The grass on the other side

It seems that the direction with these things may ever evolve. To start with the desire to have the lowest, loudest most head turning car around.

To having one that you can simply just hop in and drive it out to the coast for a weekend. Nice and shiny in all the right places, looks good at a stop lamp or the grocery store parking lot.

I think that's enough for a lot of people, to have a nice car, for some it's an investment that never sees anything below sixty degrees. Others it's just to have aquired that thing of there youth.

For me it's no different, the quest for that thing of my youth, however there has always been the two. The two that draw me in polar opposite directions.

Those Germans with their finely tuned six cylinders, precise steering and ever evolving design philosophy. While in the other hand, the loud and brash opulence of fifties Americana, the sounds and smells of each flout like the bouquet of summer flowers.   

You can't always have your cake and eat it too. The grass may not always be greener on the side, you just don't know that until you get there.

I like my grass, plush and green, impractical and insane, healthy and irrelevant to most of the world around it. It's my dream to bring these two countries together some seventy odd years later.

Some big metal monster, screaming and snarling, with as much attention to detail and refinement as my untrained eye can bring. 

The day

It was a  sunny, a day like any other day, that's how these things are supposed to start right? Actually it was a sunny day, however that day would prove not to be like any other day.

To begin again, I guess that would sorta make this the second beginning? I had only a few months earlier loaded up my life's belongings and moved across the state, love is pretty powerful like that. With a new environment and surroundings came new stories of cars wasting away in garages.

I'll admit I was slow to respond as I didn't have much to offer if the story turned out to be true. After some time I felt I was in the position to investigate these wispers.

I had been told repeatedly that the fable I was being told was nothing of the sort. That although I had been to this house on numerous occasions having not seen anything to indicate that what lies beneath my feet.

The teller of the story was unquestionably dependable, also the resident was without question in nature. Two people I still find as important parts of my life to this day.

However I just couldn't bring myself to believe that my "white wale" quietly lurks beneath me. I finally brought myself to build the courage to find out for certain if this story would have a happy ending or continue to be the one that got away.

So in the middle of the afternoon I stood in a dark garage in the basement of a Seattle home in one of it's more vintage neighborhoods. As the car cover was pulled back and the dust lingered in the air I stood wobbling on weakened knees trying to catch my breath.

Lying at rest in beautifully checkered black lacquer sat "the Black Pearl" as it's come to be known. A real steel fifty five Chevrolet two door had top, with a messaged three fifty and a four speed.

After several years of sitting it took some coaxing and a little smoking of the clutch to get it out on the street. Once the hands stopped shaking and the clutch cooled down, it was time for our maiden voyage.

Inception

Not to long ago I wrote about the freedom that came from the first two wheeled adventure machine, and how it changed a little boys world.

That same adventure continued to escalate like most do. Right up until the opportunity to increase the adrenaline made it's self available. Going fast is an addiction that is not easily calmed.

The freedom to go where you want and as fast as you can is quickly learned on a bicycle. It's interesting that no one ever comes along to tell you that if you go to the top of the hill behind the house, give a good push and hold on for your life, that your little eyes will be oped.

It's almost like an infant that automatically knows how to nurse the minute they arrive. Something is just there, call it the devil on your shoulder, saying, " You can do better..."

For some that first near mis is plenty, for others (author included) that first near mis, knocked out, woke up in a ditch was just the tip of the iceberg. That voice still lingered "You can do better..." and the speed increased, along with the risks, even after thirty days laid up in a hospital bed that voice never wavering.

Many have had similar stories with similar results. So it's not surprising that when I came across the all motor monster known as the 1974 Yamaha mx-80 it was met with considerable resistance from people charged with my health and well being.

However, cunning, decent, and a few lies later, I had aquired this machine of mayhem. And those does that had been opened by the freedom of the bicycle got kicked clean off there hinges.

The sound of that two stoke motor pinging away in the driveway was a calling card to the world that I was coming, "and hells coming with me!"

And the first forays into customizing and maintenance had begun. The little monster ran but didn't go, so I would just start it and push it down the street as fast as I could. Then the magical missing item that kept it from going and allowed me to spent my thirty dollar birthday money on it was aquired.

And I'm certain my farther still wonders where that twenty two millimeter socket went to. It went to a great cause,  it went to the inception of my addition to speed, steel and tinkering with things.

I should feel bad but I dont.

What's in a name

What's in a name? I have a name, a sur name, everyone I know has a name for the obvious reasons.

What's in a name of a car? How many cars get the wrong name? I know of several, some I've named myself before truly knowing the personality I'm dealing with. But how do we come to choose these names for an inatimate object. 

We choose the names of our children based off of family heritage, names from television shows, cool names we've looked up in a book in a panic as the due dates inch closer. We name the dog Indiana, cause it's just cool.

But what about the car? The steel and plastic,  rubber money sink that sits in the garage or next to the house. How do you come up with the names of Gunther and the Turky, Nadine?

I know the Black Pearl is fitting of the sixty year old car that  sits in my garage. And the why it's fitting, it's not just the color.

I have this strange belief, maybe more of attitude towards the world around me. I fly the skull and cross bones on my car. It's not that I think I'm above the law or that the rules don't apply to me. To the contrary.

I consider myself a pirate of the open roads so to speak. Mine is not to brake laws and pillage villages, but to embrace the freedom of living by a code of the concrete and steel network that criss-crosses this great land.

I feel that the curves and crests where set forth for our enjoyment. The straight two lane black top that stretches farther then the eye can see through the high desert of northern Nevada. The short river roads of central Washington's backroads that twist back and forth until you have to pull over and catch your breath.

And that sign on the right that states the recommended operating speed, is not for me. It's not for the others like me.

The bears have there stickers so they know not to pull each other over. I have that black flag and the ominous image it conveys, so I call my vessel after the feared pirate ship.

Watch your mirrors, cause through the fog comes the Black Pearl.

The Spirit

I don't know all the names of the men that competed, changed tires or filled gas. I only know the legacy they left behind by the images that filter through my days.

Those Trans Am pony wars of days gone by were well before my time, although being born at the end of that era it would be a long time before I looked at a car with that kind of anger.

However the aforementioned image lingers constantly, the '68 camaro of Mark Donohue drifting sideways through a left handed sweeper at the long forgotten Riverside raceway or the clips of race footage during the hay day of Seattle international raceway that can thankfully still be found in the web of the world.
It's those images and the feats of near inhuman strength and determination that remind me that although I've chosen to follow the god's of speed with an unlikely chariot. My quest is attainable, I can achieve that hang upon the edge if I'm willing to push for it. There where men that achieved great hights without all the technology money can buy.

And as I've been rather forthcoming with the fact, that like most enthusiasts,  I am a man of meager means. Those chassis and brakes that rest on every other page of every magazine on any stand will never find there way onto the Black Pearl.

Instead we will be taking a page out the history books to achieve our end. Because I'm sure someone told Smokey Yunick how he should go about following the crowd to get his speed, and how certain I am that he scoffed at the suggestion.

I'm gonna take all that old knowledge out into the hills and put it up against all the new technology and see what happens. I'm sure that customed off the shelf newstalgia ride will have an issue running against some of those old souls.

Credit to the original photographer for being there, unfortunately I can't praise you more as I'm unable to find your name