My first real car was a 1965 Chevy Impala SS. It was a deeper red than Dora’s fire engine, has a motor big as Texas and four on the floor. It came to be known as The Beast.
That was in the summer of 1969 and I had been at Jeff Sate College for almost a year. The “no pass, no play” rule had been invoked by my parents after the first quarter of school because I had spent too much time partying and not enough time on the books. So I had to go to work at night for a manufacturing company that painted the Coke logo on bottle caps.
The job meant I could no longer use the Jeff State bus as a means of transportation, so I went looking for a car. My dad and I headed out early on a Sunday morning to Jasper, which even then was Auto Mecca.
I’m still amazed that my dad signed with me for The Beast. When I cranked that baby up you could hear the windows rattle in the showroom and see salesmen grabbing for coffee cups to keep them from vibrating off their desks. Dad walked around the car, kicked the tires and looked down the side from rear to front as if he were sighting a gun. He was trying to see if it had been wrecked.
An hour later the deal was done and I was rolling east through downtown Jasper towards Sloss Hollow. I seem to remember calculating the MPG rating on The Beast and it was about three gallons to the mile. The car was too cool for air conditioning. When I drove The Beast with all four windows rolled down because it looked better that way.
My future wife Jilda didn’t like that aspect because she had long flowing blonde hair, and after five minutes with those windows down it looked as if she’d been in a hurricane. But when the car was parked, she looked like a million bucks.
The Beast was made of steel. The only plastic in that car was the door locks and the covers over the gauges and radio dial. Like most cars built in that era it would mortally fly. I used to drag race at all the popular racing spots, which included Little Vine and Brian Road on the east end of Walker County.
There wasn’t a lot for kids to do then, so we spent a lot of time hanging out at the Mug and Cone in Sumiton, Sherer’s in Jasper or in Carbon Hill.
Kids parked perpendicular to Highway 78 and sat on the hoods of their cars watching the show. On Saturday night, it was like cool cars on parade. All the kids would clean and polish their rides and drive in circles around the hangouts.
Cars were rated not only on looks, but also sound and how quickly they could burn a set of tires off the back. Laying down rubber would often vault an inferior-looking car over a better-looking one. This scoring technique gave less-fortune drivers who drove ugly cars, a chance to attain “status,” if they had a knack for tuning and performance.
I installed an eight track tape player in The Beast. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard a better sounding stereo in a car.
When I look at cars today, the thing that strikes me is that they don’t seem to be as stylish as they were in the ‘50s and ‘60s. It seems like American automakers are spending more time trying to imitate the Japanese and the Koreans than doing things the American way – which is designing and building good cars that are dependable and look great.
Wake up, Detroit. Build something remarkable, like you did back in the day.
