Rattling on the Ragged Edge - Part 1 - Feeding the Need for Speed

Maybe it was the era we grew up in, maybe it was our genetic coding, and maybe it was just plain opportunity; but long before the movie “Top Gun” came out, Barry, Jeff, and I surrendered to the need for speed. 

American automobiles had begun their march towards more muscle and more speed shorty after World War II when in 1947 NASCAR was founded.  In 1949 Oldmobile debuted the first 300+ cubic inch V8 with dual overhead cams producing 135 horse power in a 3580 lb car, or 26.5 pounds vehicle weight for every horsepower.  In 1951 Chrysler introduced the Hemi engine.  Chevy introduced the small block V8 the same year Barry was born (1955).

In 1957 the year between Jeff’s birth and mine, Chevy introduced Fuel injection; Ford and Studebaker introduced Superchargers; and Pontiac had both factory fuel Injection and factory equipped “Tri-Power” or three two barrel carburetors on a six cylinder production engine.


But even more “mind molding” was the true explosion of American Muscle that was launched in 1964 When the Pontiac Grand Turismo Omologata’s (GTO) 389 cubic inch, 3 double barreled 348 horse powered ground pounder tipped the scales at an exciting one horse power for every 8.9 pounds of vehicle weight, only to be outclassed 6 months later by the lean 1964-1/2 Ford Mustang that tipped in at an amazing one horse for every 7.8 pounds of vehicle weight.

And the race was on.

By the end of the 60s; 5 short years later, classics like the 351 Cleveland 385 stock HP, and the Dodge 426 Hemi 425 stock HP had dropped that vehicle to horse power ration down to 6.5:1.  Several American manufacturers were turning out V8s with an astounding 500 plus cubic inches.  For you Rice rocket fans, you’d need an 8.5 liter engine to equal the size of those monsters. 

And while cars today run faster quarters than back then, it’s only because the engine armament race slowed way down in the early 70’s thanks to the federal government’s imposing tighter fuel restrictions, and then even more in the late 70’s with the first of the environmental laws.

At the same time out on the salt flats of Bonneville there was a tremendous battle raging over the fastest car on earth, primarily fought out between Craig Bredlove’s Spirit of America and Art Afron’s Green Monster. 

In 1962 Craig Breedlove became the first man to exceed 400 miles an hour behind the wheel of the Spirit of America. In early ’63 the Green Monster took that record away with a 409 mph run.  A couple months later, Spirit was back on the track and grabbed 434 mph; late ’63 rolled around and Afron ran a 458 mph run, only to be eclipsed a week later by Bredlove at 522 mph.  1964 saw Green Monster run a blistering 536 mph, Spirit answered with 552 mph; in summer Green Monster appeared to slam the door with two successive 571 mph runs (that is covering over 837 feet every second).  August slide by, and September, then just before the end of the racing season, Craig Bredlove laid down a stunning 600.6 mph (just shy of 900 feet per second) run to stamp Spirit of America firmly in the history of land speed racing.


And while Bonneville had become dominated by jet powered vehicles, the local Drag Race scene was alive with poor boy’s home built thunder machines.  Straight 6 engines and V8’s ran side by side and door to door.  There were 8 or 9 ¼ mile dragstrips within an hour’s drive of our small town and at those strips, along with the local boys, men like Don Garlits came calling.  “Big Daddy” Don Garlits had a run of speed records in the 60’s becoming the first man to exceed 170 mph from a standing start in a ¼ mile run.  Then he doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down being the first man to exceed 180, then 200, 240, 250, and 270 mph in standing start ¼ mile tracks. 

And all the while Garlits, Afron, and Richard Petty proved that this was all about the driver and the skill, and not the money.

Garlits blew up a transmission on a slingshot dragster that took off part of a foot, and during the winter break invented the rear engine dragster design that remains dominate today some 50 years later.  And a year later he was the first to start running alcohol instead of gasoline. 

Afron powered his Green Machine with a wounded jet engine he bought from a scrap dealer after a bolt had been sucked through the blades.  He pulled out the broken blades, threw them away, and reassembled the engine; balancing it by distributing the remaining blades with empty slots all without manuals or drawings, which were all classified at the time.

And while Richard Petty ultimately seemed to print money, he started out dragging a car around on a trailer from event to event and ultimately racked up any number of records on dirt tracks, figure 8s and asphalt ovals.  Petty started 1,184 races in his career, pole position on 127 races, finished over 700 races in the top ten drivers, won 200 races, 27 in one year alone, and won both the Daytona 500 and the NASCAR annual championship 7 times.
 
Yep, the times we grew up in were filled with the throaty roar of machines that existed only to turn oil, gasoline, and rubber into sound, speed, and black stripes on the asphalt.  Machines that existed not as the engineer designed them, but as the mechanic breathed life into them.


Just as Barry, Jeff, and I were beginning to wrench on cars of our own, those monster muscle cars of the early 60’s were being sold off as affordable used cars.  Ten years old, and 100,000+ miles and they were in need of much more repair than the average working man wanted to have waiting for him every weekend.

The seals were worn, the parts were loose, the bolts were rusty, and the windows leaked.  But for a few hundred dollars and some sweat and parts, a boy could have a fire-breather of his own to fuel his dreams of real speed; limited more by his effort than his wallet, and an inspiration to every other boy in the valley.

Is it any wonder then that we gravitated to the now clichéd “need for speed”?

Barry’s first car was a 1960 Ford thunderbird.  Native 360 cubic inch displacement, rolled off of the assembly line faster than the police cars of the same year.

Jeff’s first machine was a 1964 Chevy Impala with a native 327 that ended up over-bored, shaved, and fast with a capitol F.

And a few months before I turned 14 years of age I bought a 1935 Ford PU and paired it with a ‘48 Mercury flathead V8.  It was thirty five years later in the early 1980s when Detroit came out with a production engine that pound for pound developed more horsepower than that ’48 Merc.  And coupling that powerful, torquey flathead to a three speed and 4.11:1 rear end meant that truck flew from 0-55mph faster than anything else around. 

Is it any wonder that we carried pocket knives to school back then?  If we hadn’t, our finger nails would have always been greasy.

© Copyright 2017, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Thanksgiving Stories

It was Thanksgiving.

I remember it clearly, although my brothers probably won’t.  Of course, I had more invested than they did at the time, so that is to be expected.  They had both already moved out of the house, and thus were immune to any reprisals, I hadn’t, and wasn’t.

The family was gathered at mom and dad’s house and the air was filled with sweet scents and the easy joy of togetherness.  Uncle Dave and dad were off tending to something or other that obviously had not interested us boys.

Our Grandmother Betty (Dake) Vandermolen had come over with Uncle Dave and was happily sitting at the kitchen table, with my brothers and I, chatting with mom as mom rapidly worked her way through a shopping cart pile of ingredients to make enough pies, rolls, mashed potatoes and what not for dinner to sate three growing young men, with a few leftovers to nourish the four full adults.

Barry had been talking about his job, but somehow drifted on into a story about some stunt we boys had pulled “back in the day”.  He was completely at ease.  The hair on the back of my neck began to rise.

Jeff joined in, and soon not only were the stories flying fast and full, but the hair on my arms were standing straight up.

Remember, they were out of the house and immune to punishment…I was still living under mom and dad’s roof.  And the stories while related with a fair amount of laughter and mirth, had some unacceptable undertones to them that led me to fear for the long-term consequences, especially since my last “tanning” had yet to completely heal.

Now I can’t tell you exactly which, or how many, stories were related around that table; might have included the one about out blacking out all the street lights in town, might have been about waterballooning cars, jumping off the back of the high school grandstands, blasting for fish in the rock quarries, acquiring several thousand Christmas lights, or any number of other stories that centered on blood, broken bones, and or explosions of one size or another (intended or not).

After each story, and sometimes during them at critical points in the story, Grandma Vandermolen would expostulate; “No, you didn’t” with incredulity.  Her eyes wide, he sense of appropriate obviously abused.

This went on for some time, with more and more grandmotherly interjections as each story became a bit more outlandish than the previous (owing in large part to Barry and Jeff realizing that they had no risk I bleakly suspected).  At one point I recall worrying about Grandma’s neck.  After-all, I knew for a fact that she hadn’t exercised it as much in any given month lately as she did that afternoon listening to stories.

Finally, after one particularly eventful story, Grandma turned to our mom and said; “Jan, tell me they really didn’t do that”.

At which point my mother turned around and faced us all with “that look”, took a deep breath and let it out in a long eloquent sigh, and replied: “Well, this is the first I am hearing about this, but I’d bet they really did!”

©Copyright 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

World’s Greatest Disciplinarian – Part 2

Yep, whether it was belts or pencil dots on the wall, our dad was an expert at getting his point across.

Truth be told, he was far less concerned with punishment than he was about learning and developing internal discipline in order to be able to live up to your responsibilities.  But he understood the value of using italics and underscores when writing to communicate, of using volume and inflection when speaking, and his physical disciplines were effectively just that.

Many of dad’s common punishments were considered even back then as just “urban legends”.  But at our house, they were real and carried with them the impetus to take some time, perhaps sitting uncomfortably on an extra pillow, or holding hands under cool water to ease the friction blisters worked up between shovel handle and palms, while thinking about the situation that got us thus afflicted.

Early on I remember Dad checking our “bed-making skills” by bouncing a quarter, and if it didn’t bounce high enough, we were given the opportunity to practice some more.

Dad went through a phase of sending us to our rooms without dinner, until he realized that we didn’t mind and (foolishly) never whined about being hungry.  Of course, each of us had stashes of food in our room as preparation for “hard times” knowing that it was a question of when, not if, we would need them.  My personal storehouse consisted of several cans of Shasta Soda, some dried jerky, dried apricots and peaches, a dozen or so either molasses or chocolate chip cookies, a pint jar of apricots, and second pint jar of peaches, a small jar of honey and usually some pilot biscuits.     

Dad had been a Sargent in the Army, and I guess he hadn’t gone to tactical school, because he never seemed to understand that to impact the enemy, you have to cut his supply lines.


We three boys were always in a hurry to get where we were going.  Because of that, out the front door, down the sidewalk and around the corner took far too long for us if we were headed north and so, we would head out the back door and jump the fence.

Dad was none too fond of our fence “jumping” activities, cause truth be told, we never really jumped a fence in our lives.  Sure, we went over lots of fences, but all of them suffered in the process.  Either the upright 4 x 4s got yanked, tugged, and pushed, or the fence boards got kicked, scuffed, and shoe-marked, and of course the odd redwood plank would end up split, or broken after a train of hands, feet and ample muscle heaved up and over the supposed barrier.

One night he’d had enough, so he sentenced us to stand on a top rail for 45 minutes.

Imagine the framework only of a fence.  4 x 4 uprights cemented into the ground, rising 5 and a half feet.  Top and bottom runners in place, with the top rail consisting of a 2 x 4 positioned so that the 3-1/2” side was faced up.  No upright fence boards yet, just top rails and uprights.

Each of us boys was stationed in the middle of a top rail, half way between the upright posts, feet at 90 degree angles to the line of the top rail.

Balance is rather sketchy in a situation such as that.  Your heels are where you get your “solid stance”, but what with the spring in the top rail, one needed ones fine adjust toes involved.  So we all ended up with the balls of our feet and part of our toes on the top rail.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been up there with those other two nit wits, but fact was, there were three of us critically dependent on a dynamic system.  Every time one of the others would shift his weight, my section of top rail would bounce, and I would struggle to keep my balance.  Dad was inside where it was comfortable and warm, we were out where it was uncomfortable and if “unwarm” isn’t an Adverb, it really should be.

I’ve never understood what was going through Dad’s head that night.  It is impossible for me to see how he thought that session was going to end up, but I do know how it ended.  One of the nimrods I’m related to got to bouncing up and down.  His motivation (unlike Dad’s) I instantly got.  His goal was to knock the other two of us off of our top rails.  Likely had this half-baked though that Dad would hear the noise as boy one and boy two fell screaming to separate face plants, come outside, and give Brother one “time off” for still being on this top rail while the other two of us were slacking.

Only problem with the plan was that all three of us had climbed fences together.  We’d climbed trees together.  We’d thrown ourselves off of the same bleachers, houses, and cliffs.  We were in short all pretty nimble and quick.  Thus we both rode out the resulting bounces and wobbles.

So he ramped up to higher bounces, and higher bounces, until on coming down from his highest bounce yet, his top rail simply split in two dumping him on the ground.

And while Dad may not have been clairvoyant enough to anticipate this little hiccup in his disciplinary plan, it was quite apparent that he immediately recognized the error of his ways on responding to the caterwauling coming off the ground.  Brother two and I were thankfully paroled.  Not because of any “good behavior” on our part, more because Dad didn’t want to rebuild the remaining two sections of fence as well. 

And I can tell you stories of fence painting, being “loaned out” to weed neighbor’s yards, writing essays and any number of other regular “behavior modifiying activities” that Dad employed, but ba far, his favorite was having us dig holes in the yard.

It was part of the reason my brothers and I always assumed someone forgot to tell Dad he had been discharged from the army.  What with “Quarter-toss” bed checks, spit-shined shoes every week, and Dinnertime verbal exercises, Dad was an adherent in 3’ x 3’ x 3’ holes dug in the rocky soil of the back yard.

The one thing I can say about the hole digging endeavor was that once you got a bit of experience, cutting a clean right angle cornered, level floored hole out of the ground got much easier with practice.  It might be that was because our hands grew strong.  It might be that our arms and backs grew powerful. It might be that all that sieving to remove rocks made the ground softer.  It might be all three.

All I know is that in my life, I have never met another individual (other than Barry or Jeff, who could handle a shovel with the efficiency and exactitude as I can.  Turned out to be good practice, I’ve had to dig cars out of sand pits when they sunk to the frame, I’ve had to dig any number of backpack trails in rocky hillsides, and light pole bases, and what not.  And I’ve had to re-sculpt the ever failing slope behind my house to keep the house from being thrown off of the hillside it is perched on.

All because my Dad was the World’s Greatest Disciplinarian.

 

© Copyright 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved