her again. Ever.
So what do two broken-hearted guys do? They buy a basket-case POS ’59 Corvette. Of course! What else??? Something to escape their sorrows, like joining the French Foreign Legion, I guess. But not as hot, dry, or deadly. And that Corvette really was a basket-case, a bushel-basket-case. And a lot of aged, floppy, bottom-falling-out corrugated cartons of rusty parts. The body was brushed or rollered with grey house primer and the body was loose from the frame, but you could say it was a “roller”. What were we thinking??? About old girlfriends, of course, but how that relates to an old, neglected car, I’m really not sure, anymore.
From the evidence, the car was originally red with white coves, a red, or red and white interior, a 245 hp dual-quad 283 with hydraulic cam, three-speed, open diff, I think a 3.70 gear. And it suffered a very hard life. The original engine was gone. The original trans was gone. The original body behind the gas tank was gone, with the tail of a ’58 spliced on. The original frame was rusty, and kinked after a hard rear-end collision. I had full confidence I could fix it — but based on better foundations than Fast Times at Ridgemont High’s Spicoli, even considering his TV repairman dad’s ultimate tool set. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=spicoli+i+can+fix+it#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:6d75b561,vid:Y1En6FKd5Pk,st:0 I had more experience, no weed, more beer, and more money.
I already knew how to build engines and transmissions, I had some body work and paint experience, plenty of youth, time, energy and, did I mention?, a lot of time on my hands.
Don and I separated the body and frame, we started organizing parts for sandblasting — at Sahara Sandblasting, what a great name, run by a big, tall guy with a terrible stutter. I started ordering parts from Michaelis Corvette, remember them? Early restoration parts; the interior stuff was not very good, and now I realize I should have thrown the crappy ‘repro’ red dash pad and instead painted the NOS Fawn Beige GM dash pad that came in a GM box with the car. Didn’t notice, ‘til many years later, after installation of course, that the pleats in the repro seat back covers were sewn in on an obvious slant! But mechanical parts from Michaelis and others in those days were usually good GM stuff. I also became a regular at the local Chevy dealer parts counter; a wonderful, smaller dealership who much later, after 95 years in business and under O’Bama’s dictatorship, lost their franchise, well OK, so GM was saved from bankruptcy, incidentally, caused by Bill Clintoon’s liar loans and other ‘get ’em a mortgage, no matter what’ crap that ended up seizing up the whole credit structure of the United States. Sorry for the politics, economics, and letting my story got ahead of itself.
And speaking of financial counsel, another buddy’s uncle, a very successful local business owner, stopped by my shop, I don’t know why. He saw me working away on rusty old parts and advised I’d be much better off starting a new business, rather than devoting my work and young life to that old Corvette. But I wanted to work on that old Corvette!
Don and I attacked that hunk-a-junk at first, then got distracted by better cars, vans, trucks, motorcycles, lots of beer, and soon enough, by the always-hunt for a new girlfriend. Don slowly got over his loss, we stopped talking about his loss, and mine.
I got a great rebound girlfriend, whom I should have treated much better. Don bought a home, and then met a new girlfriend next door, whom he married, and later, she divorced him. He worked on our car less and less. That old Corvette languished in the back of our family-business machine shop — several times squashing a salamander under its leaky tires. And so I bought Don out after a few years. I got the engine, suspension, and frame assembled and running in roughly ’79. Then I tackled the body work. Took years, and into it, I had another wonderful new girlfriend who helped me sand the Featherfill and gray DuPont primer in 1982, until she didn’t. She was gone after that, but I got the car in paint, black, Centari Pitch Black. I jobbed out chrome and polished metal parts, I installed the interior.
The car was assembled at long last, license-plated, and barely back on the road in ’83. I recall one perfect late summer night, driving it home on back roads after a big cruise night several towns over. The car had looked great there under the lights, and on the way home, everything worked, even the Wonderbar vacuum tube radio, playing bassy AM WCFL. I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode. It drove like a new old car! With the emphasis on old: on a frame first produced in 1949, on skinny, black-wall, pie-crust tires, behind that shoulder-wide steering wheel, working that flimsy, flexy shift lever, listening to that brave little 283 through optional ‘off-highway’ GM mufflers. Did you ever watch an episode of Route 66? My ‘59 sounded like that, but the car felt dated and kinda’ slow. Much like watching Route 66 on DVD today. Well! – except for Season 1, Episode 2 with the very lively and lovely Janice Rule. https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/219680/s01-e02-a-lance-of-straw Oh my gosh! But, getting back to cars, I should’ve expected the ’59 to feel kinda’ slow compared to my 427-435 Corvette.
And those C1 Corvettes, the fiberglass floor is flat on top of the frame rails, so a tall guy like me, his head sticks out above the top of the windshield; I felt like a gangly Gilligan. So I sold my ’59 Corvette, the car that still gives me fear of overwhelming projects and lost-part-nightmares. I sold it to a long-time friend, a shorter in stature friend, in 1989. I used the money to help finance the big new house I wanted to build — talk about overwhelming, in-over-my-head projects.
Then in 2012, I’m on vacation in a roachy Hermosa Beach motel, right on the strand, watching TV. The Mecum Indy auction comes on. And there is my ’59 Corvette! Frankly, I recognized it for a couple of restoration mistakes I made, but there it was, “An older restoration” said the kindly Mecum announcer. And it went for $52,000. I had sold it to my friend for $13,000. But who gets to see their old car on TV?
I’m happy.
Almost 50 years really changed me. And my old friend, Don? Resourceful, resilient Don?
He has disappeared.
