"St.John, Kenneth" wrote:
>
> Driving to work today in the sun I was thinking about my Spitfire and MGs
> and why we are attracted to one car or another and why.
>
> I bought my '74 1500 about 14 months ago at, of all places, a Ford
> dealership!
> I'm curious as to how others got bit!
Hmmm. This involves ancient history (or what passes for such with the
younger folks).
I appeared, courtesy of the US Army, at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, in
February, 1968, and was assigned there to a separate infantry brigade
headed for Viet Nam around September, 1968. Schofield Barracks, to those
privileged not to have been drafted during the Viet Nam war, was a
training post for prospective Viet Nam attendees, and is situated high
up in the mountains on Oahu, a good twenty-five miles away from
Honolulu. At the time, there was one bus going downtown, leaving at 10
a.m., returning around noon, and another, leaving around 6 p.m. and
returning about 10 p.m.
To those sensible people, such as myself, who thought that communion
with ordinary people (women included) was an essential part of a
well-rounded life outside the military, that isolation was somewhat
limiting. But, with training underway, there was no point in seeking
some other, better, means of transportation.
By July, 1968, it was apparent that the infantry brigade was being
disbanded (a couple of decades later, I realized we were part of
Westmoreland's 266,000-man contingency force, which Johnson had nixed),
and I was, in late July, dumped in Hawaii in a garrison unit. About the
same time, I met a woman (soon to be girlfriend, later wife, later
ex-wife), and had to do something about this transportation problem.
So, since I was recently twenty-one, and responsible for myself, I went
down to Honolulu one weekend and explored used car lots, and found,
unbeknownst to me the significance of the car, a `63 Spitfire4.
Perhaps it was significant to me because of those ads in Playboy while I
was in college (roll-up windows (!)), or, maybe, it just seemed to be a
low-cost sports car in a sports car town, a convertible in a place with
some sun, and it promised some fun, or, perhaps, I'd succumbed to a
British car because of those years I'd lived in England, post-WWII, and
it won out, because of familiarity and sympathy. I still don't know,
exactly, but, in the absence of some careful, prudent, dedicatedly
intellectual determination of my tastes in cars, it might have been
because I liked the looks of the car--sleek, low, decidedly British and
sporty. Perhaps the name, evoking the Battle of Britain, was enough for
me, an Air Force brat with time in England, having lived near a base
from which that battle was once fought. The name, Spitfire, might have
been enough to push me over into the pit of penury. <smile> To go fast
enough in a Spit, it was almost like flying one. <smile>
And, with some financial wanglings, I put enough of my private's savings
into the down payment to gain a loan on the down payment and a loan on
the remaining principal, and drove away in a Spitfire, and didn't think
about the amount left to me out of my salary after those loans. I just
did it, and didn't look back.
That Spitfire's gone, but other Triumphs linger on. <smile>:
http://www.zianet.com/mporter/triumphs.html
Cheers, all.
--
Michael D. Porter
Roswell, NM (yes, _that_ Roswell)
[mailto:mporter@zianet.com]
The gulf between content and substance continues to widen....
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