My Life with Cars, Part One...
May. 24th, 2005 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kedamonoWherein I explain my origins and my early encounters with Cars and Public Transportation and the emotions therein engendered...
I was born in Michigan, home of Detroit City and the Big Three. If you didn't drive a car then you were a loser.
I never bought into that mindset. I didn't get my own personal car, till I was 24. Before that I used my parent's car. My brother, on the other hand, went through cars like they were water.
Me, I hated driving, the mind numbing drone of the highway, the gridlock of the freeway. When I went to CDI, (see my tirade on Education and Technical Trade Schools), I was routinely caught in gridlock, sitting there in the summer heat, the fumes rising up and polluting the air.
I hated it. I'd rather take the bus... but you see, this is South East Michigan, who's lifeblood was automobiles. Where if you drove an import to the Ford Factory, it would be at the very least, keyed by everyone who saw it. Buses existed, they were for the dregs of society, people so poor that they couldn't afford a car.
There was no trains, at least when I was busily commuting to school from Lake Orion. There was one that used to run from Pontiac to Detroit, I know, because I rode on it on it's last day.
My Mom arranged a day in Detroit for us, and made it extra special by having us ride the train. It was the last train to Detroit from Pontiac and it died with no ceremony or fanfare.
We sat together, old style, facing seats. The toilet emptied out on the tracks, I checked, and ran through mostly industrial areas of region. We spent a couple of hours in Detroit and then came back. This was in the early 70's. From what I can tell, no one has been able to bring it back.
Why? I'd claim the Grand Car Company Conspiracy, but the truth is that no one rode it enough to make it viable. Everyone was in their car.
The region was and is car crazy. Woodward Ave, also known as Widetrack, is so wide that at some intersections, to turn left, you have to turn right, pull into a special left hand U-turn, and then end up facing the direction you want to go in.
When I went back for my mother's funeral, I was shocked by the size of the streets. Six lane streets in areas that shouldn't see that much traffic! That's something I don't want to see in Seattle.
People in that region of Michigan are car crazy. Even people on welfare had to buy the latest Caddy. A high school acquaintance of mine is the perfect case study. Let's call him Mr. Car Nut.
Mr. Car Nut went out and bought a new Trans Am special edition, '76 edition and blew the engine in the first week. In the next three months he went through four engines. Then new Trans Ams came out with new tail lights and front end. So he decides to ruin a the body of a '76 Trans Am special edition and cobbles on a new rear end and front end.
Then he goes and blows three more engines and two transmissions.
The amount of money he spent on that car was staggering, and most of it was his father's as best I could tell. He finally got cut off and he went to work at K-Mart where he went on to help raise prices by stealing auto stuff, radios and other things from the place to deck out his cars with. Yes, with his new job, he got himself another car. Did he sell his Trans Am? No. Insanity, that's all it was, insanity.
My brother, however, had to buy his first car, so he spent about $200 bucks and bought this black car that was held together by rust, a prayer, and the doors being shut. How he got it home must have been a story and a half. He spent more time working on that sucker than he did driving it.
Me, I was either in the basement writing Basic programs for my Trash 80, or over at my good friend Bruce McMeans trailer plotting the end of the world as we know it, or another round of DnD. I was not at all interested in the mechanical bits of a car whatsoever.
That changed when I got my first car, a 1963 Belvedere...
[to be continued...]
I was born in Michigan, home of Detroit City and the Big Three. If you didn't drive a car then you were a loser.
I never bought into that mindset. I didn't get my own personal car, till I was 24. Before that I used my parent's car. My brother, on the other hand, went through cars like they were water.
Me, I hated driving, the mind numbing drone of the highway, the gridlock of the freeway. When I went to CDI, (see my tirade on Education and Technical Trade Schools), I was routinely caught in gridlock, sitting there in the summer heat, the fumes rising up and polluting the air.
I hated it. I'd rather take the bus... but you see, this is South East Michigan, who's lifeblood was automobiles. Where if you drove an import to the Ford Factory, it would be at the very least, keyed by everyone who saw it. Buses existed, they were for the dregs of society, people so poor that they couldn't afford a car.
There was no trains, at least when I was busily commuting to school from Lake Orion. There was one that used to run from Pontiac to Detroit, I know, because I rode on it on it's last day.
My Mom arranged a day in Detroit for us, and made it extra special by having us ride the train. It was the last train to Detroit from Pontiac and it died with no ceremony or fanfare.
We sat together, old style, facing seats. The toilet emptied out on the tracks, I checked, and ran through mostly industrial areas of region. We spent a couple of hours in Detroit and then came back. This was in the early 70's. From what I can tell, no one has been able to bring it back.
Why? I'd claim the Grand Car Company Conspiracy, but the truth is that no one rode it enough to make it viable. Everyone was in their car.
The region was and is car crazy. Woodward Ave, also known as Widetrack, is so wide that at some intersections, to turn left, you have to turn right, pull into a special left hand U-turn, and then end up facing the direction you want to go in.
When I went back for my mother's funeral, I was shocked by the size of the streets. Six lane streets in areas that shouldn't see that much traffic! That's something I don't want to see in Seattle.
People in that region of Michigan are car crazy. Even people on welfare had to buy the latest Caddy. A high school acquaintance of mine is the perfect case study. Let's call him Mr. Car Nut.
Mr. Car Nut went out and bought a new Trans Am special edition, '76 edition and blew the engine in the first week. In the next three months he went through four engines. Then new Trans Ams came out with new tail lights and front end. So he decides to ruin a the body of a '76 Trans Am special edition and cobbles on a new rear end and front end.
Then he goes and blows three more engines and two transmissions.
The amount of money he spent on that car was staggering, and most of it was his father's as best I could tell. He finally got cut off and he went to work at K-Mart where he went on to help raise prices by stealing auto stuff, radios and other things from the place to deck out his cars with. Yes, with his new job, he got himself another car. Did he sell his Trans Am? No. Insanity, that's all it was, insanity.
My brother, however, had to buy his first car, so he spent about $200 bucks and bought this black car that was held together by rust, a prayer, and the doors being shut. How he got it home must have been a story and a half. He spent more time working on that sucker than he did driving it.
Me, I was either in the basement writing Basic programs for my Trash 80, or over at my good friend Bruce McMeans trailer plotting the end of the world as we know it, or another round of DnD. I was not at all interested in the mechanical bits of a car whatsoever.
That changed when I got my first car, a 1963 Belvedere...
[to be continued...]
