Halcyon Daze - Growing up Canadian

by N. A. Dalbec

  Everything got fixed, but it was never the same. The van didn't feel right and the trailer never felt right. Eventually they bought something that was a lot better suited to the job.

  It turned out to be a funny sort of summer, because I decided after the mishap, to go on to something else, and I did, then I came back to the same job to finish off the summer, because they ended up needing someone.

  Ride the Wild Pony

  Spring was in the air, late spring actually, and I had already found a job for the summer. I was off on an errand, not too far from home. As I rounded a corner, I saw something that I just had to have. The for sale sign had my name on it, so to speak. The for sale sign was looking out from the wind shield of a cream colored '66 Mustang with a black vinyl top, and black interior. I stopped the Mini I was driving, jumped out and had a closer look.

  The car was almost eight years old and had lost some of its virginal appeal. The rear fenders had been reworked, but not masterfully, and the wind shield had a rather long hair-line crack running through it. The interior looked new and the rubber looked new as well.

  I had been coveting these cars since their introduction in 1964, and I always dreamed of having one. Might this be my chance?

  The owner of the car came out to greet me. He was a short fellow with a Jimmy Dean sort of look to him. He was soft spoken and had evergrease in the skin of his hands. It turned out that he was a mechanic at one of the local dealers. We exchanged the usual formalities and he proceeded to show me the car. It had a 289 V8 sitting under the hood. It was mated to a three speed automatic on the floor. The shifter was surrounded by a full floor console, which was unusual. We started up the engine and blipped it for smoke. We couldn't take the car out for a spin because it was not licensed. I took his word that the car ran fine, and worked out a deal whereby he would take my '68 Mini as part payment, and that I would pay the balance in cash. That meant five hundred in cash, and my car for a total of seven hundred and fifty dollars. I had paid two hundred and fifty for the Mini over a year before. so I figured it was a pretty good deal.

  I managed to get the car safetied without getting the wind shield replaced, which at the time saved me a bit of cash. The car did indeed run fine, but had a tendency of overheating. I had noticed that disgusting odor, that smell of antifreeze, when I had run the car before buying it. I figured the previous owner had recently changed the coolant in the rad, and had not given it any more thought. But here it was again, that haunting odor, accompanied by bouts of overheating. I called the previous owner and asked him about it. He pleaded ignorance, stating that he'd never had any problems with the cooling system. So I changed the thermostat, and that didn't work, then I took the thermostat right out, and that didn't help, then I changed the rad, and that didn't help. I was getting pissed off. And that insipid lingering odor made it all worse.

  So I stopped worrying about it for a while. The car really move, and was smooth and quiet to drive. One evening I was going to a club to meet some friends. I was just about a block away. As I turned a corner, I laid into the gas pedal a little too hard and left a patch of rubber on the city street. A policeman was right behind me when I did the deed. I hadn't noticed him there. He pulled me over, and proceeded to give me a ticket for littering rubber. Not too much was going right. I didn't have my papers with me and I had some contraband in the car. Fortunately the officer, and most people who didn't know these cars were not aware of a cubby in the console that's extremely visible, but the door to the cubby doesn't open conventionally. I was perspiring heavily as the officer was rummaging through the car. He even put his hand on the cubby door, and tried to open it. He asked me if there were any cubbies that opened in the central console. I pointed to the one that lay towards the back of the console, and told the officer that that was the only cubby I knew of. He let it go at that and told me to drop by the station within twenty four hours to show my papers, as he handed me the fine for making excessive noise. I was very lucky in my misfortune.

  I quickly grew disenchanted with the car. One evening, I dropped by a car dealership. The salesperson had a bigger passion for these cars than I, and he asked me if I was willing to unload it. I said yes. We took the car for a spin, and he brought it up to eighty-five miles an hour on one of the hottest evenings of the year. It must have been ninety degrees out. The car overheated a bit, and the salesperson asked me if it was a habitual thing. I gave him the answer that I had received from the person that I had bought it from. He took the car for six hundred and seventy-five dollars. The experience cost me two or three hundred dollars.

  One day, a few weeks later, I found myself rummaging through a junkyard. What did I see? The little blue Mini that I had traded in on the Mustang. I guess there is poetic justice after all.

  Go West, Young Man

  Summer was half over, and a mishap with the truck I had been driving for the ice cream company had sort of turned me off of driving. I decided to have a look at the student employment center to see if there were any opportunities.

  It being so late in the season, the pickings were pretty slim. There was, however, a new concept being tried out. It was a national job bank for students. If a position couldn't be filled in locally, the employment centers across the country would post it. If, as a candidate you qualified, the center where you applied would send you to where the job was. So I looked at the board, and there it was: Bartender, Smokey's Pizza, Pine Gorge. They also needed a pizza chef. I couldn't stand the smell of pizza at the time. let alone cook one, but I did have bar tending experience which I had acquired working at university bars. I looked at the guy in the student employment center, and I said to him that I would be happy to take the job. He looked at me and said that normally they would send you out by the least expensive mode of transportation, but seeing the vacancy had to be filled quickly, they would send me there by plane. If I stayed there a minimum of eight weeks, they would pay for my way back. That was the deal. I said okay.

  One or two days later I found myself on a plane that would take me two-and-a-half thousand miles away to be a bartender in a Smokey’s Pizza. The guy sitting next to me turned out to be the pizza chef.

  After a transfer on the way, we finally made it to Pine Gorge, a lumber town where men are men. The pizza chef and I made it to the Smokey’s Pizza to introduce ourselves to the manager. He greeted us and went on to explain our duties. He looked at me and said that both of us would be bartenders, and pizza chefs. I didn't like that idea, as that was not the original deal, but I didn't say anything.

  My cohort and I had to find lodging. Someone in the restaurant offered to put us up until we found something. By this time. we were both getting tired. I started mulling over what the manager had said about being a bartender sometimes and being a pizza chef at other times. The idea was becoming less and less appealing as I worked it over in my tired head. It got to the point where I didn't like the idea at all. The only obligation I had was to stay for eight weeks if I wanted to get a free ride back home.

  I walked over to the train station. It wasn't too far away. I went in and inquired about departures, and prices. It turned out that I could get a coach fare back to the east for about sixty dollars. I bought a ticket, and I sat down. The scene that took place in the station could have been in a one act play. There were three main characters. There was an older hippie with long silver hair and a beard, a tall guy in a leather motorcycle jacket and a pair of jeans, and me. The tall guy was soaked to the bones from riding his Harley Sportster. He had been riding in the rain for hours, and was on his way to the valley, which I knew nothing about at the time. The older hippie was going somewhere else, by train.

  We all got to talking, because there was a lot of time to kill. With one thing leading to another I found myself having been talked in to going to the valley with the tall guy on the Harley. We had walked over to the snowmobile dealer and had bought me a cheap snowmobile helmet just to say that I was legal, riding on the bike. We were back at t
he station and the older hippie kept telling me I should quit smoking now, and that my lungs would be pink again in no time at all. There was no way in my mind that I was going to try to stop smoking that day.

  I sat there and gave the motorcycle ride more thought. I had a pretty heavy pack sack that I would have to carry on my back wherever we were going, which was hundreds of miles away. I gave that some serious thought, because I had injured my back working on construction the year before. I'd be in a fine pickle if I couldn't even walk after a few hundred miles on the back of a Harley Sportster. Upon serious reflection in that train station, I decided that the bike adventure would have been thrilling, but it would not happen then and there. I gave the tall guy the cheap helmet that I had bought for the trip and wished him well. I thanked the older hippie for his advice and said that I would follow my own that day.

  The train finally arrived, and I hopped on it. There were a million thoughts going through my head. For now though, the plan was to stay on that train, and live with the consequences of my decision. I know I did feel like I was cheating myself out of an adventure, but as it turned out that fateful day, no matter what I decided, I would be in for an adventure. It was one of those existential moments and as with existential moments, you can't do a hell of a lot about them.

  The train ride was a hoot. Five days of travel with a heterogeneous bunch like you find only on a train made the adventure more complete.

  I'll always remember the look of disappointment on my father's face. He had been very proud to see me take on this challenge, and now I was back prematurely. I guess he had psyched himself up to not see me for a while. I felt a little sorry too, but that's the way it was, and I had thought about all these things before hopping on the train back. My mother, on the other hand was happy to see me. She had not liked the idea of my going out west in the first place.

  The next day I went back to where I had been working to see if I could get some work. They were very happy to have me back. One of the other guys had wrecked one of the vans while I was away. So I got back into it and finished the summer back where I had started.

  Silly Swede

  Reputation will take you so far. That's what I found out about Volvos.

  When I got rid of my '66 Mustang, I went from the frying pan to the fire. I had just gotten back from a quick trip out west and I needed a set of wheels for the coming season. I did have the motorcycle but it would not keep me warm in the months to come. I started looking at the ads in the paper to see what I could line up. I found a listing for an older Volvo 544, with a B-18 engine. These were rather culty cars, and there were still quite a few around at the time. A good friend of mine was a Volvo nut. He had owned a bunch of them, and knew the cars well. I asked him to come and see this particular example to see what he thought.

  As it turned out, the car we went to see was one of the first that my friend had owned. It had come out of the factory as a white car, but now sported a color called Rolls-Royce Gold. It had suffered an accident. but did not look worse for the wear. It had been bondoed up and painted, and looked fine. The front bumper was removed and a pair of funky chrome kitchen chair rung-like things had been put there instead. It made the car legal.

  I liked it and I bought it for something like seven hundred dollars. The thing had a bizzillion miles on it, but these cars had a reputation for durability. And they were durable. You could easily get a couple of hundred thousand miles out of the car, and those free spinning 1.8 litter engines were usually good for at least one hundred and fifty thousand miles.

  The car was running on two ply razor blades, so I went to the wrecker's and picked up four fat radials that had adorned a Citroen at one time. Then I bought the requisite moon chromed hubcaps. You just had to have the moons to make the car complete.

  The car was really fun to drive. It felt solid like a tank, and it had that retro look to it. The styling dated back to the mid-forties. On my twentieth birthday, I drove over to a friend's place to pick his girlfriend and him up. We were off to the movies. When we got into the car, I started it up. It started to sputter. I thought nothing of it. Those damn S.U. carbs were probably out of sync again. It turned out to be more than that.

  It turned out that the rings had let go in one of the cylinders. We found out by mashing the throttle on the highway. I never had heard the sound of an engine blowing up before. Amazingly enough, we were able to get the car to my friend's Volvo barn outside the city. They do make tough engines when you think about it. The car made awful sounds all the way, and people were really wondering what was going on when we'd get to a stoplight.

  We spent an entire weekend replacing the engine. To make things simple, we yanked an entire drive train from a spares car that was at the barn and put it in my car. I have to admire my friend's tolerance for pain. He spent most of the weekend on a cold concrete floor in an unheated barn while I spent a good chunk of the weekend helping from the top, and puking every once in a while from having partied too much the night before and smelling antifreeze. We managed to get the car rolling by late Sunday afternoon. The last pieces to go on were a makeshift series of about twenty washers that we placed on the clutch connector shaft to give the clutch pedal the play it needed. The operation was a success, and the car got me through the winter.

  Parts were prohibitively expensive, and the car, although it always ran, nickel-and-dimed me to death. The final blow was when the king pins that had been replaced at a cost of nearly two hundred dollars seized. The mechanic had neglected to grease them because he had heard that you never had to grease a Volvo. The steering got progressively stiffer until it got to the point where the steering wheel would turn no more, even using two hands.

  We had a ton of fun burying the Volvo. My friend and I went back to the barn where he kept his old cars. The dirt road that led to the barn crossed a little stream. The bridge that spanned the stream was elevated. So we'd take turns running the car up to about sixty miles an hour and we'd get the car airborne for some twenty or thirty feet, then the car would plow out the road upon landing. They do make tough cars at Volvo.

  Going my Way?

  When you're young, you've got all the time in the world, and you've got the world by the balls, and you've got the balls to take on the world.

  I was eighteen, and had two years of university under my belt. If I were to continue, I would be nineteen coming out of university, or twenty if I were to take an honors program. I took a good look at my life clock and concluded that it was time for a hiatus in my formal studies. I had been at school all of my life, and now I wanted to taste something different.

  One day, in early fall, I bumped into an old friend. We had been neighbors as kids. We reminisced a little, and I asked him what he'd been doing during the summer. He mentioned that he'd been driving a cab, and that the money was good. I had no immediate prospects, so I followed up on the cab idea. I loved driving, and I thought the experience would be good, in that I would meet lots of different people, and learn about life in the adult world. It turned out to be quite an education.

  I still remember my first night. I had decided to work evenings because the money was better, and the traffic was lesser. I was still living at home at the time. Working in the evenings gave me a form of privacy that was not possible otherwise. My schedule was so unorthodox that I actually simulated living away from home, even though I had not moved out. Because I was working, my parents charged me a nominal sum to live at home. I thought that was fair. Back to the first night of work. It was early fall and I got to the stand. Vactor, a tall gentleman with a very heavy accent passed me the keys to a car, and wished me good luck. He was basically telling me that I was about to learn the business by fire. I took the car out for a quick spin and concluded that he was passing me a piece of crap. If I was going to make any money at this business, I needed a good set of wheels. So I drove back and told the guy that the car was a piece of crap, and that I wanted a good car. From that point on there was no more b
s, and I was very proud to have nipped that situation in the bud.

  I left with a good car, and didn't know what to do. The dispatcher was calling out all kinds of things and you could hear the other drivers returning cryptic messages to the dispatcher. It made me nervous as hell. I decided to just drive around for a while, and get a feel for the car. At one point, I just drove to a side street, and placed the car in park with the engine idling. I listened to the dispatcher on the radio to see if I could make sense of what was going on. I knew that if I was going to make any money, I would have to learn what was going on. As I was sitting there, minding my own business, one of the car doors opened, and a voice from outside asked if I was free. I was stunned. My first fare, and here I was, actually trying to avoid this kind of stuff. The person attached to the voice hopped in and gave me an address. We drove off, and that was my first fare. I was thrilled. Money was coming in instead of going out and I liked the feeling.

  I finally got the nerve to talk to the dispatcher and explained briefly that I was new. He turned out to be a very patient person, and he helped me out during those first nights. I quickly learned that the dispatcher was God's right hand man. If you treated the dispatcher right, or even helped him out with a stale call, he had the power to make your life much easier. And so the lessons of life at the school of reality were being taught. It was wise and lucrative to be attentive. You learned to keep the microphone in your lap, and your finger on the trigger. If you wanted to get a freebie, you had to be fast, and you needed a good radio. You could actually make more money with a lousy car that had a good strong radio, than you could with a good car that had a lousy radio.