I have been off the grid for a while.  Jackie and I covered quite a bit of land and sea in the space of two weeks.  We traveled from Atlanta to Newark, from Newark to Bar Harbor (Bah Hah Bah), Maine, from Bah Hah Bah to Halifax, Nova Scotia, from Halifax back to Newark, from Newark to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Panama City and finally, from Panama City back to Atlanta.  Whew!  The trip seems twice as long when written out.  We were on a cruise ship the first leg, from Newark to Bah Hah Bah and Halifax.  And yes, I was completely off the grid.  I intended to turn my phone off completely, which I did, then realized on the shuttle from the parking lot to the airport that I had left it in the van.  

There is something completely liberating about being totally off the grid.  No phone, no lights, no motorcars.  Well, maybe not that stark on a cruise ship, but you get the picture.  This was our birthday trip.  Our first day at sea was on my birthday, June 26th.  The return day at sea was Jackie’s, June 30th.  We had a great time, especially in Bah Hah Bah.  We got off the ship at about 7:15 am and spent the day exploring the wonderful little seaside New England town.  My friend Jules, a native of Maine, had advised us that the mornings and evenings were cool, even in the middle of the summer.  And she was right, too.  It was in the 50’s in the morning, pretty chilly.  It may have cracked 80 in the early afternoon, but the temperature was already starting to drop when we headed back to the ship around 5:00 pm.  We sailed from Bah Hah Bah to Halifax.  Quite honestly, there isn’t much to tell about Halifax except for a 3 hour bus ride, less than an hour in Peggy’s Cove, and an obnoxious tour guide in a kilt.

Upon returning on Saturday, we received a call from Jackie’s son Lars, daughter-in-law Carrie and grandson Gavin.  They were in Panama City and invited us down for the Fourth.  So, Sunday morning we rearranged our bags for a trip to the beach and headed down I-85 South.  Along the way, Lars called and asked if I would be interested in going out fishing on Monday.  Hey, twist my arm.  I figured there were worse ways to spend a Monday afternoon.  We had a great day, the fish were biting, and the stringer Carrie and I are holding in the picture above is just one of the two we brought home.  Her dad cooked them that evening in an iron skillet over a camp stove on the tailgate of his pickup.  You can’t get any fresher seafood than that…

On Tuesday, the Fourth, we paddled up Holmes Creek in Vernon, Florida.  Yes, paddled.  We weren’t in the SS Minnow, on a pontoon boat or in a ski boat.  Jackie and I were in a canoe.  And not just any canoe.  A canoe that Carrie’s dad has owned since he was twelve years old.  Jackie said it looked like a submarine from The Great War.  There were specific instructions not to let anything happen to the canoe.  And they put the two of us in it.  Lars, Carrie, Gavin and the others were in kayaks.  Holmes Creek is a wide, shady fresh water creek winding through the Panhandle with a spur that ends at Cypress Spring.  Cypress Spring is absolutely beautiful.  It is pictured here.  The water is crystal clear and very shallow to the spring itself, which is about thirty feet deep.  The deep blue water of the spring is so clear you can see the bottom.   

I had not been in a canoe since 1983.  My father had bought one when we bought our property on Fairfield Lake.  It didn’t even have seats in it, you had to kneel.  I liked it so much, I threw it in as part of the deal when I bought my VW convertible.  Jackie had not been in one since sometime in the Nineties.  She got in one with her Dad, and he kept rocking it trying to scare the daylights out of her.  He succeeded.  So here we are, two people whose river experience was limited to going down the Chattahoochee in an inner tube and a Ramblin’ Raft Race float, canoeing down a creek as big as a river covered with downed trees and various other obstacles.  I pointed out to Jackie that I had earned a canoeing merit badge in the Boy Scouts.  I don’t think it eased her mind any.  It certainly didn’t ease mine.  I swear at one point I heard banjo music.

We negotiated the first obstacle fine, a small tree lying across the creek with passage against one bank.  No problem, nothing to this, right?  Yeah, right.  A little bit further up we got turned sideways and stuck nose first on the bank.  Lars had to come rescue us.  That was mere child’s play compared to what happened next…

We came upon a large tree lying across the creek which the top and limbs had been cut off to allow passage.  I don’t know why they didn’t cut the rest of the stupid thing up, but that’s beside the point.  Lars and Derrick, Carrie’s burly cousin, instructed us to go to the left around the tree.  We tried, but instead hit it headlong and were pushed sideways against the tree by the current.  Lars and Derrick paddled up to help, and suddenly the canoe pitched left at about a thirty degree angle with the edge inches from the water.  Lars and Derrick both grabbed hold of the side of the canoe and I was pushing against the tree with all I had.  My head was stuck under the stump of a limb that had been cut off, and Derrick said, “I know it might be hard because of the tree, but scoot as far to the right on the seat as you can.”  I managed to do so.  Jackie moved to the right as well and somehow, I don’t know how but somehow, the canoe righted and with a big push we got free and around the tree.  Did I mention the cooler and the food were in the canoe as well?

Shaken but undaunted, Jackie and I continued our journey with Lars towing us on a rope from his kayak and we made it to the spring safe and sound. We both paddled around the spring in the kayaks, and became somewhat more familiar with steerage of an open faced manually propelled water vessel.  We did require help getting back in the canoe for the return trip, however, and one kind hearted lady walked us back to the deep water of the creek and pointed us in the right direction.  

We did much better on the return trip, except when we hit a motorized jon boat.  Technically, he had the motor, so he hit us.  And he really didn’t hit us, he pushed us off in the right direction before contact.  He was very gracious.  I think it was obvious we really didn’t know what we were doing.  When we got to the landing there was a line of boats waiting to put out.  So, as we waited across the creek for our turn, one of the good samaritans who had helped us back in the canoe at the spring rode up and said, “Hey, you made it and didn’t turn over!”  “Don’t be so sure, we’re not on dry land yet,” I replied.  We all laughed, but it turned out to be prophetic.  When our turn came, we paddled across the creek, got sideways, had to be pulled up to the landing and almost capsized getting out of the canoe.  But we had made it.  I’m sure Lars and Carrie let out a huge sigh of relief seeing the canoe upright, intact and the top side dry.  I know I did.  Jackie now wants to go to Hard Labor Creek State Park and take kayak lessons… Still Cruisin’!  –J.     

Last Saturday was Graduation Day for many of the high schools around the country.  Today, I’m going back to 1973.  June 6, 1973, to be exact.  Graduation Day for the DeKalb County Board of Education.  For roughly 275 of us at Walker High School, it was the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.  My friend Melanie Bagley posted a copy of the cover of our Commencement Exercises Program earlier this week.  I remember it well.

My parents were building a house in Clayton County, and while the house was being built we had moved from Gresham Park to Spanish Trace Apartments on Flat Shoals Road.  For an eighteen year old boy, moving into a predominately singles apartment complex with two pools and a clubhouse was like moving to Heaven.  The last two weeks of school for the Seniors was a breeze.  We would show up for Baccalaureate and Graduation rehearsals, take any tests or exams that needed to be taken, and then were pretty much free to go.  That meant, for my friends and I, hitting the pool at Spanish Trace.

For graduation, we walked in pairs alphabetically.  However, due to a glitch in the grading system that was entirely my fault, I was left out of the original lineup.  The glitch was cleared up, but the lineups were already set.  One of the guys in the “B” section had graduated early and decided not to walk.  So, I was inserted into his place, walking next to Tony Bailey and in front of Melanie and Randy Bagley.  After the Graduation Exercises had concluded and we were all officially alumni, a group of us guys piled into Doug Holmes’ SS396 Chevelle, went to The Pumphouse in old Underground Atlanta, and drank “several” pitchers of beer.  Back in our time, Graduation was on the last day of school, which in 1973 was on a Wednesday.  This was because of make up days due to the infamous ’73 Ice Storm.  Hence, we all had to be at work or, in Doug’s case, a job interview the next morning.  I was working for the DeKalb Board of Education as a Custodial Engineer.  Meaning, I was on a crew that went around cleaning schools, mostly stripping and waxing floors.  It was part time at night, but kicked in to full time the day after Graduation.

I worked on the crew with a bunch of guys who went to Shamrock High.  I remember walking into the Service Center for work the morning after Graduation.  I was a little fuzzy, but one of the Shamrock guys, Jeff Moore, was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall.  He had his head in his arms, which were crossed around his knees.  He lifted his head when I walked in and weakly said, “Hey, Jimmy.”  He looked like he had been run over by a truck, his eyes resembling a Tennessee road map.  I asked him what happened and he mumbled something about a Graduation party and two in the morning, then buried his head back in his arms.

We were working at an elementary school in Clarkston that week, and when we got there, our first order of business was emptying the trash cans.  On our first trip to the dumpster, Jeff got one whiff of it, shook his head, staggered off and tossed.  He then stumbled back into the school.  We went back inside and were working when a teacher showed up with Jeff, whose face by this time was a mixture of red and green.  “He was in the bathroom,” she said to Mr. Peel, our boss.  “He’s sick.”  She was genuinely concerned, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that he was hung over like a dime store Indian.  She took him into the infirmary and put him on one of those fold up cots.  The remainder of the morning, we would walk by and all we could see was his feet hanging off the edge of the cot.  Poor Jeff had come to a sorry pass…

We woke Jeff up at lunchtime and went to eat at Dairy Queen.  Mr. Peel, a Navy man who apparently had experience in such matters, tried to get him to eat a hamburger and drink a vanilla shake.  The milkshake, he explained, would coat his stomach and the grease in the hamburger would soak up the alcohol.  Jeff took a nibble of the burger and a sip of the milkshake, shook his head and pushed them away.  After lunch, Mr. Peel dropped us all off back at the the school, then took Jeff back to the Service Center and sent him home.  The next day Jeff showed up at work, fresh as a daisy and ready to go.  “I felt better after I went home and got some sleep,” he said, ” I went swimming later on in the afternoon.”  The human body is an amazing thing.

When my daughter Dana graduated from Georgia State University in 2006, she told her mother and I that she wasn’t going to walk in the Graduation Exercises.  “It’s crazy,” she said.  “It’s two hundred and fifty dollars for the cap and gown alone.  And there are about a three hundred of us graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree, so we don’t even walk.  They just tell all of those graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree to stand.  We stand and then sit back down.  They don’t even call our names.  And, they give you a rolled up piece of blank paper then mail your degree to you later.  Take that money and throw me a big party.  I want a luau.”  Never ones to shy away from hosting a social gathering, we complied.  And it was a grand party, indeed.  One of Marie’s friends in the printing industry, Larry, ran a catering business on the side.  Larry and his partner would bring a whole pig to your party, cook it, provide all of the side dishes and do all of the clean up.  It was also very expensive, so Marie struck a deal with him.  Larry cooked the pig, and the morning of the party Marie met him at the intersection of I-285 and Bouldercrest Road.  She picked up the pig, brought him home and we placed him on the dining room table, right in the middle of everything.  We then surrounded him with fruit and veggies, and placed the various side dishes around the table.

Of course, my buddy Barry and I had to take it a step further.  We put a pair of cheap sunglasses on the pig, a lei around his neck, stuck an apple in his mouth and named him “Snuffles.”  My Aunt Louise walked in the house, took one look at Snuffles and freaked out.  She wouldn’t even go into the dining room because he was in there.  Nor would she go out onto the deck because, in order to get there, you had to walk through the dining room.  She sat in the front room the entire party with her back to Snuffles and would not even look at him, let alone eat any of him.  I’m sure that if it weren’t Dana’s Graduation party she would have left immediately.  And, of course, my Uncle Tub had to take it a step further by snapping off one of poor Snuffles’ ears and eating it in front of her.  My nephew Jason’s girlfriend at the time was not particularly pleased about a whole pig being on the dining room table either, but she wasn’t as freaked out as Aunt Louise.  I’ve got pictures of Snuffles somewhere in either the albums or the archives.  I’ll have to dig them up and post them.  Snuffles, stretched out on the table, sporting his shades and lei, eating an apple, a real party animal… Still Cruisin’!  –J.  

The only thing I ask of you all is please do not laugh and point at me.  I am a serious artist, and I realize that this is a step outside of the box.  This is not digital art, nor a car portrait, a dog, a cat, a bird, a flower or a still life.  This is a re-creation of the first thing I ever remember drawing.  

I was four years old when I drew the original picture.  I know I was four years old because I remember showing it to my mother when we lived in our house in East Atlanta.  We moved from East Atlanta to Gresham Park in December of 1959 when I was four.  Four and a half in kid years, to be exact.  The original was done on paper in crayon, I’m sure.  This re-creation is acrylic on canvas.  I’m also fairly certain that the worm wasn’t in the original, and I think that the leaf rotors may have been turning.  I do remember that the reflection on the apple was there, made to look like a window.  I also remember that when I showed it to Momma, her daughter said to me, “There’s no such thing as an apple helicopter.”  Momma shushed her, thus quashing my first negative critique.

At the behest of the CEO of Still Cruisin’ Automotive Portraits and AquaHue Artworks, I have been… well, “urged” to post this painting and to write about it.  Not wanting to get fired or be subjected to “positive counseling,” I have complied.

I have been told that I have a very good memory.  That may be true, but a friend of mine said last week that she went upstairs to get her shoes, rearranged the bookshelf and then came back down without the shoes.  That is the story of my life.  I can remember what I wore to school on April 14, 1971, I just can’t remember where I put my car keys five minutes ago.  Or what day it is.  Or why I walked into a room.  But I do remember drawing this picture as a kid.  Jackie once asked me if I remembered my trip down the birth canal.  I told her that I actually did, and that it was kind of like one of those water slides at Lake Lanier Islands where you go down the tube before flying out and landing in a pool of water. 

I had memory issues as a child as well.  I could memorize and recite entire Bill Cosby albums verbatim.  But I couldn’t remember my homework.  My mother used to ask me how I could remember Bill Cosby but couldn’t remember my math homework.  Well, math wasn’t funny.  You couldn’t make the entire class laugh by standing at the blackboard doing mathematical equations…

Kidding aside, I realize that I am blessed with a very good memory.  I am thankful that I am able to remember a number of the details about growing up in Gresham Park, and that I am able to share those memories with those who were there with me in that wonderful place and time.  I used to get in trouble a lot in school for, among other things, drawing in class.  There were really not that many creative outlets in grammar school at that time.  We went to art class once a week.  Same with music class.  Same with the trip to the library.  My imagination would take over and WWII fighter planes, ships, super heroes, motorcycles and dragsters were much more interesting to me than long division.  To this day I really can’t do long division.  Thank goodness for calculators.

My friend, Butch, and I drew comic strips all the time in grammar school.  He did “The How Come Dept.” and I did “Grin and Laugh At It.”  Butch was apparently able to channel his attention span, however.  He made all A’s, graduated from Georgia Tech and became an architect.  I kicked around before landing at DeKalb Technical College and earning a diploma in Commercial Art.  While I was at DeKalb Tech, one of the required classes was Business Math.  It was practical math and we were allowed to use a calculator.  I made an A in the class.  I remember getting the report cards in the mail and running down the driveway yelling, “Momma!  Momma!  I got an A in math!  I got an A in math!!!!”  I had never gotten anything above a C in math my entire life.  Momma cried.  I went out and had a pitcher of dark beer to celebrate.

In the tenth grade I took Geometry, for some reason.  Try as I might, I just could not grasp it.  I think the teacher, Miss Jackson, gave me a D out of the goodness of her heart.  Which is funny, because I use geometry all the time now in my day job and in my art.  But it is applied geometry, not abstract geometry with theorems, isosceles triangles, negative reciprocals and other such jabberwocky. 

After graduating DeKalb Tech, I went to work for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, then got into Macintosh computers and graphic design.  I learned Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Quark XPress, all the programs.  I became obsessed with the computer and quit conventional drawing and painting altogether for about fifteen years, concentrating instead on digital art and design.  However, I never really forgot about the pencils and the brushes.  Art was always such a big part of my life.  I suppose that’s why The Good Lord put me on the planet.   I started painting again in 2006 and will continue to do so for the remainder of my trips around the sun.  Often times, painting from inspiration.  Other times, painting from imagination.  And sometimes… painting from memory!  Still Cruisin’! –J.

Happy Mother’s Day to all Moms everywhere!  I hope you all have a day filled with love, family and happiness.  And, in honor of Mother’s Day and moms, I’d like to feature some of the rides of moms I have known…  

The first car I remember, my Momma’s car, was a turquoise and white 1959 Ford Galaxie.  It was a police interceptor my father bought from one of the firemen he worked with, and was as big as a yacht.  It had an automatic transmission back when automatic transmissions were the exception rather than the rule.  Years later my father told me it had a 352 V8 that, being an interceptor, was not your everyday off the line 352.  He said he got it up to 120 mph once and it got there pretty quick.  I can assure you my mother was not in the car.  If Daddy got over 60 mph, she would start having heart palpitations, flailing her arms, stomping on the imaginary brake with her right foot, screaming and, on some rare occasions, cursing.  She was from Dallas, Texas and at least once a year we would drive out there.  I don’t know if you’ve ever driven from Atlanta to Dallas at 60 mph, but it’s not a trip, it’s a career.  I think I actually went through puberty on one trip.  It wasn’t until I was an adult and drove her home after my grandmother’s funeral that I fully understood what my father went through on those trips.  All I will say is that he was a stronger man than I.

One day when I was about eighteen or nineteen, I picked my mother up from work, which was close to our house. We were sitting at the red light at Highway 42 and Rex Road in my black ’69 Mach 1.  When the light turned green, something came over me.  I stomped the gas and dumped the clutch.  The car sat still for a couple of seconds boiling the tires, then took off down the road burning rubber with an ear piercing scream.  Momma was beating me on the arm and hollering at me to “SLOW THIS DAMN THING DOWN!!!!,” which for her was very strong language.  I hit second gear and the tires barked again, the four barrel carb growling and the glass packs roaring.  About a mile down the road I slowed down and we rode home in silence.  I think she was in shock and unable to speak.  When we got home she got out of the car, slammed the door and stomped unsteadily into the house in a huff.  About a half an hour later, she came into my room.  She had regained her composure and could now talk.  She told me she wasn’t going to tell my Daddy, but hoped I didn’t drive like that anymore because I could get a ticket, lose my license and Mr. Jones would have to cancel my insurance.  I apologized, gave her a hug, and assured her that I would never drive like that again with her in the car.     

My grandmother on my mother’s side learned to drive at eighty years old in a 1967 Rambler American after my grandfather passed away.  My grandmother on my father’s side, Mema, did not drive.  But, my Pepa drove a blue ’57 Bel Air.  Mema always rode in the back and let me ride shotgun.  I loved my Mema and I still do, and not just because she let me ride shotgun.  Looking back, she probably let me ride up front because behind the wheel of a car, Pepa would scare the hell out of the devil himself.  

My Aunt Louise drove a pink and white Buick Special, a car I would love to have today, then graduated to a gold Chevy station wagon.  About five years before she died, she walked into Heritage Cadillac and paid cash for a brand new CTS.  My Aunt Barbara in Dallas had a Chevy station wagon in the Sixties before graduating to a Cadillac as well.  Aunt Lottie drove a Buick Riviera in the Seventies and let me drive it on a date when I was seventeen.  I felt like a king and made sure we rode through McDonald’s and Dairy Queen so everyone could see us.

A lot of my friends mom’s drove cool cars and awesome cruising vessels as well.  Tommy McMillan’s mom had a beautiful dark blue ’66 Mustang with a white vinyl top.  Pat Sconiers’ mom, Joyce, drove a dark green ’72 Mercury Marquis Brougham that was the size of a football field.  My boyhood friend Andy Shook’s mom had a blue ’65 Galaxie, preceded by a blue Falcon station wagon.  Mrs. Shook liked blue.  Jackie’s mom drove a Cadillac, as did Cissy Blalock’s mom.  There were a lot of Cadillacs around.  There were more, but four are enough for the blog…

Debbie Moore’s mom drove a white ’66 T-Bird, which Debbie inherited and drove as a teenager at WHS.  My Aunt Ann had a beautiful 1969 Chevy Caprice, which was the first car I remember seeing with power steering.  My buddy Chip Hunt’s mom had a silver 1970 Impala which we drove to prom, double dating our junior and senior years.  Those were the days before you rented a limo for prom.  In the Impala, we thought we were in a limo.  A lot of our friends doubled up for prom squeezed into Opels and VWs.

My lifelong friend Nan Ennis, Stacey and Dennis’s mom, drove a silver 1968 Dodge Dart Fastback.  It had a slant six engine in it that I don’t believe you could have torn up if you ran battery acid through it and attacked it with a sledge hammer.  She let us drive it all the time.  After the Dart she drove an endless succession of VWs that were bought and sold by her husband Tommie, including the family’s nineteen seventy something model blue and white bus.  For her birthday a few years back I gave Nan a 1/32 scale diecast VW model.  Afterwards, she sent me a card thanking me and added “that damn VW wouldn’t start again!”

None of my friends’ moms rode a motorcycle.  Times were different back then.  Moms didn’t ride motorcycles.  Not on the front, anyway.  A lot of moms drove pony cars and sports cars, though.  I have already mentioned Tommy McMillan’s mom’s Mustang.  Don, Bobby, Darrell and Wanda Campbell’s mom drove a yellow ’69 Camaro with a black vinyl top and a stick shift.  Jan Stowe’s mom, Dale, drove a ’66 Sunbeam Alpine which eventually became Jan’s.  But, the all time prize winner was Doug and Deborah Holmes’ mom, Barbara.  She drove a ’78 Silver Anniversary Edition Corvette.  Now, THAT’S a cool mom!  

Speaking of sporty cars, my friend Dennis Bryant’s dad bought an Army surplus Jeep back in the Sixties to take to the family farm in Greensboro, Georgia and use for deer hunting.  He painted it red.  The Jeep needed a new top, so he asked Mrs. Bryant to take the Jeep to the upholstery shop.  Mrs. Bryant, by the way, was a vivacious and gregarious German woman with a beautiful smile and a rich, wonderful accent.  She introduced me to wiener schnitzel and German potato salad at a very young age.  When she brought the Jeep home from the upholstery shop, it had a white vinyl top with red fringe all around.  I remember Mr. Bryant bringing it over to our house and saying, “Now, won’t I look like a dern dude riding this thing out to the woods to go hunting?”  I saw Dennis a few years back at a high school reunion, and we were laughing about the “surrey with the fringe on the top.”  He said the Jeep is still in use at the farm, minus the bling.  Army Jeeps were built to last.

To Our Moms, thank you for life, for raising us and for teaching us life’s lessons.  To the Mothers Of Our Children, thank you for our sons and for our daughters.  Thank you for loving us, for marrying us and for putting up with us.  To Our Grandmothers, thank you for your love, your kindness, your nurturing and your wisdom.  To the Mothers Of Our Grandchildren, thank you for giving us the precious gift and the joys of a third generation.  Happy Mother’s Day to all Moms everywhere!  We love you all, and today is your day.  Enjoy… Still Cruisin’!  – J.                    

It’s the time of year again for one of the enduring rituals of spring and summer.  No, I’m not talking about baseball.  I am referring to lawn care.  We spend hundreds, sometime thousands of dollars and spend countless hours each year establishing, maintaining and grooming our acre of sod.  At the risk of sounding sexist, men are usually the ones who tend the turf, although that is certainly not always the case.  Particularly with my next door neighbor, Sue.  A retired Air Force Colonel, she spends most of her waking hours tending to her lawn and garden.  And it shows, too.  Her yard is absolutely beautiful, worthy of a spread in Southern Living, Country Gardens or Birds and Blooms.  

People generally fall into one of three categories when it comes to lawn care.  There are the ones that are obsessive, the ones that only do what they have to do, and the ones who simply do not do anything at all.  The obsessive ones are the ones that cannot stand one weed in their yard.  Growing up, a friend of mine’s Dad fell into this category.  I would pull into their driveway and he would be down on his hands and knees, crawling about the yard pulling up weeds.  That’s a little over the top.  The easiest and most normal method is to apply the Weed & Feed, water it in and let time, Mother Nature and chemistry take care of the rest.  

Then there are those who only do what they have to do.  They might plant a little seed every now and then, but weeding and watering?  Forget it.  The weeds are great!  They’re green.  Mow ’em and they look like grass!  Bare spots?  So, what, I’ll run over them, kick up a dust storm and run off the mosquitos!  Rocks?  Run right over them too.  Who knows, I might sling a few and take out a squirrel or three!  

And finally, there are those who simply do not care.  If they ever cut their grass at all, it’s because they finally have to, if they can even cut their grass.  Eventually their yard gets to a point where Agent Orange couldn’t even kill all the vegetation.  Who knows, after defoliation, they might even discover a couple of lawn mowers or a car that was pulled into the yard and forgotten six or seven years ago.  If you are really lucky, someone like this lives right next door to you.  Some, however, have money and some semblance of pride, and will at least hire a lawn service to perform the tasks of care and maintenance.

I fall somewhere in between Categories One and Two, leaning more toward Category One, but stopping short of crawling around on my hands and knees pulling weeds.  I plant a new lawn every year, keep my grass cut, my hedges trimmed and my plants pruned.  I always keep seed in the feeders for the birds.  I even put ears of corn out for the squirrels.  My driveway and walkways are swept clean.  I pick up the limbs in my yard and keep the leaves at bay with my leaf blower. 

Speaking of the leaf blower, that brings us to the heart of the subject of this week’s edition of Car Talk.  You can’t do proper lawn care without the proper equipment.  And, as I said earlier, men generally do the bulk of the turf work.  So, you know what that means.  We can’t just have a Murray push mower or an Ozark Trail leaf blower.  We have to have the biggest and the best and, guys being guys, we may wind up with a hot rod like the one pictured here.  My leaf blower is like a flame thrower.  I’ve never used a flame thrower, but I’ll be willing to bet my leaf blower is just as much fun.  It’s one of the back pack type, a Stihl BR500 with a 200 mph velocity that could blow all of The Three Little Pigs houses down, including the brick one.  

How I came about owning this piece of gardening equipment is rather interesting.  When I worked nights, especially on the weekend rotation, I would get home at around 8am Saturday morning and hit the sack.  Of course, what happens on Saturday mornings all across America?  Yard work, of course!  Try to sleep with a 200 mph velocity leaf blower running right outside your bedroom window.  I slept with ear plugs in my ears and a pillow over my head.  I came to curse the man who invented the leaf blower, even stating as such on social media, which drew a backlash of negative comments.  I went out and bought a Black and Decker lithium powered string trimmer at Lowe’s.  The package also included a leaf blower with a velocity of about 7 mph.  My neighbor Sue fell out laughing when she saw me using it.  She called it my “Barbie” leaf blower.  I limped through the season using it, all the time suffering the slings and arrows of ridicule, mostly from myself.  On Christmas Morning, Jackie brought in a huge box with a bow and my name on it.  I opened it, and there inside was the Stihl BR500 leaf blower with the 200 mph velocity.  It was a great gift, and made clearing the yard of the fall leaves a much easier task.  I refuse to be That Guy, however.  I vowed never to use it before 10am and never, never before 1pm on Sundays.  I still use my “Barbie” leaf blower, however, for touch up and the stairs.  It is much less cumbersome climbing and cleaning stairs with a small hand held blower than with a 200 mph behemoth strapped on your back.

The lawnmower itself is the one piece of that lawn care hinges upon.  Without a lawnmower, you simply cannot cut grass.  I learned to use a lawnmower as a boy, like most of us.  I used to mow my grandparent’s yard in East Atlanta with one of the old manual push type mowers.  Mind you, theirs was a very small yard.  At home, mowing the lawn was one of my weekly chores.  I do not remember the brand, but we had a silver push mower my father bought at Ace Hardware in Gresham Park, and it lasted well over ten years.  I could not wait to learn how to use it, and felt like a real grown up when I learned to gas it up, crank it and cut the grass all on my own.  

And, guys love to work on lawnmowers, too.  I have seen men pay twenty dollars at a yard sale for a junk lawnmower and take it home with a smile on their face.  Somehow we just love the challenge of small gas engine repair.  One year at the Christmas Parade in McDonough there was a group of guys in the parade on Snapper lawnmowers.  These weren’t your average Snappers, either.  They were painted red, orange, blue and hot rod yellow.  Some had wheelie bars on them, and they all had loud, souped up motors.  The ones with the wheelie bars would pop the front wheels up to almost a ninety degree angle and ride down the road on the two back wheels.  Boys will be boys…

In the early Nineties I bought a Murray 85 push mower and used it for ten years.  In the end, I had to take off the air filter and prime the carburetor to get it started.  Eventually the magneto went south, so it would run for a while and conk out.  I would have to wait about ten minutes for the engine to cool down, then crank it and continue.  Sometimes I would have to prime the carburetor again to get it going.  All this in the middle of July.  Marie kept encouraging me to buy a new one, but no, I said, there’s no sense spending the money while this one is still running.  Finally, one blazing hot Saturday I cut the back yard and the engine conked out just as I was finishing up.  I still had the front yard to go.  I pushed it up to the front porch where Marie was sitting having her toddy.  As I came to a stop in front of her, one of the front wheels fell off.  “Well, that ought to tell you something right there,” she said.  I had to admit that life was finally over for the Murray 85.

When I got home from work on Monday, Marie was there with a young man from a local outdoor power equipment company.  He was unloading a brand new John Deere L100 lawn tractor.  I was speechless, thrilled and excited to climb aboard and go.  I cut the front yard and then cut the back yard again for good measure.  

That was fourteen years ago.  Today, the old John Deere is still functioning, but I can see the end on the horizon.  The seat is torn.  Getting it started these days is kind of like preflighting an airplane.  I first unplug my battery maintainer and close the hood.  The start safety system had to be bypassed a few years ago, so to crank it now I have to turn the key to the on position and then use a toggle switch to turn the engine over.  I then fire up the seven horse Briggs and, while the engine is warming up, pump up the rear tires, both of which have a slow leak.  I then pull out of the basement and into the yard.  The deck belt has a tendency to slip off when the engine cranks, so I pull into the yard and test the blades.  If the belt has slipped off, I turn the engine off and climb under the mower.  I loosen one of the pulleys, put the belt back into place and tighten the pulley.  Then I fire the tractor back up, climb aboard and engage the blades.  I set the deck level, put it in gear, let off the brake and ease out the clutch.  Off to cut grass again… Still Cruisin’!  –J.        

The way I met my friend Larry is a pretty interesting story.  My father owned a 1960 Chevrolet Apache pickup truck that I’m convinced could have and may still survive a nuclear blast.  Faded brown, inline six, three on the tree.  Fleetside longbed.  Weighed close to five thousand pounds.  Seat belts?  Hah.  Padded Dash?  Please.  Radio?  Surely you jest.  Air Conditioning?  Stop, you’re slaying me.  It looked similar to the one pictured here, only not quite as rough.

He picked me up in it from football practice one afternoon.  Spring practice to be exact, March of 1970, probably about 5:30 pm.  We pulled out of the school parking lot, through the intersection of Bouldercrest Road and Key Road, and down to Mary Lou Lane to take a left and head home.  A motorcycle was approaching in the oncoming lane.  A 1969 Honda Scrambler similar to the one pictured here.  A beautiful bike, pristine.  No match for a five thousand pound Fleetside.  We waited for him to pass before turning, and as he got closer, it became apparent the cyclist was looking down to his right and did not see us.  Unbeknownst to my father, his left front was slightly over the line, and the Honda struck the front end of the truck at about forty or forty-five m.p.h.  I can still vividly see the rider rolling across the hood of the truck right in front of me.  I actually think he was wearing a silver helmet.  We both jumped out of the truck to check on him, and he assured us he was okay.  The Scrambler, however, was not.  Mangled and bent, it lay in a heap in the middle of Bouldercrest Road.  The Fleetside, of course, suffered no damage whatsoever, and if it did, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.  The main thing was that the young man riding the bike was unhurt.  He was about five years older than me, blonde and on his way to work at Kroger.  He told us his name was Larry Kagelmacher.  “Kagelmacher,” my father replied.  “Is your father’s name Herbert?”  Larry told him yes.  Of course his father’s name was Herbert.  There just weren’t that many Kagelmachers on the south side or anywhere in Atlanta, then or now.  It turned out my father and Herbert knew each other from East Atlanta, and were brothers in the Masons.

When the police arrived and assessed the situation, the officer asked Larry if he needed medical attention.  Larry said he did not.  I do remember at one point he asked my father what was the color of his truck.  “I don’t know, what would you call that… P-ss Brindle?” he replied.  The officer laughed, then wrote him a ticket for crossing the yellow line.  Then he proceeded to write Larry a ticket for “not avoiding an accident.”  Even my fourteen year old mind realized at the time that that was just wrong.  The poor guy just went head to head with a Chevrolet Apache on a three hundred pound motorbike.  A ticket for “not avoiding an accident” was adding insult to injury, even if the only injury was, thank goodness, to the bike.  

What happened next just shows what a different time and place in which this occurred.  After issuing the citations, the officer asked if he should call a wrecker.  “No, we can just load the bike up in the back and we’ll take him home,” said my father.  Larry said that was fine so the four of us lifted the remains of the Scrambler into the back of the truck.  Larry had told us earlier he lived on Bouldercrest Road in Cedar Grove.  “I’ll ride in the back,” said Larry, “when I bang on the top our house is the next one on the right.”  The officer left and we headed down Bouldercrest.  When we got to Cedar Grove, Larry banged on the top, and we pulled into the driveway.  His dad Herbert came out  and we told him what had happened.  Larry reiterated that he was not hurt, and we unloaded the Scrambler from the back of the truck.  Daddy and Herbert talked about East Atlanta and some of the goings-on at the Mason Lodge.  Larry went into the house to call work, and we climbed into the truck and headed back to Gresham Park.  In so many ways, due to “One Call That’s All” and the ones that are “For The People,” this simply could not have happened today.  First of all, the officer would not have just taken Larry at his word that he was okay.  An ambulance would have to have been dispatched to verify as such.  Secondly, a wrecker would have to have been called.  Today, an officer would not have even given us the choice, let alone help us load the bike in the back of the truck.  And finally, we never would have been allowed to take off with Larry in the back of the truck.  He would have to have ridden in the tow truck, strapped in safe and sound with a redneck road hog wrecker operator at the wheel, while we made our way home to Rollingwood Lane.

Fast forward forty years.  Larry married Jackie, I married Marie and we lived our lives.  Larry and Jackie divorced in the mid-nineties, but remained and still are very close friends.  Marie passed away in ’09.  Jackie and I had started dating in the spring of 2010.  Her mother had spent a week in the hospital, and I went out to visit Meme on the day she came home.  Larry came to visit as well, and we both came to the front door at the same time.  After Jackie got over the initial surprise (she was actually speechless, if you can believe that) of us walking in together, she introduced us.  Larry stuck out his hand and said, “Hey, Jim, Larry Kagelmacher.  Etheridge, Etheridge… that name sounds familiar.”  I shook his hand and said, “Hey, Larry, you and I actually met on Bouldercrest Road back in 1970.  I was in a brown Chevy Apache and you were on a Scrambler.”  He immediately started to laugh, looked down, shook his head and said, “Oh my Lord.”  “You do know that that wreck was entirely my father’s fault,” I said, “He was over the center line.”  “Yeah, and I got a ticket for Not Avoiding An Accident.  What was the deal with that?”  We both laughed and agreed that it is indeed a small world.  We hadn’t seen each other since that evening on Bouldercrest Road.  But there we were, standing in the living room of Jackie’s mom’s house… Still Cruisin’!  –J.   

This is Masters Week.  Being a born and bred Georgia boy, and from a golfing family, to me The Masters is A Tradition Like No Other and Masters Sunday is a National Holiday.  My family used to gather at my and my late wife Marie’s house on Masters Sunday for pimento cheese and chicken salad sandwiches, beer, wine and cocktails.  We would put five dollars each into a white Masters porkpie hat and draw the names of every player that had made the cut.  Then, we would sit down at 4:00 pm and watch the tournament.  Whoever had the name of the player that won would win the pot.  And the winner of the tournament would get a green jacket, a lot of cash and his name etched on the big silver trophy and in history. 

That being said, in this edition of Car Talk we are going to look at another golfing tradition; The Golf Cart.  Or, buggy, as it is called across the pond.  When you play a round in the U.K., you don’t get a cart, you “hire a buggy.”  I’m sorry, but “buggy” just doesn’t sound right to me.  A “buggy” is something you push around the grocery store.  Of course, they also call a dump truck a “tipper lorry.”  Just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?  I mean, let’s face it, “dump truck” just sounds more heavy duty than “tipper lorry.”  My grandsons had a big yellow Tonka they kept at my house.  They called it their “dump twuck.”  I may be wrong, but if they were out playing in the sandbox with some of the neighborhood kids and called it a “tipper lorry” as opposed to a “dump twuck” they probably would have gotten beat up.  But I digress…

The first golf carts gained widespread use in the mid Nineteen Fifties.  Most were electric.  Companies like Cushman, E-Z-Go, Club Car and even Sears and Roebuck produced them.  Gas powered models first appeared sometime in the late Fifties.

Today, golf carts are used for any and all things, a truly functional utility vehicle.  Many communities are now built with the golf cart as the primary mode of transportation.  Peachtree City, Georgia was one the first, employing a one hundred mile network of paths.  Residents can get to homes, shopping centers and parks via the paths that wind through the wooded scenery.  McIntosh High School even has a parking lot for golf carts.  

When I was a child, my Great Uncle Leonard, who lived on a farm in Carl, Georgia, suffered a debilitating stroke.  He and Aunt Sabra’s house was about a half mile from the mailbox.  They bought a golf cart so that Uncle Leonard could pick up the mail and ride around the property.  When visiting, it was always a treat for me to get to drive the golf cart to the road, retrieve the mail and bring it back.

The first golf course Marie and I played regularly was Idlewood, which was a public course in Lithonia, Georgia.  Idlewood was a course I could write volumes on, but today we will just stick to the carts that were in use when we first started playing there in the early Eighties.   The manufacturer slips my mind, but I think they must have been the originals from when the course opened in ’63.  They were the three wheeled jobs that you steered with a handlebar.  There were no tops on them so, due to the way Idlewood was laid out, you needed a crash helmet while in the the middle of the course.  Seriously, it was not unusual to be lining up a shot and have a ball land next to you, sliced by some hacker two fairways over.  

I cannot tell you the number of times Marie tried to kill me in a golf cart.  Extremely impatient, it is a wonder she was able to play golf at all, let alone embrace it and excel at it.  She always drove because I dawdled too much.  After hitting a shot, I simply did not move fast enough getting back in the cart.  She was notorious for flooring the gas when I had one foot on the floorboard and one in the fairway, my rear end somewhere between the side rail and the seat.  This would work okay with a gas powered cart, where there is somewhat of a delay from when you stomp the gas and the engine responds.  In an electric cart that responds immediately, however, it can be deadly.  She wrenched my back and twisted my ankles more times than I care to count.

She actually threw me off the back of a cart once.  We had played Sugar Creek Golf Course with our friend Bob and one of the assistant pros at the course.  Marie and I rode, the other two walked.  It was a scorching hot June day and after the round, Bob rode in the cart with us back to the clubhouse, and I stood on the back with the bags, holding onto the frame for the top.  In those days, to get from the eighteenth green to the clubhouse, you drove across the parking lot.  I had a bottle of Michelob in one hand and held onto the frame with the other.  Marie started to swerve back and forth, yelling, “Ooh, doesn’t that breeze feel good!”  The swerving threw me to one side because I was only holding on with one hand.  I yelled, “Marie, stop it!”, but she gave it one last yank and off I went, rolling across the parking lot.  I got pretty skinned up, but, I am proud to say, never spilled a drop of my Michelob.  The lesson here?  Never ride on the back of a golf cart.  Especially with a bottle of beer in one hand and a reckless English woman driving.

I was playing with some friends at Georgia National once, and my partner Donnie told me to pull over after leaving the first tee.  He got out of the cart and pulled the hatch door above the motor off.  “What are you doing?” I asked.  “I’m taking the governor off this thing,” he said.  It is amazing how fast a golf cart will go without a governor.  A couple of times I almost turned it over.  After the round, we pulled over and he hooked the governor back up before we got to the cart barn.  “Do me a favor, Donnie,” I said.  “What’s that?”, he replied.  “Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t EVER show Marie how to do that!” … Still Cruisin’!  –J.   

A lifelong friend died a few weeks ago.  Sergeant Tom Ennis, United States National Guard, passed from this life March 4, 2017.  He was 87 years old.  Just over a month earlier, I had written a blog recalling some of the memories of a lifetime friendship with him, his wife Nan, and their children Dennis, Stacey, Susan, Sharon and Samantha.  Tom was a member of The Greatest Generation, the Generation that literally went out and saved the world.  In the end, his eyesight had failed,  his body frail and wracked with pain.  Thankfully, he is now free of the pain and suffering he endured the last years of his life.

Tom, or Tommie, as I called him, was tough as nails.  A career soldier who worked in the motor pool at The National Guard Armory, he supplemented his income by working on VWs out of his garage.  I say his garage, but when I first met the family, Tommie worked outside in the driveway and beside the house in Gresham Park.  When they moved to a larger split level on the outskirts of Cedar Grove, he worked out of the carport.  I can still see him pulling into the driveway in whatever VW he was driving at the time, walking into the house in his green fatigues and boots, and saying in that deliberate, baritone drawl of his, “Nan, fix me a drink.”  It is ironic that his eyesight failed him, because his eyes were a deep piercing blue.  He had a non-fade tan and was lean and fit.  I’m sure in his youth he was quite strapping and handsome.  After retiring from the Guard, he rented a garage on Fairview Road about two miles from the house and worked out of there for ten or fifteen years.  I painted the sign for the shop when he opened it.  The slogan on the sign was “We Get The Bugs Out.”

Tommie, or Tom, or T.L., whichever you preferred (he went by all three), had a very… acerbic sense of humor.  Everyone had a nickname.  I was always just “Etheridge.”  My buddy Chip, all six foot two and two hundred twenty pounds of him, was “Tiny.”  One of our long haired Gresham Park friends, of whom Tommie was not particularly fond, was “Alice.”  There were names for others as well, but I won’t mention them.  Some were pretty embarrassing.  My father, whose name was Julian, became “Julie.”  That’s all he ever called him, and the two of them became very close friends in the last five years or so of my father’s life.  Daddy would go over and hang around the garage at least three or four times a week.  A lot of people did.  I stopped by one winter afternoon and Tommie told me my wife, Marie, “came a-wheelin’ in here the other day with the top down, wearin’ an overcoat, gloves and a big ol’ floppy hat, tellin’ me her car was a-makin’ a funny noise.  I said, ‘Hell, Marie, it’s a Volkswagen.  It’s supposed to make funny noises!'”  She left in a huff.  I went home and drove the car around the block and, I had to admit, didn’t hear anything other than the usual Volkswagen funny noises.  I drove down to the shop to tell Tommie.  “Etheridge, what are you doing driving The Nice Car?” he asked.  He always referred to the convertible as “The Nice Car.”  He did not refer to it as such due to its mechanical soundness or cosmetic beauty, either.

When I was drifting in and out of jobs in my late teens and early twenties, Tommie was always good enough to pay me a few bucks to help him out with the Bugs whenever he could.  “Oh, hell, Etheridge, you’ve got the damn thing in upside down…”  He taught me a lot about Bugs, but the most important lesson he taught me was that I was in no way cut out to be a professional mechanic.  He tried to get me to join The Guard.  He was always trying to get all of us to join the Guard.  What a motley crew that would have been.  Ultimately, he convinced me that it was in my best interest to go back to school and pursue a career in which my talents lay.

But, he did teach me some VW tricks that stuck.  He taught me about wedging a stick between the throttle and the carburetor, opening it up about halfway so you could get home after the accelerator cable broke.  He taught me a trick about how to get into a Bug in case (or with me, whenever) you locked your keys inside.  I’ll refrain from sharing that one, because I don’t want to encourage breaking and entering.  And, after I had to stop by and borrow his perpetually full five gallon military gas can because I had run out of gas, he advised me, “they’ll run a who-o-o-ole lot better if you put gas in ’em to start with.”

Another trick I saw Tommie use involved jumper cables and a lot of ingenuity.  During the ice storm of ’73, the power got knocked out.  Never mind the heat, stove, washer or dryer, the TV was out.  This was a disaster.  Undaunted, Tommie and his buddy G.C. climbed the pole out in front of the house and, using jumper cables, managed to jump the power from the main line to the line going to the house.  Problem solved.  The jumper cables stayed up there for months, until Georgia Power discovered them while doing routine maintenance.   

Tommie put up with a lot from us as kids, more than I ever could have endured.  Pulling in from work and there being four or five jacked up hot rods parked in and leaking oil on his driveway.  Walking into his house from work and Foghat blasting from the stereo.  Four or five teenage boys hanging around his swimming pool or running around his house in swim trunks.  No wonder he wanted Nan to fix him a drink.  I would have eventually gone postal.

Tommie never did.  As a matter of fact, beneath his somewhat gruff facade, you always knew he was kind, compassionate, and would do anything he could to help.  He helped me patch up my Bug countless times when I would come limping into the driveway in it.  He helped our friends David and Butch rebuild the transmission in David’s Porsche 912.  He kept Stacey and Samantha’s MG Midgets on the road.  When I was restoring our convertible, I sought him out for advice constantly and he gently walked me through many of the processes.  When it came time to paint it, he got me the paint at his cost from NAPA and let me paint it in the shop using his spray gun.  He showed me the basics and I painted it myself.  The end result was something less than even Earl Scheib would have been proud of, but it didn’t matter.  With Tommie’s help, I had painted the car myself.  I was thrilled.

As much as Tommie endured, he endured what is, to me, unfathomable.  He endured the loss of his only son, Dennis, in 1989.  Dennis was thirty three years old and killed in an automobile accident.  I have lost family and friends, but cannot begin to imagine the loss of a child.  Dennis, Stacey and I had been friends since high school, and that is how I became close with the Ennis family.  Tommie, Nan and the girls persevered and life, as it should, went on.  All these years later, it still seems surreal sometimes to me that Dennis is gone.  I can only imagine the hole that was left in the their lives.

Dennis was absolutely and without a doubt the best mechanic I have ever seen in my life.  He could do anything he wanted.  He could change out a VW engine the way most people change underwear.  He once took a ’67 bus and cut the middle out of it.  Then he pushed it all back together, welded it up, finished it and it looked like a Balooney Toons Cartoon Car.  He built numerous dune buggies, both rail and fiberglass bodied.  He and Stacey and I went to Daytona one year for Spring Break in his 454 Monte Carlo.  On the way back the ignition coil (remember those?) went out somewhere on I-10 in the middle of nowhere.  Dennis and I left Stacey in the car with a blackjack, and walked about a mile and a half to the closest gas station.  They happened to have an old 350 engine out back and sold us the coil off of it for two dollars.  We walked back to the car and Dennis took the old coil off and put the new one on using nothing but a screwdriver.  Rather than try to put it in the mounting bracket without the proper tools, he laid it on top of the intake manifold, and off we drove.  We made it home without a blip.  A couple of weeks later, Dennis told me he had forgotten that the coil wasn’t in the mounting bracket until he opened the hood to replace his air filter.  He had driven it around for two weeks with it resting on top of the intake.  At the time he died, he was working on a Volkswagen limousine.  He was in the process of cutting a Bug in half.  He was then going to pull it apart, cut the middle out of another bug, and put it in the middle of the one he had cut in half.  There’s not a doubt in my mind he would have pulled it off perfectly, and it would have looked and driven like it had rolled off of the line in Wolfsburg.

The last time I saw Tommie was in the summer of 2016.  Jackie and I, along with Barry and Debbie Pratt, visited with him, Nan and Stacey at their house in Jackson.  It was a beautiful afternoon, and we spent several hours laughing and reminiscing about the old times.  As we were leaving, I told Tommie I loved him.  It was the first and only time I had ever done so.  I’m thankful now I had that opportunity.

So, they are all back in the garage now.  They’re sitting around the pot bellied stove drinking coffee in the morning and beer in the afternoon.  Talking about VW’s, NASCAR, model airplanes and bass boats.  Other than Tommie and Dennis, ol’ Charlie is there.  G.C. is there.  Marie just wheeled in wearing her overcoat, gloves and a big ol’ floppy hat.  My father is there.  And, I like to think, someday I’ll be there.  We’ll all be there… Still Cruisin’!  –J.     

 

  

Well,  Jackie and I went flying again.  And, no, it was not in a commercial airliner.  I said to her afterwards, “Do you realize we’ve flown together three times but never in commercial airliner?”  The Good Lord willing, we will finally experience The Friendly Skies together this summer on a trip to New England and Canada. 

In 2013, we flew together for the first time in a 1941 Waco biplane.  We sat side by side in the open cockpit.  Then, a year later, we went up with our friend Jerry in his 1963 Mooney.  Jackie got to sit shotgun, I was relegated to the back seat.  I say back seat, but it was more like the luggage compartment in a Karmann Ghia.  

This time we went up in a helicopter.  A Robinson R-44 Clipper II, manufactured in Torrance, California, in the good old USA.  Again, Jackie rode shotgun, I in the back seat.  I complain, but I really don’t mind.  As long as I can see out the window, I’m happy.  We went up in February in when we visited the USS Yorktown at Patriots Point in Charleston.  We arrived early before boarding the ship, three hours early to be exact.  We saw the sign for Helicopter Rides when we pulled into the parking lot, then saw the chopper sitting on the grass pad.  I did my Eeyore imitation, droning, “They’re probably not flying today.”  Then I went into the gift shop and spent $60.  When I came out of the shop with my Yorktown cap and various other USN souvenirs, Jackie told me, “I talked to the pilot, they’re flying today.”  We walked down to the pad, and the pilot was a very nice young man who told us about the helicopter itself, the length of the rides and the rates.  “You want to go up?” I asked Jackie.  “Sure,” she said, so we walked back up to the gift shop to purchase our tickets.  As we walked back to the pad, adrenaline took over and I began to walk faster and faster.  I wasn’t quite running, but was close.  I’m sure I looked like one of those Olympic Race Walkers powering my way to the finish line, which in this case, was the helipad.  “Slow down, Jimmy, he’s not going to take off without us,” said Jackie.  “I know, but I don’t want anybody to jump ahead of us.”  I was convinced some interloper would push their way to the front of the line, even though there was no one within five hundred yards of us.

We went through the mandatory safety orientation with Young Pilot Rodney (his real name escapes me), then boarded the Clipper II.  As I said, Jackie rode shotgun, but she was in the left front seat.  Young Pilot Rodney flew the bird from the right seat.  I started to ask him if he was sure the chopper wasn’t built in England, but he didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor.  We sat on the pad and waited for the rotors to get up to speed, then gently lifted off and began our trip around Charleston Harbor.  If you have never ridden in a helicopter, I would highly recommend you do so if ever the opportunity presents itself.  It is, as Young Pilot Rodney put it, “like riding a magic carpet.”  You are literally floating high above the landscape.  The power plant is behind you, the rotors above you and, even though we were wearing earphones, the ride was surprisingly quiet.  

We went out over the Crab Banks and Hog Island.  The Crab Banks are also a seabird sanctuary, and there were hundreds of gulls on the banks.  I didn’t see any hogs on Hog Island, at least not from the air, and I refrained from asking how it got its name.  We flew over Fort Moultrie and the mansions on Sullivan Island, then banked right and headed out across the bay to Fort Sumter.  We visited Fort Sumter the following day, so Young Pilot Rodney gave us a brief history lesson.  At the time of the Confederate attack on the fort, it was four stories high.  He also told us that the initial shots fired on the fort were fired from Fort Johnson, which is on a point about a half mile east from Fort Sumter.  I had always wondered about the cannons used to fire upon the fort and how they could have the firepower to shoot clear across the bay from Charleston and hit their target.  So that answered that question, and we continued on our excursion.  We then turned right and headed over the city, the pink and yellow houses of Old Charleston, Folly Island and the remains of Castle Pinckney.  We then circled around the Ravenel Bridge over the harbor, and Young Pilot Rodney pointed out the remains of a scuttled Confederate ship that was built out of concrete.  Yes, concrete, and apparently it actually did float.  From the ground it just looks like an old concrete barge or dock, but from the air you can clearly see it is the remains of the hull of a ship.  

We then landed, shook Young Pilot Rodney’s hand and thanked him for the ride.  Jackie had never been up in a helicopter before.  I had been up twice, both times in an early Sixties model Bell 47G.  These were the models with the glass bubble cockpit, the true Whirlybirds.  Riding in one of those is REALLY like riding on a magic carpet.  You are sitting two or three abreast in a glass bubble, and can see everything in front, beside and below you.  The first time I rode in one was when I was seven years old, with my father at the old Southeastern Fair.  The main thing I remember about that flight was flying over the old Funtown Amusement Park and seeing the Spinning Teacups ride below us.  I got a card that certified I was a Junior Whirlybird Pilot, and it stayed on the bulletin board in the kitchen of our house until we moved.  Thirty or so years later, in Panama City Beach, my brother in law and I rode the bicycles down to the Daiquiri Shack.  There just happened to be a helipad next door where you could rent rides on a 1963 Bell 47G.  After several daiquiris, we ponied up our fares and climbed aboard for a flight over the beach, banking left at Gulf Highlands Condos where we were staying.  We looked down and saw our wives and kids walking across the parking lot, headed to the beach with towels and coolers.  When we caught up with them later they told us they saw us fly over.  As thrilling as it is seeing things from the air, it’s really cool to see your family.  

The trip around Charleston was a wonderful surprise, and again I reminded myself about how lucky I am that Jackie has no qualms about climbing into a flying machine with me and taking off.  Next on my bucket list is to fly in a Huey.  Riding shotgun, mind you, not being airlifted.  Jackie wants to try skydiving next.  She may have to do that one on her own.  I can’t see bailing out of a perfectly good airplane.  Especially one that is… Still Cruisin’!  J.                     

I punched up Facebook this morning and saw a post by my friend Rob that the ’68 Mustang 390 GT Fastback used by Steve McQueen in the chase scene from the movie “Bullitt” has been found in a Mexican junkyard.  Thanks for the post, Rob, because this week’s edition of Car Talk happens to be about car movies!  The Mustang was found by car collector Hugo Sanchez, who wanted to restore a Mustang into “Eleanor” from the movie “Gone In Sixty Seconds” starring Nicholas Cage.  Paint removal revealed the original dark green paint.  The VIN numbers were checked against the order numbers from Warner Bros. and found to be a match.  McQueen himself had searched extensively to find and purchase the car, which disappeared shortly after filming, before his death in 1980.  Sanchez plans to restore the car to its original state, and experts are hesitant to guess the Mustang’s potential worth.  Let’s just point out that one of the Dodge Chargers used in the movie went on sale for a cool mil in 2013.

I have to admit I really don’t remember much about the movie other than the chase scene, which is arguably the best of all time.  I do know it was not a car movie but a detective movie.  McQueen’s name was Bullitt, and he was protecting a Mafia witness, I think.

Speaking of the movie “Gone In Sixty Seconds,” I really didn’t care much for the remake.  Maybe because I’m not really a Nicholas Cage fan, but to me the 1974 original was much better.  First of all, they changed the name, spelling out “Sixty” as opposed to the number “60”.  Not that that makes a lick of difference, but if you’re going to copy something, copy it right.  Second, the original had a budget of $150,000.  Granted, this was ’73 when the film was made, but it was still low-budget.  The film grossed $40,000,000 in 1974 dollars.  The 2000 remake had a $90,000,000 budget and grossed $101,000,000.  Even I can figure out the profit margins there.  Third, the original was just a lot more fun to watch.  The second half of the movie is one long car chase that has to be seen to be believed.  The funniest part of the entire movie was a group of black teenagers riding around smoking weed and drinking Coors beer in a beat up old Cadillac, which eventually catches fire while they are riding in it.  

And, speaking of Coors beer, no car movie discussion would be complete without mentioning 1977’s “Smokey and the Bandit.”  Filmed in and around Atlanta, it starred Burt Reynolds as The Bandit, Jerry Reed as Cledus and Jackie Gleason as Sheriff Buford T. Justice.  SATB was a huge box office hit in ’77, second only to “Star Wars.”  The movie had a budget of $4,000,000 and grossed almost $127,000,000.  (Thanks to IMDB for these figures.)  Not a bad profit margin.  Remember, these were the days before video, Netflix and Hulu.  If you liked a movie, you would see it in the theatre more than once.  I saw SATB five times.

A friend of mine owned Fred, the basset hound in the movie.  His real name was Happy.  John’s mom saw a classified ad (remember those?) for a casting call held at Stone Mountain.  They were trying to find the ugliest dog they could.  She took Happy to the audition, and he was supposedly picked by Burt Reynolds himself.  The story is that Reynolds wanted to mess with Jerry Reed and picked Happy because of his refusal to obey commands.  After the movie came out, I was visiting John and petted Happy.  He is the first and only movie star I have ever petted.

John made it into the film as an extra.  When Cledus gets beat up by the bikers in the bar, he is one of the members of the motorcycle gang and is clearly visible in several shots.  My buddy Jimmy and his cousin Redus are in the movie as well, by nothing but chance.  They were leaving for a job from their overhead door business one morning, heading up Stone Mountain-Lithonia Road.  Filming was going on at the cemetery at Phillips Road.  Their truck wound up right behind Sheriff Buford T. Justice’s car in the funeral procession scene.  Theirs is the white Ford truck behind the patrol car, and you can clearly see Redus looking out the driver’s window into the camera.  Only the outline of Jimmy’s head is visible due to the shadows.

For me, the whole car movie thing started with Robert Mitchum’s 1958 moonshining epic, “Thunder Road.”  I first saw it at the Madison Theatre sometime in the Sixties, and my cousin Dennis and I would see it every time it played there.  It is the story of Lucas Doonin, a Korean War vet now running the family moonshining business.  Mitchum wrote the story as well as the theme song.  The chase scenes are remarkably well done for the time, and I can only imagine driving a souped up 1950 Ford with no power steering through the twisting Appalachian roads at night.  Ol’ Luke would have left the Fast and Furious guys in his dust.  The role of Robin, Luke’s younger brother, was offered to Elvis Presley, but Colonel Tom demanded more money than the producers were willing to spend.

Speaking of Elvis and The Madison Theatre, I then moved on to Elvis movies.  At the Madison, I saw pretty much every Elvis movie ever made.  A number of his movies were car and motorcycle themed.  The best, in my opinion, was “Viva Las Vegas” featuring Ann-Margaret.  As I have mentioned before, Elvis could ride down the road on a motorcycle or in a convertible, burst into song and be accompanied by a full band, without his hair ever getting messed up.  The King was the coolest. 

“Two Lane Blacktop” starring James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird and Warren Oates was released in 1971.  Taylor and Wilson, known only as The Driver and The Mechanic, are street racers that drift from town to town looking for action.  They pick up Bird, known only as “The Girl”, in a diner in Flagstaff.  They meet up with a middle aged braggart driving a 1970 GTO Judge in a gas station in New Mexico, and agree to race to Washington D.C., title for title.  Rather than traveling the interstates they decide to stick to the backroads to attract less attention from police.  Hence the name, “Two Lane Blacktop.”  Apparently music rights have prevented this movie from being released into the video market, and it is rarely seen today.

The iconic “Easy Rider” was released in 1969 and became an instant classic.  Written and produced by Peter Fonda and directed by Dennis Hopper, the film stars Fonda, Hopper and a young Jack Nicholson.  Fonda and Hopper are two counterculture bikers who, after a big score, ride from California to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.  Along the way they pick up Nicholson, a young, alcoholic lawyer.  It is a landmark film and is still relevant today.  I had a huge poster of Peter Fonda from the movie on the wall of our garage, which was odd because I was not allowed by my father to see the film.  This was due to the fact that they “smoked mary-wanna in it.”  It didn’t make any difference later on, but I did not see the movie until 1984.  We had just gotten our first VCR, and a friend of mine taped it for me off of HBO.

1973’s “American Graffiti” was an important film in so many ways.  At the time of its release, the only well known actor in the cast was Ron Howard.  The movie launched the careers of such actors as Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, Suzanne Somers, Mackenzie Phillips, Paul LeMat, Charles Martin Smith and Candy Clark, to name quite a few.  It was directed by a young upstart named George Lucas and produced by Francis Ford Coppola.  The beautiful canary yellow 1932 Ford Coupe driven by John Milner (Paul LeMat) is my favorite hot rod of all time.  The car is owned by Rick Figari of San Francisco and, along with Paul LeMat, regularly makes appearances on the car show circuit.  Another interesting note is that the ’55 Chevy driven by Harrison Ford in the movie is the same car used in “Two Lane Blacktop.”

Finally, I must mention a personal favorite, 1980’s “The Hollywood Knights.”  The movie is basically a cross between “Animal House” and “American Graffiti.”  Set in 1965, it chronicles the high jinks of a Southern California car club on Halloween night.  Their hangout, Tubby’s Drive-In, is being torn down the next day to make way for a new office complex.  The film features a fantastic soundtrack and, like “American Graffiti,” was the first film for several young actors.  Tony Danza was the only established star in the cast.  The rest of the cast includes a very young Michelle Pfeiffer, Fran Drescher and Stuart Pankin, whose character Dudley Laywicker makes Flounder from “Animal House” look like The Fonz.  The real star of the movie, however, is Robert Wuhl as Newbomb Turk.  This was Wuhl’s first film, and his character Newbomb is loud, crass, funny and clueless in his relentless pursuit of girls.  Newbomb is at constant odds with Officer Bimbeau (Gailard Sartain) for having his brother’s El Camino, whose care Newbomb has been entrusted with, impounded.  Despite the sophomoric pranks, the film also deals with deeper issues of the looming Vietnam War, moving from adolescence into young adulthood, and inevitable change beyond one’s control.  There are many beautiful cars featured, including “Project X,” a canary yellow 1957 Chevy driven by Danza’s character, Duke.

These are but a few, and there are way too many great car flicks to mention here.  From the A-listers to the B-movie classics of the drive-ins, celluloid and gasoline seem to go hand in hand.  And thanks to today’s technology, a lot of the movies are only a click away.  Punch up “Duel” on YouTube.  It is a 1971 made for TV movie starring Dennis Weaver.  It was directed by a young unknown named Steven Spielberg and takes road rage to the ultimate level.  

That’s it for this week.  Car Talk is at its “Vanishing Point!”  …Still Cruisin’!  –J.