The lines between my first car are a little blurred. Technically, it was a 1956 Volkswagen Beetle. In reality, I suppose, it was a 1969 Meyers Manx Dune Buggy. The ’56 was torn down and my father and I built the Manx from that. It was a clone of the Manx body, built by George Howell of Howellcraft in Atlanta. George was a boat builder by trade, and his shop was on Pryor Street at University Avenue. I always called the car a Manx. A ’69 Meyers Manx just sounded way cooler than a ’69 Howellcraft.
The Manx was a street buggy, and a beautiful one, if I say so myself. It featured, among other things, custom leather bucket seats, plush carpeting, a custom cherry wood steering wheel, custom built wide VW wheels so no adapters were necessary, chrome baby moon hubcaps, Goodyear Polyglas F70-14 tires, a Ranger Mini 8 eight track tape deck mounted in the dash and a vintage Model A Ford Oogah horn operated by a button on the dash board. The power plant was a 40-hp VW engine beefed up to at least 60 hp with chrome headers, a high lift cam, a competition clutch and a roller crankshaft. The transmission was a modified bus transmission with the gear reduction boxes removed from the transaxle. The car would only do 70 mph top end, but it would get there in a hurry. I found out later it would yank the front wheels up off of the ground in first and second gear. This would prove to be my undoing.
It took my father and I three years to build the car. We started in the late spring of ’69 and the car was finished in early ’71. The dark green ’56 Bug the car was built from was purchased from Jeff Saunders, who was three years ahead of me at WHS and lived on Parker Ranch Road off of Gresham. We got the car in the winter of ’68. We used it as is for a few months and one Sunday my father took me out to the dirt road construction area where Clifton Springs Road was being extended to Panthersville Road. He put me behind the wheel, taught me to drive it in one afternoon and I’ve been a Bug Man ever since. I was thirteen years old and at the end of the day he let me drive home. Times were a lot different back then.
The truth be known, I became attached to the little ’56 and really did not want to tear it apart for a dune buggy. I asked my father if we could just keep the Bug, but he told me no, “we” would rather build a dune buggy. But that is another kettle of fish for another day.
As I said, the car was finished in early ’71. I knew it would be a shoo-in for Car Of The Month at Walker, but it never happened. I never got to drive it to school. It sat in our garage with the key in it. To a fifteen-year-old boy chomping at the bit to drive, this was torture. I asked if I could drive it back and forth to school and was told no, I had to wait until I was sixteen. Both my parents worked, so I would come home each day and look at the dune buggy sitting there ready to go. Finally, temptation got the best of me and I could stand it no longer. At school I told my buddy Chip to come home with me that afternoon, we were going riding in the dune buggy. We drove it all over Gresham Park for a week. Cruising McDonald’s and Dairy Queen, taking girls for rides, having a blast. However, being the geniuses that we were, we never thought to unhook the speedometer to keep the miles off or use our lunch money to put gas back in it. My father eventually figured it out and that is when the proverbial excrement smote the oscillating cooling device. My learner’s permit was snatched from me. I was put on triple secret probation. Anybody and everybody within an earshot was treated to the story of what a juvenile delinquent I was for taking the dune buggy out for springtime afternoon joy rides.
The stocks were eventually lifted from my neck and wrists. I got my driver’s license and a job as a Petroleum Transfer Engineer at Parks American Station at Flat Shoals and Fayetteville Roads. I made $1.50 an hour, about 60 bucks a week. I thought I was rich. I could fill the buggy up for $2.50 and spent the rest on movies, clothes, eight track tapes, McDonald’s hamburgers and Dairy Queen shakes. I taught a girl how to drive in it on Cottonwood Drive. I also bought a year’s membership to Clifton Springs. That was The Beginning Of The End.
Somewhere around that time, someone who was not really a reliable source told my father that a certain type of contraband was being offered for purchase in the Gresham Park Dairy Queen parking lot. Hence, I was forbidden to go to the Dairy Queen. My father’s description of the alleged transactions was not so eloquent and he would tell anyone and everyone who would listen. One afternoon I was at the DQ in my dune buggy, leaning against the fender and talking to a few of my buddies. My father rode by and saw me. The bright yellow Meyers Manx with the white convertible top was hard to miss. He whipped his truck into the parking lot, screeched to a stop behind us and jumped out. He yelled for me to “get that thing home with my [gluteus maximus] in it right now!” He glared at my friends like they were useless reprobates and climbed back into his truck. He backed up and waited for me to pull out. To say it was embarrassing is an understatement. He followed me home and when I climbed out of the dune buggy he slammed the door to the truck, poked his finger in my chest and said that he had told me about hanging out in that “blankity blank slop chute” and if he ever saw me there again he was “first gonna whip whoever’s [gluteus maximus] I was with and then he was gonna whip mine.” I always wondered if he would whip one of our defensive ends’ [gluteous maximus], had I been there with one of them. I still went to the Dairy Queen, but I didn’t drive the dune buggy there anymore.
One Sunday afternoon Chip and I were at Clifton and I was bragging that the dune buggy could do wheel stands. No one believed me and I was challenged to prove it. So, we climbed in the buggy with a small crowd gathered ’round. I got it rolling backwards down the hill, revved up the engine and dumped the clutch. The front end jumped off the ground and we tore off up the hill. I hit second and the front end popped again. Take that, doubters and scoffers! We took a left, buzzed into the subdivision across the street and roared up Weslock Circle. As I slowed for the stop sign at Clifton Springs Way, Chip looked at me and said, “Now look in your rear view mirror.” My father was flying up behind me in the Fairlane, hanging out the window screaming at me to “take that @#$$%^! thing home!!!!” “I’ve got to take Chip home first,” I called back. “Well, take his @$$ there, then get yours home!!!” I found out later the old man made a habit of following me from a distance. How else would he know I was doing wheel stands at Clifton Springs and just happen to come riding up behind me? Anyway, when I got home, my mother told me my father was in the basement waiting on me. I went downstairs and he demanded my driver’s license. I gave it to him and he tried to rip it in half. He couldn’t and I laughed. That was the wrong thing to do. But, he looked funny trying to rip a laminated plastic license in half and turning blue in the process. When I laughed, he looked at me with his eyes on fire and his face turning a deep purple. He snatched up a pair of tin snips and cut up my license into confetti. Then he yelled something about there it was on the floor, and my @#$$%^! future along with it. He stormed out, presumably to go smoke a half a pack of Lucky Strikes at once. That was the last time I ever drove the dune buggy. It was sold within two weeks. I got my license back and bought a Pinto. It didn’t explode, but after about a year the transmission fell out and I sold it to the man across the street.
I saw the dune buggy again, however, about four years later. A friend and I had been at the Mad Hatter in Underground Atlanta one Saturday night. His girlfriend lived in Gold Key apartments in Riverdale and we dropped her off. Sitting in the parking lot was a yellow dune buggy. “That dune buggy looks kind of like mine. I’m going to check it out,” I told Don. I walked over and looked in through the side curtain. The instrument cluster was identical to mine, and holding the speedometer in place were the bronze bolts with the custom “JE” heads daddy and I had made. I ran around to the front and there on the nose was the Etheridge Coat of Arms I had painted on the nose. It’s visible in the photo above. It was my dune buggy! I’d had more than my share of Mad Hatter draft beer that night, but there was no doubt it was my Manx. We rushed to my house and I stormed into my parents bedroom and woke them up. “I saw the dune buggy, I saw the dune buggy!!!”, I kept yelling. My old man looked at me like I was out of my mind. The next day I told him, “I know you don’t believe me, but that was the dune buggy I saw. It had different wheels, but the “JE” bolts and the Coat of Arms were there. It was ours.” He still didn’t believe me and said something about my state at the time impairing my ability to recognize anything. But, no ifs ands or buts, that Manx sitting over in the Gold Key parking lot was once mine.
I bought a Bug my junior year at Walker. It was a pale green ’63 model and remains the best bargain I have ever had in a car. I bought it off of a buddy for seventy-five dollars. I tinkered with it, drove it to school a couple of days a week and even went out on a few dates in it. Then I let my father talk me into using it to build another dune buggy. I resisted at first, but he kept at me and I eventually caved in. He built a beautiful metalflake blue street buggy and then wouldn’t let me drive it. When I did, the car went through a fifty-six-point inspection when I got home. The final straw was the day Chip and I took it for a Sunday drive and drove the car down a few dirt roads. I didn’t fishtail it or aim for potholes, but I did bring it home with a little bit of mud on the tires. My old man went ballistic. He was convinced that Chip and I had taken it out trail riding and railed accusatory profanities at me. That was the last time I drove it. I just decided that a few hours of fun driving it wasn’t worth the abuse when I got home. It sat parked in the carport in Rex for about six or eight months. Every once in a while if I was headed out on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, Daddy would ask if wanted to take the dune buggy. I always politely declined. He finally sold it. No more Cruisin’. Especially at Clifton Springs.