What Does Your Garage Sound Like?

Last week was Memorial Day, orignally known as Decoration Day, a day of rememberance for the Fallen.  It was established after the Civil War and expanded after WWI.  In 1971 Memorial Day was moved from May 30 to the last Monday in May.  My mother and my aunt never made the tranistion and continued to call the holiday Decoration Day.  Their tradition for that day growing up was a family trip to the cemetery.  Although the meaning of the holiday was never lost on me, Memorial Day was the beginning of summer.  Last days of school and beach weather were a heartbeat away.

Memorial Day weekend and its celebration of summer included lots of music.  When I was a teenager, that meant the radio.  It was very difficult to listen to records anywhere but in the house.  Some time in my early teens it became a tradition for the local radio stations to do a "countdown" theme over Memorial Day weekend.  I don't know if it was because of Casey Kasem or it took less staff in the control booth.  Either way I still remember working in the garage as we listened our way up to No. 1, (I can't get no,) SATISFACTION.  Of course it was!!! 

This Memorial Day weekend was a countdown on satellite radio; The entire list of Beatle songs played in order of their recording date.  It was great, from "Love Me Do to the rooftop concert and "Get Back".  Even in Junior High I was a car guy and I liked car songs.  The lyrics weren't sophosticated and they had a great beat.  I remember when the Beatles car song came on the radio, "Pay For My Chrysler".  My brother had to spoil it for me in a very insensitive way.  It's "Paperback Writer", you idiot!  You'll never listen to that song in the same way again, trust me.

Even as a kid, the first switch I turned on when I entered the garage was the light, the second was the radio.   It is still literally impossible for me to work in the garage without music playing.  I will admit, these days it is usually via my iPhone to a speaker or ear buds.  You'd think listening to a playlist with your favorite songs would be as good as it gets, but not so.  There's no anticipation.  The second time you hear the playlist you know what's coming.  It may be a great song, but knowing what you're getting for Christmas is just not the same as the surprise.

A song can immediately transport me back to a specific memory.  It's no surprise that lots of the memories involve cars.  For example, every time I hear Linda Ronstadt's "Differernt Drum", I'm back in 1966 painting my 1929 Model A (which I still have) on a rainy night.  Do you have songs that bring back vivid car memories?  Another one for me is driving back home from Chicago along I-80 in my brand new 1971 Super Beetle, with FM, to the sound of Wings and "Amiral Halsey".  I've got a bunch of them.  One more for me in 1978 is driving my red Porsche 924 along the beach next to LAX with Fleetwood Mac's "You Make Lovin Fun" pounding at near full volume.  Been there, right?

So I'd have to say that my sound track is the Beach Boys.  It was popular when I was young and fell in love with cars.  I connected with their songs and they were written about things I knew, about where we lived.  Colorado Boulevard was not just a gimmick in a song but the route we cruised on the weekends.  "Four speed, dual quad, positraction and 409 horsepower was bad ass in 1962. "Pink Slip" wasn't a euphemism.  In California the pink copy of the registration papers was the title.  You can't really appreciate the irony unless you know about little old ladies from Pasadena.  My mother and aunt would dress up to go shopping in Pasadena.  No sound is a better score for my younger years than the Beach Boys.  I know I danced to "Surfer Girl" and others in the gym, but I can barely remember the girls as cute as they were.  When I hear "Help Me Rhoda" I can smell my '57 VW.  

What defines your sound relationship with cars? It doesn't have to be music.  It could be sports.  It could be talk radio.  I don't know anyone who drives or works on cars in silence.  What is the sound track of your garage?  Is there one particular genre or can it be anything?  Do you still listen to the radio or are you digital?

Popular music today just doesn't have the appeal as it once did.  I'm perfectly fine with that.  It's a generational thing.  Nowadays, when I'm in the garage the radio is tuned to the country oldies station.  It's an aquired taste.  I don't think there are many things so inexorably linked in this country as music and cars.  I love them both.

A Child of the American Road

 

This is the earliest memory I have of automobiles.  It was my Dad's 1930 Model A Ford truck.  This was the truck he used when he moonlighted as a gardener at the apartments we lived in.  I remember it vividly, but the old black and white snapshot sharpens the memory even more.  I was about 2 1/2 years old in the front seat and my brother about 5 in the back when this picture was taken.

My Dad was a philanderer although he never ever cheated on my Mom. He loved! cars.  He was attracted to cars the way some men are attracted to women.  He wanted to be around them.  He wanted to interact with them.  He fantasized about them.  He flirted with them.  He wanted to put his hands on them.  He was the automotive version of a womanizer.  If there was a car anywhere around, he was interested.  Whether it was a sleak beautiful European type or a more basic domestic model, it was not important.  His formal mechanical training came from the U. S. Army where he served in the South Pacific during WWII.  My parents honeymoon was a car trip from Michigan to Florida.  WWII had just ended so tires and gas were still in short supply.

I took after my Dad at an early age.  When I was just a pre-schooler I would sit on the fender of a car my Dad was working on.  The parts facinated me.  Spark plugs were especially interesting.  As he cleaned and gapped the plugs I would count them and line them up, ready to be put back in.  Even before I had a driver's license, Dad and I got a 1929 Model A Fordor sedan that I still have today.

Our first extended car trip was a family vacation in our new 1956 Chevrolet station wagon.  We visited Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, Lake Tahoe, Donner Pass as well as Muir Woods State Park and the Santa Cruz boardwalk.  From that trip on I never took a road trip I didn't like.  In 2017 my brother and I drove the entire Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, retracing the route our parents took on our move from Michigan to California in the early 1950's.  It was a "bucket list" item we both had longed to complete.  Our only regret was that it went by so quickly.

This fall my wife and I will join friends on another bucket list trip.  Driving our 1931 Model A Pickup truck through the Arizona and Utah National Parks in conjunction with attending the Model A Ford National Tour.

It has been said, "The apple does not fall far from the tree.".  I am unapologetically a child of the road. I am very grateful for two things that allow me to enjoy this incredibly beautiful and interesting "American Car Nation".  First, my parents for instilling in me a "love of the road".   Second, but even more important, the priviledge of having a wonderful woman who enjoys it as much as I do.

Happy Motoring.