[TR] Ashes to Ashes

[TeriAnn J. Wakeman]

On 3/10/12 7:15 PM, George Haynes wrote:
>   How about our old friend Scott Fisher, who I think is still alive, and the
> witty Ray Gibbons, who is not.  Both great contributors in their day.
> George
>
Scott was an MG guy back in the days before the Triumph list.  He was on 
the British car list.  He had an MG racer garage queen that he never 
could get to run right. Before he left the Bay area and headed North he 
sold the MG, got an Alfa and I don't think he ever looked back.

I think the last time I saw Scott was soon before he and his family 
moved North. We were driving through the Santa Cruz mountains abut 75 
miles South of San Francisco.  He was in his Alfa and I in my TR3.  He 
was leading the way and and decided to see if he could loose me on a 
narrow curvy mountain road. I stayed right on his tail the whole way 
down the hill, watching sparks fly as his Alfa bottomed out on some of 
the bumps.

To this day I am very grateful that there were no pedestrians or 
cyclists or cars coming the other way.  In many places it would be 
generous to call it a two lane road. The steep mountains and redwood 
forest obscured every left hand curve.  Though with the two engines 
roaring in the 5 to 6 thousand RPM range with almost no straight 
sections requiring a shift I'm sure we could have been heard a long way 
off.  But still it was a very dumb and very dangerous thing to have 
done. But one I'm sure I'll remember for life as I just don't do silly 
things in the TR unless I know the road is empty or can see past the 
next curve.  I just couldn't resist Scott's gauntlet and his thought 
that his Alfa was faster than my 3.  Silly boy.  That's why I had Greg 
Solow build my engine and built the suspension for auto crossing.

Scott was a part time restaurant critic for one of the Bay area news 
papers and had a descriptive flowing style in his writing that spurred 
me on to write flowing descriptions too.  After he left, I got out of 
the the habit of writing long descriptive postings. He just always 
inspired me to a little bit more.

I didn't know (or remember) that we lost Ray Gibbons.  I enjoyed his 
postings to the list way back when.  I am reminded of a statement Marlen 
Brando made during the movie "The Longest Day"  He was playing a 
Spitfire pilot  who had been fighting since the beginning of the battle 
of Briton. It was something like "What I don't like is how we few keep 
getting fewer".

I think sometime during the summer half of this year it will have been 
25 years since I received an email saying that a British car e-mail 
group was being formed and would I like to be part of it.  I don't 
remember the date but I remember the TR was in the parking lot and that 
day I took the long way home through the curviest roads I knew over and 
along the Santa Cruz mountains.

Here is where my memory gets real tricky.  I think it was Dale, a guy 
that worked at Apollo Computer who had an MGB housed in a single car 
garage with a dirt floor who originally  hosted the British car mail 
list.  All of us who had been invited to join the new list had been 
posting to rec.autos about British cars. I bought my TR3A in 1986 so was 
asking lots of questions about it on rec.auto.  If I remember, Dale 
eventually sold the MG because either his wife or he and his wife could 
no longer get easily in and out of the B.

To absent friends

Teriann