Disinterred...

[lloyd3]

Got the car out yesterday. Not surprisingly, it went from late Winter to Spring almost overnight.  The sun came out and the winds died down and.... I was even well-rested from sleeping a little late on Saturday morning(not a common occurrence here). So after a big breakfast (the boy is home from school & mom goes all-out) I set to digging out all the accumulated debris and pulling off the cover. The battery was pretty-well down, but it got the car out to where I could jump it and then prime the carburetor. It caught on the 3rd turn (just about when the battery was all done). The valve guides must be showing some wear because it was quite the smoke bomb for the fist few moments and it didn't really settle down until I'd driven it for about 5-10-minutes when it finally began to idle and run more smoothly. This car is 55-years old now and 10-years post restoration. It's never going to be confused for a trailer queen again, but....it's still darn fun to drive and that's saying something (considering that I've always been 10-years older than it).

[b5blue]

  Good job!  How long had it sat?

[lloyd3]

B-5: Let's see...5 months.  But...snow here tomorrow again evidently. Springtime in the Rockies, eh?



Too damn-many shoes and boots in my garage.  Talk about a slip, trip & fall hazard(!), and thank-goodness for that now-ancient trickle-charger.  Had to put it on deep-cycle later to fully charge the battery.



After a day's fun, back in her slip. Wiped down, lubed and oil changed.  I've gone back to work (got bored after my son went off to collage) so maybe this year she'll get a tune-up and some new rubber?

[b5blue]

  88* today for me.

[lloyd3]

88 would be too-hot for me. I'd adapt, I suppose, but more moderate temps are the goal here. The price you pay for warm winters is too-hot summers (& even Spring?).  How does one keep an old 440 happy (& it's driver) in 88-degrees?

[b5blue]

  A bit more than half of our 28 year trip the 70 Charger was my construction truck. Trunk stuffed with framing tools (A 6 1/2 foot level fits inside the trunk.) After the drag race engine bent some push-rods about the same time the now ex started acting up the Charger sat out a few years in storage.
  Now patched up and retired I just flip the A/C on and drive.  You spend winter mostly inside and I spend summer in A/C!  (88* is still kinda cool more heat is coming.) 

[lloyd3]

You could fill a book with divorce and old car stories. The fact that I'm still able to sit in my car and look out the window plays in my mind every time I drive it now.  There's nothing easy about marriage (sigh!) and a high-percentage of them fail, and for all sorts of reasons. Most of the time the car goes when the wife goes (that certainly would have been the case with mine).  Nobody likes to get older, but for women that seems to be twice as hard as it is for men (old and sweet is a rare combination, eh?). I also get accused regularly for living "in the past" and she's right, I do. But when your past was a good-one (even a great one)....why the hell not?  I really don't like what I see going on in the world now, so I retreat into the past (just every once in a while!) to give myself a break. I also hunt and fish for largely the same reasons (& I mostly use old really-stuff there too)...it's clearly an escape from the modern world and modern life. I've long-since quit pretending that I'm going to change anything in the world anymore, so I just do what I've always done (and I sincerely look forward to doing lots more).  Driving a classic car on a nice day is a rare treat and one that I hope to keep doing for a long time still. I even sort-of like electric vehicles now.... because that means more gas for my "one-car environmental disaster", right? (You shoulda seen the plume of smoke this thing barfed-out when I started it Saturday!)

[Kern Dog]

You could fill a book with divorce and old car stories. The fact that I'm still able to sit in my car and look out the window plays in my mind every time I drive it now.  There's nothing easy about marriage (sigh!) and a high-percentage of them fail, and for all sorts of reasons. Most of the time the car goes when the wife goes (that certainly would have been the case with mine).  Nobody likes to get older, but for women that seems to be twice as hard as it is for men (old and sweet is a rare combination, eh?). I also get accused regularly for living "in the past" and she's right, I do. But when your past was a good-one (even a great one)....why the hell not?  I really don't like what I see going on in the world now, so I retreat into the past (just every once in a while!) to give myself a break. I also hunt and fish for largely the same reasons (& I mostly use old really-stuff there too)...it's clearly an escape from the modern world and modern life. I've long-since quit pretending that I'm going to change anything in the world anymore, so I just do what I've always done (and I sincerely look forward to doing lots more).  Driving a classic car on a nice day is a rare treat and one that I hope to keep doing for a long time still. I even sort-of like electric vehicles now.... because that means more gas for my "one-car environmental disaster", right? (You shoulda seen the plume of smoke this thing barfed-out when I started it Saturday!)

I agree with most of this except that "Marriage is hard".
I don't think that is always true. It isn't hard for me. I married a woman that is independent enough to support herself so her interest in me isn't based on dependence, it is based on desire and mutual affection. She has interests of her own like I do so she isn't reliant on me to entertain her....or vice versa.

I do agree that the "climate" of the world is heading in the wrong direction and that these cars can be a portal to simpler times where societal roles were clearly defined and sensible. I too enjoy looking back more than looking forward. The music was better, no question about that.

[lloyd3]

KD: To be precise....(& I don't want to sound weaselly here) I didn't exactly say that "marriage is hard". What I did say was that "there's nothing easy about marriage" and what I was referring to by-that was the "big-work" part. As a successfully-married man yourself, you'll likely know what I'm talking about... the constant need for give & take, the perpetual effort to maintain an ongoing sense-of-fairness (and a sense of security(!) which is a big thing for all women [& that's not sexist-thing to say]), and the deep commitment to keep-on making it all work. There aren't many "days-off" from being married, when you think about it, or at-least there shouldn't be.  Divorce is so destructive, and in so-many ways. The financial part is only the very surface of it. Just look at the children of any divorce and tell me you don't see the effects.

My wife doesn't exactly "love" my car, and there are probably some components of it that she actually resents (it's clearly a symbol of my pre-married life, possibly a symbol of earlier-relationships, and even some foolish decisions/attitudes, [I did grow-up in hillbilly hell after all]) but, she's been a good sport about it. It's probably the single most-frivolous possession I've ever owned, really (when you consider all the lost-opportunity costs involved over the years). It helps that our son is nuts about it too, but...she's been very fair about it and still is.  With that said, I am sorely missing the "sweet" part of it these days. 

Men can age like fine wine, women mostly age like milk. That is, perhaps, a little sexist.