I've been a car guy for as long as I can remember, back into my single-digit years. But I still remember my first consciousness raising.
When I was knee-high to a high knee (TM Hawkeye Pierce), my father owned a Big Healey -- a 100-6, to be exact. It was like the better-known (and later) 3000, except a bit more primitive -- with removable side curtains instead of roll-up windows, and was probably lacking a few other creature comforts, as well.
For reasons I don't recall (or more likely, was never privy to in the first place), early one evening when I was five, my father had to go to the dealership where he'd bought the Healey in order to talk to somebody about something. Maybe about the reliability of his car. I wish I could ask him, but he's gone now.
I was allowed to come along to British Motor Center in San Jose on the condition that (1) I wore my pajamas, and (2) that I'd go to bed within nanoseconds of our returning home to Los Gatos. (Despite it being the Kennedy era, my father was one of those old-school parents with an obsessive "bedtime" fetish. Probably because after a long day as a young engineer at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, he valued some "grownup time" with my mother in the evenings.)
While my father went off to talk to whoever it was he needed to talk to, I padded around the showroom to kill the time. There were two or three other Big Healeys on display, and maybe an early Spridget or two.
They were cool, as far as they went. But there was this one car in the corner that stood out from the others. It drew me as though by magnetism.
It was midnight blue, and shaped like a flattened torpedo. Its headlights were under glass, and there were louvers on its long hood. Instead of a grille, there was an empty oval with a chrome bar across it.
I reached for the door handle on the driver's side. The first thing I noticed was that my fingers didn't go all the way through. Interesting.
The second thing I noticed was that unlike the case with the other cars in the showroom, the door was locked.
My mom found a salesman and deferentially asked whether five-year-old me might be allowed to sit in the car. To his credit, the salesman was happy to unlock the car for me.
When the door opened, I was almost knocked over by the intense smell of tanned leather. If I concentrate, I can still smell it.
Once I clambered into the driver's seat, I was confronted by an angry gold cat, silently growling at me at eye level from the hub of the steering wheel. The second thing I noticed was a long row of toggle switches in the middle of the dash. I've loved toggle switches ever since.
I fell in love with that car then. I'm still in love, to this day. Maybe someday, I'll own one.
:lol:
