A new item just popped on my Bucket List.  A bronze statue has been erected of the late Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey in Winslow, Arizona on the corner of Old Route 66 and North Kinsley Avenue.  I have to see it.  I have been an Elvis fan all my life, and would rather see Standin’ On The Corner Park than Graceland.  I’ve seen enough crushed velvet and shag carpet in my time.  To actually stand on the corner in Winslow Arizona would be like being in the middle of a song.

The park is pictured above.  That is not a building, that is a wall with a mural painted on it.  The flatbed Ford truck, from what I understand from various photos of the park, is part of the montage.  There is an existing statue of a young man with a guitar who, though unnamed, bears too strong a resemblance to Jackson Browne to be coincidental.  The windows painted on the wall contain an image of the reflection of a “girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford.”  There is an eagle perched on the upper left window, and a couple in the right center window in an embrace.  They are both wearing jeans.  Something tells me they won’t be for much longer…

And now Glenn takes his place.  He is leaning with his hand on the lamp post behind the flatbed, mustachioed and with shoulder length hair as he was in the 70’s.  The t-shirt he is wearing reads “Music Power”.  The story goes that Browne wrote the song while he and Frey were neighbors in a $60 a month apartment building in Los Angeles.  Browne had actually been stranded in Winslow once and wanted to include that in the song, but couldn’t find a lyric to go with “standing’ on a corner.”  Frey came up with the “flatbed Ford” line.  Browne loved it and gave Frey co-writing credit.  The Eagles recorded the song on their first album.  It was their first single, became a smash hit and the rest, as they say, is history.

And that is the beauty of art.  From a struggling young musician stranded in a small town in the middle of the desert came a song that is now so ingrained into pop culture that a life sized shadow box complete with bronze statues of Browne and Frey has been built in the town forever linked to one of the greatest American bands in history.  

The first song I ever heard when I fell under the influence of a certain controlled herb, which is now considered medicinal in several states, was “Witchy Woman”.  It changed my entire concept of music, and the Eagles in particular, forever.  I finally got to see them in concert in 2010.  Our friend Charles, a fine Southern Gentleman, got tickets and invited Jackie and I to see them at Piedmont Park in Atlanta.  It was one of the best concerts I have ever seen, and though well into their 60’s, the guys could still bring it.  Never Too Old To Rock and Roll…

I got a Harmony box guitar for my 21st birthday, and was convinced I was on my way to becoming a rock star.  One of the first songs I learned to plunk out the chords to was “Take It Easy”.  And I had the vision of standin’ on a corner, not necessarily in Winslow, but anywhere.  A girl in a flatbed Ford slows down to check me out.  If she’s driving a flatbed Ford, you know she is one cool chick.  She stops, asks if I need a lift.  I open the door, she’s wearing short cutoffs and a halter top, with long blonde hair and a beautiful smile.  I throw in my guitar and duffle bag, hop in and we’re off.  Two free spirits…. Still Cruisin’!  –J.   

I love motorcycles.  Always have and always will.  I grew up in the 60’s, when Honda pretty much cornered the light motorcycle market in the U.S.  To own a Honda 50 was the coolest thing in the world, and a 300 Dream was, well, a Dream!  However, I was not allowed to get anywhere near a motorcycle.  This was due to the fact that when my father was 13, he pulled out in front of a car on a 1937 Indian and was hit broadside.  So, motorcycles were off limits.  I could fly with him in airplanes, though, but that’s another subject for another day.  

As I grew up, I loved riding bikes when I could, and when I turned 21 I acquired a Honda 550 Four and rode it for one glorious summer.  To me, there is nothing more beautiful than the gleaming chrome, paint and iron of a fine motorcycle, and the freedom of the wind and the road.  I love ’em.  Always have and always will.

What I can’t stand are the knuckleheads who ride them.  Now, before you tie me down with a saddle strap and beat me with a pair of ape hangers, hear me out.  I am not referring to the cyclists who ride for both pleasure and transportation, the enthusiasts and aficionados who obey the traffic laws and ride alone or in groups, from the mountains to the sea.  I certainly am not referring to those who may be retired, exploring America on a fine road bike pulling a travel trailer.  Quite the opposite, of you I am fairly envious.  Nor am I referring to groups (I refuse to call them gangs) of bikers, for whom riding and the open road is a way of life.  I have always observed these groups to be nothing but courteous and considerate on the road, wanting nothing more than to be left alone and to ride.

What I’m referring to are the knuckleheads, usually on crotch rockets but on road bikes as well, who insist on running 150+ mph on the expressways, usually in groups of two to twenty and always in traffic.  You know who you are.  And, if you are one of those and are reading this, shame on you.  If it offends you, I don’t give a damn.  It’s idiots like you who give all motorcyclists a bad name.  All it takes is one false move from you or a car you are terrorizing, one loose rock on the asphalt, a slung retread in the road, and your ass is airborne, most probably to The Great Beyond.  If you have a death wish, fine, go find an empty road and test God and Luck there.  But don’t put the lives of innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in danger.  At 150 miles per hour with your dumb ass at the controls, a motorcycle is no longer a motorcycle but an extremely dangerous weapon.  And if you happen to be riding on the back with one of these cowboys, congratulations.  You’re even stupider than they are.  

One Sunday Jackie and I were on the way home from The Varsity with our 9 year old nephew.  I saw the swarm coming in the rear view mirror, at least 30 crotch rockets running way over 100.  Weaving in and out of traffic and amongst themselves, all I could do was slow down and pray none of them hit us, someone around us, or one another.  You may think it’s cool.  It’s not.  You may think it proves you are a great rider.  It doesn’t.  If you were a great rider, you would be on a racetrack, not I-20.  All it proves is that you’re a knucklehead with no regard for your life or anyone else’s.    

Forgive me for my soapbox rant, but this is something I feel very strongly about.  And, the sad thing is, there is really not much that can be done about it.  I have a good friend who is a police officer.  I asked him about it once, and he said, “by the time we get the call and get after them, they’re probably halfway to South Carolina.  All we can do is show up when they crash and scrape ’em off the road or the wall.”  Notice he said ‘when’ and not ‘if’.  

But, cops are all idiots, so go ahead.  Lean forward and crack down on it.  They’ll never catch you.  At least not until they show up with the shovels and the bags… Still Cruisin’!  –J.      

Once upon a time, there was a class for Juniors and Seniors in high school called Drivers Education.  Judging by the driving I see on the road today, it needs to be brought back, not just for students but for parents as well.  Most all of us at Walker High School and our Neighboring Institutes of Secondary Education took Drivers Ed.  Not just because you got to leave school during the day and go driving around, but you also got a break on your insurance if you completed the course successfully.  Drivers Ed was either a pass or fail course.  Most students passed.  Some of us, however, did not.  

Drivers Ed at Walker was taught by the man pictured here, Mr. Gilbert S. Dill.  This picture is the closest I ever saw him come to cracking a smile.  Sour, ornery and country as the day is long, Mr. Dill (or Pickle, as he was more affectionately known) was one of those teachers you had to wonder why he ever chose to enter the profession.  He had a genuine disdain for teenagers, or “arrogant rascals” as he called us.  If you asked him a question he’d look at you and say, “Are you gittin’ smart with me?”  Mr. Dill was a math teacher before they switched him to Drivers Ed.  He had a poster on the wall of his classroom of a cartoon car crashed into a tree with a liquor bottle and a bottle of pills beside it.  At least once every day he’d point to it and remind us that “Alkyhawl plus drugs equals car again’ tree.”  That was our Drivers Ed version of an algebraic equation.

One of the main tactics of Drivers Ed was scare tactics.  They showed us a movie made in 1959 called “Signal 30” which was the Ohio State Patrol’s code name for a fatal accident.  I would never post it here because it is very graphic, but it is on YouTube.  Even more graphic was when the DeKalb County Police came in with slides of accidents from around the county.  They hit home more than Signal 30, because they were local, more up to date, and some of the officers had been involved in the cleanup.  

At Q&A time after the slide show, I asked a question which many of us were interested in the answer:  “Is it illegal to drive barefoot?”  I had asked Mr. Dill once and he just looked at me as if snakes were crawling out of my ears.  The officer told me no, it is not illegal, but you can apply more pressure to a brake pedal while wearing a shoe.  I didn’t care about any of that, though.  The only thing I cared about was going home and telling my father the part about the officer assuring me that driving barefoot was not illegal, thus ending an ongoing argument.

After a month or so of classroom work, we began driving lessons on the road, in pairs with Pickle riding shotgun.  I never made it that far.  One day my buddy Chip and I were leaving football practice and Mr. Dill and a couple of students were in the parking lot practicing parking with orange cones.  We decided it would be a great idea to moon them, so with Chip behind the wheel of my ’65 Fairlane, we tore past them, blowing the horn with my Luna Plena illuminating the early evening sky.  Sara, the girl that was driving, said that Mr. Dill started yelling “WHO WAS THAT?? WHO WAS THAT??”  She was laughing so hard that he got mad at her, but managed to get my tag number and turn me in.  Needless to say, I was called to the Assistant Principal’s office the next morning and dismissed from Drivers Ed immediately.  I also got three licks, wasn’t allowed to drive to school for a week and had to run countless windsprints after football practice.  In retrospect, I have to say that it was all worth it.  And, miraculously, my parents never found out about it.  An “arrogant rascal”…Still Cruisin’!  –J.

We all remember our first driving test.  For most of us who grew up in the East Atlanta/South DeKalb area in the 60’s and 70’s, that test was administered at The Department of Motor Vehicle Services, 959 E Confederate Ave SE, Atlanta, GA 30316.  I remember the day I took my test like it was yesterday.  First you took your eye exam.  Easy enough, but I was nervous.  I started reading the letters, messed up and asked the nice lady behind the counter if I could start over.  “Step to the left, pick up your written test and instructions,” she told me.  She hadn’t listened to a thing I said when I was reading the eye test or afterward.  Some things never change… After the eye test and the written test came the driving test.  You didn’t find out if you had passed until you had taken all three.  

At Confederate Avenue, there was a driving course beside the building.  It is pictured above circa 1971, when the bulk of my colleagues and I took our tests there.  At the top is the shed where you would stop and give your paperwork to the Driver Examiner, who would then inspect your vehicle.  This was where I hit my first snag.  We pulled up in my dune buggy.  The Examiner took one look at it and told my father he couldn’t test me in that car.  “Why not?  It’s street legal,” said my father.  Which was true, it had a fiberglass body, a top, a tag, a Georgia State Safety Inspection sticker and everything.  “Well, first of all, it ain’t got no doors,” said the Examiner.  “Second, it ain’t got seat belts, side mirrors or windows.  And honestly, how to expect me to test him parallel parking this thing?  You can turn the wheels and pull it in sideways.”  My father had to go home and get the ’65 Fairlane.  Other than the fact it was three times as big as the dune buggy with a three on the tree, I had driven exactly it exactly twice.  I was doomed.

I pulled out of the shed with the Examiner and his clipboard, and went down the road to the left.  Speaking of the left, my late wife Marie took her driver’s test at Confederate when she came to the States in ’68, even though she lived in Smyrna.  Don’t ask me why, but she did.  Anyway, being from England, she started off down the left hand side of the road.  She was in a ’63 Impala, ran up on the curb and parallel parked cockeyed.  The Examiner told her, “Here, you passed.  You actually drive better than most people in this country.”  I’m sure the fact that she was 18, blonde with a British accent and wearing a mini skirt which came up to her hips didn’t have a thing to do with it.

Anyway, we went down the road and stopped at Stop sign at the crosswalk.  No problem so far.  Then I made a right and rode the clutch up to the top of the little hill to the Railroad Crossing.  Stopped at the Railroad Crossing, made another right, continued up and parallel parked.  It took me a couple of tries, but I got ‘er in there.  Back at the shed, the Examiner handed me my evaluation sheet.  He had a mark next to the Railroad Crossing.  I asked him why, I had made a complete stop.  He said, “Oh, you didn’t look both ways.”  I wanted to tell him I was pretty sure there weren’t any trains coming, but thought better of it.  He also noted  I needed to work on my parallel parking.  My father told me not to worry, we all need to work on our parallel parking.  Years later, when my daughter got her license, the Examiner noted she needed to work on her parallel parking.  “Don’t worry, Honey,” I told her, “we all need to work on our parallel parking.”  

I passed with less than flying colors, but I passed, and that was all that mattered!  I drove my father home, ditched the ’65 Fairlane, and climbed in the dune buggy.  I headed straight for the Clifton Springs for my first ride across the dam, around the wall behind the beach and behind the clubhouse… Still Cruisin’!  –J.    

My better half, Jackie, is a Volkswagen Girl.  It’s one of the things that first attracted me to her, other than the fact that she is beautiful, smart, funny and talented.  Up until three years ago when we bought our Kia, she had never owned any type of vehicle other than a Volkswagen.  That, my friends, is a Bug Girl.  She maintains that VW people are special people.  “Gluttons for punishment,” a friend’s dad used to say.  Whatever the case, the bond between lifelong VW people is undeniable.  Jackie’s dad was a Bug Man, back when Bugs were all over the road.  VW shops were everywhere, and guys worked on them in their spare time out of their garages and basements, as was the case with Jackie’s dad.  Her very first car was a gold 1958 Bug with a canvas sunroof.  She got it for her 16th birthday.  She wanted a gunmetal gray Oldsmobile 442, but got the Bug instead.  Her dad took black electrical tape and put the numbers “442” on each door.  Being the good girl she is, she never complained.  The picture above is the only picture we know to exist of the car.

Jackie’s Bug quickly became one of the most popular and recognizable cars at Walker High School.  It embodied everything that was fun about driving a VW.  It didn’t have a back seat, you sat on milk crates.  It didn’t have a key.  You stuck a screwdriver in the ignition switch and turned.  It had a choke handle.  On cold mornings, you pulled the handle while turning the screwdriver to fire up the 36 hp engine.  If the car wouldn’t crank, you jiggled the cables on the 6 volt battery.  The sound system was a transistor radio wedged in between the open glove compartment door and the Holy Sh*t Bar.  The Holy Sh*t Bar is the handle that was on the dashboard of the earlier Bugs before being moved to above the passenger door sometime in the ’70s.  Originally intended to aid in getting out of the vehicle, what they were really for was, in a moment of motoring crisis, the passenger grabbed onto the bar and yelled… well, you get the picture.  And, being a ’58 model, it had no gas gauge.  This was a luxury that wasn’t added to the VW until 1961.  Instead, it had a reserve tank handle on the front firewall.  Run out of gas, turn the handle, go another 40 miles.

Jackie taught several friends to drive in the Old Gold ragtop, and interestingly enough, they all wound up owning VWs themselves.  The little car was an absolute blast to ride in, although I never rode in it with Jackie.  Her sister inherited it after Jackie got a ’67 model when she went away to Georgia Southern.  Although I’m sure the ’67 was a nice enough little car, there is no way it could have been as much fun as the ’58 Ragtop.  It had a back seat, a factory radio, automatic choke and a gas gauge, after all.  After the ’67, Jackie purchased a ’72 Super Beetle which she still owns.  As I said earlier… that, my friends, is a Bug Girl.  The ’72 is now safely parked in storage next to her older brother, my ’69 convertible.

Whatever happened to the ’58?  We found out years later that after Jackie got the ’67 and went to college, her dad sold the car to our friend Raleigh, who worked with him in his garage.  Raleigh sold the car to a friend of his, who wrecked it and sold it for parts.  That’s the type of thing you wish you never knew.  However, if there is a Rainbow Bridge for cars, and I’m sure there is, the little gold ’58 Ragtop is waiting for Jackie at the front of the line.  No back seat, no ignition key, no gas gauge, the transistor radio playing “Brown Eyed Girl”… Still Cruisin’!  –J. 

Chevrolet is apparently ready to launch a comeback of the iconic El Camino in 2017.  If this is indeed true, and it appears to be, there are two versions, the “stock” version pictured here, and the SS version, which is a variation of the SS Camaro.  The engines available are reported to be a 3.2 liter V6 300 HP or a 6.0 liter, V8 360 BHP.  Pricing will start at $20,000.

The El Camino is a legendary, one of a kind vehicle.  Introduced by Chevrolet in 1959, the car/trucks were built in 1959 and 1960, then re-introduced in ’64 and ran through 1987.  The ’59 and ’60 models are highly sought after today, as are the ’68 through ’72 models, which are true muscle cars in their own right.  Notice I referred to the El Camino earlier as a “car/truck”.  Allow me to illustrate the popularity and reputation of these vehicles.  Recently, Jackie picked up our 7 year old nephew at school and was giving him a ride home.  At the four-way stop by his school, the vehicle across from her rolled through a California Stop and cut her off from making a left hand turn.  “Oh, you stupid car, I mean truck!” she exclaimed.  Jason looked at her very calmly and said, “Aunt Jackie… it’s an El Camino.”  A seven year old kid, and he knows what an El Camino is.  Cool stuff.

And the El Camino was and is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, cool.  I owned one once, a black 1974 Classic model.  It belonged to my father, and I inherited it when he passed away.  I loved it and drove it for six years, eventually selling it to buy a Porsche.  And, though both technically and realistically a pickup truck, the El Camino was never intended for hauling anything other than light duty.  I learned this the hard way.  When I was 19 years old, a friend of my father’s gave him a load of firewood, and I was sent to pick it up.  The fourth generation models came from the factory with air shocks.  This was to raise the rear end to compensate for a load.  The caveat was, however, you were to raise the rear end before loading the bed.  I didn’t realize this, and after loading a cord of wood in the back, I stopped at the gas station to pump up the air shocks and head home.  Needless to say, the rear end didn’t budge.  Driving down I-285 and beyond, the front tires were barely on the ground.  The front end kept drifting, and my stomach was knotted up like a persimmon the whole way home.

A friend’s dad owned one in the mid-70s that was, quite simply and honestly, badass.  It was a ’72 red SS 454 with black panel stripes, Cragar mags and Thrush side pipes.  ‘Nuff said.  He drove it for about five years and sold it to another friend of ours, who owned it for about three months before falling asleep at the wheel on the way home from working the night shift.  He ran up an embankment and totaled the car.  When told about it, Mr. Holmes said, “I don’t even want to hear about it.”

A buddy owned a gorgeous yellow ’72 SS Chevelle, and belonged to a Chevelle club.  I tried to join, but was rejected.  I was told that the only El Caminos they accepted were either the 60’s or up to the ’72 models.  Some people simply do not belong…  

However, I did have the pleasure of driving it with my daughter’s softball team in the back during the Opening Day parade for a couple of years.  Full circle from my childhood days in the back of my father’s Chevy Apache on Opening Day… Still Cruisin’!  –J.   

Look at the picture above.  My friend Sherry posted this on FB last week.  It’s not often that blog fodder falls right into your lap, but this was Manna from Heaven!  She took this picture at a gas station across from her office.  Now, call me old.  Call me cynical.  Call me irresponsible, but I simply do not understand this.  By this, I mean taking a perfectly good Camaro… I guess it’s a Camaro, that’s the closest resemblance I can see… and putting stagecoach wheels on it, doors that look like something off of a Piper Cub, and painting a graphic of The Flash on the side.  As I have stated, I love cars.  All makes and models, shapes and sizes.  I especially love the custom and concept cars.  Without the work of the visionaries who created these works of engineering and art, many of the car models we know today would not exist.  And, I love the low riders. particularly the pickup trucks.  But the trick above baffles me.  I went to a barn wedding once and there was a stagecoach there that didn’t have wheels that tall or tires that skinny.

I get it, I’m a Boomer.  I, like my parents before me, their parents before them and so on, am clueless.  I’m an aging old codger with absolutely no idea about anything at all, certainly not about whatever is cool.  I grew up in the sixties, when Muscle Cars and long sleek Cruising Vessels were available straight from the factory and right off of the showroom floor, so obviously I am completely lost when it comes to the slick rides of today like the one pictured above.

Okay, I realize I’m sounding like some grumpy old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn, so let’s look at it from a different perspective.  I know that the cars we drove as kids probably looked hideously stupid to our parents, particularly mine.  My father went absolutely nuts when I jacked up the ’65 Fairlane I had inherited from them and put slotted disk wheels on it and big fat tires.  It sure looked cool to me though, a lot cooler than it looked when my mother was driving it to and from church on Sundays.  When I bought my Mach 1, it was already sporting air shocks and 60 series tires (these were the bias ply days).  My father told me Fred Flintstone wouldn’t be seen dead driving a piece of $#%* like that, whatever that meant.  And, I’m sure in his day, his father couldn’t understand his ’40 ford convertible with baby moon hubcaps and wide white sidewall tires.  Or maybe he could, my grandfather later drove a blue ’57 Bel Air.

All that being said, I simply do not see the appeal of a tricked out ’86 Chevy Caprice with a sound system featuring a bass thud that sounds like an earthquake.   A buddy of mine was in management at the old GM Doraville plant where they built the ’86 Caprice.  I remember him telling me when they rolled one out to show them what they would be building, and he thought maybe it was time for him to start looking into another line of work.  

I don’t really get the generation after mine’s obsession with hot rodding Hondas, either.  A Briggs and Stratton without a muffler sounds better than a CRX with a header and Cherry Bomb.  But, I’m a lifelong Bug enthusiast, so I guess I’m in no position to point fingers there.

My guess is when these guys show pictures of their Wagon Wheel Wonders to their kids, their kids will either laugh their heads off, or politely stifle their guffaws until later.  Time will tell.  Who knows, I may be wrong and Lord knows, I’ve been wrong before.  Maybe these customized ’86 Caprices will be around 20 years from now, maybe not.  Maybe I’ll make it that far to see.  Maybe not.  Oh well, I’m off to take my Geritol… – Still Cruisin’! 

Okay, who out there rode in the back of a pickup and is still around today to tell the tale?  I grew up riding in the back of one.  My father had a 1960 Chevy Apache Long Bed Fleetside that hauled everything from boards and planks to bags of cement, plants and trees, camping gear, bicycles, go-carts and more kids than I can recall.  Nowadays, of course, riding in the back of a pickup is a Bozo No-No.  Too many liabilities, “One Call That’s All”, “The Strong Arm”… you get the picture.  

I’m really thankful I grew up in a place and time when that wasn’t the case.  My father would pick me up from school in his old brown Fleetside, and every kid in the neighborhood would pile in the back and ride as far as our house, then walk the rest of the way home.  Whenever we rode to my cousin’s house with the go-cart in the back, I rode back there with it.  Gone fishin’ at my aunt and uncle’s place?  My friends and I rode in the back.  About 7 to 10 Boy Scouts and all our gear would ride back there when we went camping.  On Opening Day of Baseball Season, the truck carried the whole team in the parade from Moreland Shopping Center to Gresham Park Ballpark. 

And, not only did I ride in the back of my father’s pickup.  I rode in the back of other father’s pickups as well, and my parents didn’t mind.  My friend Andy across the street’s Dad had an old blue 1950-something Ford that you started with a foot pedal.  When Mr. Shook went to the dump or the incinerator, Andy and I rode in the back with all the unwanted items and debris.  Our job was to make sure nothing flew out.

In high school, I was in Jr. Civitan.  We had hayrides.  Meaning, we all climbed in the back of pickup trucks and rode to Stone Mountain to meet with various other Civitan clubs from other schools.

I think the last time I rode in the back of my father’s pickup was when I was 18.  My buddy Walt and I went to Florida in my Mach 1.  The coil died on the way back in South Georgia between Valdosta and Tifton.  Daddy came down in the truck and towed the car home.  Walt and I rode in the back.  Come to think of it, that was the only time I ever rode in the back of my father’s pickup on the expressway.

My buddy Chip and I took the truck to Road Atlanta at least three times a summer from 1971 until about ’77 or ’78.  When we all needed to go from one end of the track to the other, guess how we all got there?  Yep, back of the Old Apache.  A buddy took his F-150 Ford to the beach in the late 70’s when all of us youngsters would descend on Daytona for two weeks in early June.  When we all went somewhere together, that’s how we got there… back of the pickup.  We would all ride in it down the beach.  The cops would see us and never think twice.  Times were a lot different back then.  They were more concerned if you were drinking beer on the beach. 

Yes, times were a lot different back then in many ways, too many to list in this space.  Although on a recent Sunday afternoon, the whole family did jump in the back of my brother-in-law’s truck and rode over to check out their new property.  Three generations, from the grandparents to the kids, all in the back of a pickup… Still Cruisin’!

My friend Raleigh informed me recently that the Karmann Ghia turns 61 this year.  Although I have never owned one, I have spent quite a bit of time in, around, and behind the wheel of these beautifully unique sports cars.  A brief history from VW Vortex tells us that by the early 50’s, VW was doing quite well, and the economy in Europe was turning.  Wilhelm Karmann, a coach builder who designed the Cabriolet for Volkswagen, approached Carrozzeria Ghia and asked them to design a sports car for Volkswagen.  The result was the Karmann Ghia.  The first cars rolled off the line in August of ’55, sales totaled more than 10,000 in the first year, and the rest is history.

My late buddy Chip, who was the closest I ever had to a brother, got a ’71 model when we were 17.  It was yellow, and Lord knows how many miles we put on that thing, but it was a bunch.  We covered pretty much all of north and central Georgia in it, and he drove it to Tampa one summer to visit his grandparents.  We used to pile in it three at a time, one of us wedged in the luggage compartment in the back, and ride for hours in the summer with the windows up through Henry County and beyond.  Why the windows up in the summer?  It was the mid-1970s.  Do the math.

Another buddy, Dennis, built a red ’66 with an absolute beast of an engine in it.  I’m not kidding, this thing could smoke a Porsche like nobody’s business.  One day, for reasons known only to our sixteen year old brains, we decided to take it trail riding on the power lines.  Dennis hit one of those concrete gas line markers at a pretty good clip, and we got wedged on it.  We had to walk back to his house and get his dad to come back with a jack to get the car un-impaled.  He wanted to know what we used for brains.  We, of course, had no answer.

The Karmann Ghia was also a spy car.  Remember the TV show “Get Smart”?  Agent 86 Maxwell Smart drove one.

I almost owned one once, a blue ’64 I was going to trade a guy a dune buggy for.  We actually made the trade and I drove it for a few days, until his mom found out about it and vetoed the deal.  I have always said that if I had it to do over, I would have bought a Ghia convertible instead of a Cabriolet.  The engines were an absolute joy to work on.  When you opened up the boot, everything was right there and easily accessible, especially in the older 40 hp models.  The spark plugs were easy to reach, there was room behind the fan shroud, and the valve covers were easy to get to from underneath.

The Ghias handled beautifully, although you had to work the gas to build up power, and “row” the car through the curves with the shifter.  But the suspension and the steering were solid, and despite the rear engine, the rear end was stable, even in the later models with the larger engines.

Speaking of the later models, in 1974 VW phased out the Karmann Ghia and replaced it with the Scirocco,  a move I won’t even dignify with words.  The only thing I will say is you never see any Sciroccos at the car shows.  But you do see the Ghias… sleek, smart and Still Cruisin’!  –J.   

We just got back from spending a week in Florida.  The place we stayed had beach bikes available.  This was the first time I had ridden a bicycle in 20 years.  I wanted to ride one of the three Hot Rod Yellow bikes available.  The gear was stripped on the first bike I selected and the pedals didn’t work.  The chain was off the second and the third had two flat tires.  So much for the Hot Rod Yellow.  I settled on a nice green one, instead.  As I was putting the others back as I had found them and was closing up the shed, my mind wandered back to the fourth grade and the first time I ever rode my bike to school.  I pulled into the school yard, parked my bike in the rack, locked it up, unstrapped my books and went inside.  All day long I kept pulling the key to the lock out of my pocket and looking at it on the keychain my father had given me.  The feeling was incredible.  My mother had not brought me to school.  I had not ridden the bus.  I had ridden my bike and after school, I was going to go out and unlock it and ride it home.  I felt like a real grown up.

And, the old adage about learning to ride a bike is true.  Once you learn how, you never forget.  The last time I rode a bicycle was a beach bike in the mid-90’s at my brother in law’s place in Panama City.  The bikes they owned were all “girls” bikes, and before I go any further, let me say that in my humble opinion, ALL beach bikes should be “girls” bikes.  You step right through and get on on the seat.  Frankly, I never really understood the bar on the “boys” bikes.  The first time I ever hurt myself in a way only a boy can hurt himself I slipped off the pedal while going up a hill and hit the bar.  I had to sit on the curb and wait until I could move so I could go home and have my parents take me to the emergency room.  Eventually however, the agony subsided and I went on my way.  

Incidentally, one of my favorite pictures of Jackie (and there are many) is of her on a beach bike.  She’s hot, and I don’t mean from the humidity…

My brother in law’s beach bikes were all equipped with baskets as well.  No, not the little wicker ones with flowers, but real baskets, perfect for holding a twelve pack of beer.  We used to get sent to the grocery store on the bikes and very seldom, if ever, went straight there and back.  One time we stopped off at the daiquiri shack and after several, worked up the courage to go up for a helicopter ride which was next door.  Another time we stopped off at Hooters where they were having the “Hooters Olympics”.  These games involved hula hoop contests, wheelbarrow races, races on those big orange bouncy balls… you get the picture.  We were appalled and after three or four beers apiece, left in disgust.

No helicopter rides or Hooters Olympics this time, however.  Just a nice, quiet ride around town.  I did stop off for a beer at a local watering hole.  Then, I climbed back on my green beach bike and continued on… Still Cruisin’!  –J.

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