(first posted 12/17/2016) My best friend Jerry in eighth grade was one of ten kids (yes, it was a Catholic school). His mom drove a Dart 270 sedan like this one, except for it being bright red. And how did that work? Just fine actually, as it gave me the chance to snuggle up to his sisters when his mom drove us somewhere. There was one a year older than him, his twin sister, and one a year younger; ideally I’d find myself squeezed between the older one and the younger one in the Dart’s back seat. But it didn’t usually work out that way. The Dart was the women’s car in Jerry’s family, and I was lucky to get in at all.
They lived in a big old house on a double lot in Towson, which I can show you readily thanks to Google, although back in 1967 it was painted white and the yard was all grass; plenty of room for ten kids and their many friends to run around. But it wasn’t the yard and the little kids that mainly claimed it as theirs that interested me. No, it was that sunroom off the left side of the house, which the three teenage girls (aged 15, 14, and 13) shared. It was very densely girly in there; an estrogen-heavy hot house on a languid summer day.
Walking into their room—assuming I wasn’t shooed right out—I was hit with a heady melange of scents (natural and bottled), the sounds of Martha and the Vandellas playing on the portable record player, and the sight of female stuff strewn everywhere: clothes, magazines, underclothes, posters, and of course the girls themselves, it all gave me a palpable hormonal surge. Testosterone meets estrogen. Except of course that my nascent expressions of testosterone was absolutely no match for their combined hormonal overload. I felt utterly overwhelmed. They sort of put up with me, intruding into their boudoir, but just for as long as they wanted to. I knew when it was time to leave.
Actually, I did take his twin sister Jeanie to a CYO danc, and I remember riding in the back of the Dart with her. But Jeanie was the least attractive and sexy, and the most uptight of the three; there wasn’t really any magic. It was just because neither of us had someone else to ask, or be willing to go, so Jerry arranged it; a date of mutual convenience, not attraction. Even the slow dances failed to ignite anything more than the most basic involuntary response, strictly below the belt, but nothing in the head.
Why couldn’t it have been her hot younger sister Sam? Because she never really looked at me, just through me, for starters. Well, that and because her strict Catholic parents wouldn’t have allowed her to go; the end of eighth grade is when kids were allowed to start going to CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) dances.
The Dart sedan wasn’t the only car in the family. Mr. J. drove a white ’66 Ford Country Sedan, technically a ten-seater, but I’m sure it carried at least 50% more on occasion. But why he drove the big wagon to work every day and left Mrs. J. with the Dart sedan was a bit of a mystery to me; in my family, my dad drove a Dart sedan and Mom had the nine-seater Coronet wagon. Ah, but then Mr. J. was a bit…rigid, to put it mildly. Actually, he was an uptight, insecure, borderline bully, but never mind that. But he was not going to drive the lipstick-red Dart to Black and Decker, where he was an engineer.
Maybe he just didn’t like me because I would rather insinuate myself into the big girls’ bedroom to hear the latest Motown hits and take in the smells than play outside with the boys. Or maybe he was just perpetually overwhelmed by the results of his annual procreation. Yes, the kids were all about one year apart.
But I really liked Mrs. J.; she was short and cute like all the girls in the family. When she drove the Dart, there was almost limo-like rear legroom, since she had to slide the front seat all the way forward. More room for more girls in the back. We got her to drive us to Beaver Dam out in Cockeysville to go swimming. Sadly, the two-piece bathing suits were all mighty modest still in 1967.
We’d spend hours on the rope swing; back then you weren’t required to drop off on the first swing. The hot thing was the opposite: to jump back and up,and to get such a strong swing, so that you could land right back on the platform and get off. If you needed it, someone might grab you; or not, and push you in. The highlight of one of these swing sessions was when a girl’s bathing suit top popped off as she landed hard. Several guys dove in, all eager to be the one to find her top and (hopefully) help her put it back on. No thanks; I can do it myself!
But the real show-off thing to do was to swim across the lake, climb the 35′ or so tall cliff (now overgrown with trees in the background), and then climb the 30′ or so tall mining tower (it had been a quarry) that was still there, but not for much longer. The total height was some 60′-70′, which looked more like a half mile when standing on the edge of it and looking down.
The first time I jumped from it was on a dare from my older brother. I was about 12 or so, and as is my very impulsive risk-taking nature, I swam over there, climbed the cliff and up the tower, and walked towards the edge. I instantly realized that I’d never do it if I stood there and actually looked down, especially at the protruding cliff edge half way down. So I just walked back, turned, ran and jumped. And my feet just kept running the whole time I was in the air, like a person getting hanged. Which I was, sort of, but without a rope.
Wham!! I landed leaning slightly backwards, which from that height was a hard enough slap on my back to knock the wind out of me and momentarily paralyzed me. I finally gasped for air and started to feel my back again. Wow; That was intense!
I thus joined a quite small club of older guys who would jump the mining tower. Sadly, the tower was razed soon afterwards, and the cliff became off-limits. Even my daring jump for the girls failed to have the intended impact on Sam, although maybe she did warm up just a few degrees. It was my way of jump-starting my testosterone.
Riding in that Dart with cute Mrs.J. at the wheel with a few of her cuter daughters was about as good as it got, for that summer of 8th grade, anyway, even if Sam wasn’t quite snuggling up to me. No wonder I think of the Dart as a very female car, and not just because of its looks.
Although its big headlights did remind me of the girls’ eyes with full make-up. Anything to make them look bigger. And the slant six purred like girl on the make, unlike the macho burble of the 390 V8 in Mr. J’s Country Sedan. He wanted his little woman to have a feminine little car, and the Dart filled the bill.
The rides in the Estro-Dart and my visits to the girls’ boudoir came to an abrupt end at the end of summer, as Mr. J had taken a new job in St. Louis. But the following summer I talked my parents into letting me take a solo trip to the Midwest, to visit my old grade school friends in Iowa City and to Jerry and his sisters in St. Louis. I was all of 15, but my parents consented. And the arrangements were all rather sketchy; I wrote a letter to one of my old friends that I would be coming out, and with a date. No further details were arranged, like how I would get from the airport in Cedar Rapids to Iowa City.
I took an early morning United flight from Baltimore to Chicago on a brand new DC-8-61, and there were no more than twenty passengers that day. It was bizarre, sitting in such a long plane, and only a few heads to be seen anywhere. Such were the days before deregulation.
I hitched a ride from the Cedar Rapids airport to Iowa City. And when I got into town, I just walked to my old grade school friend Johnny’s house, knocked on the door, and said…here I am!
Oh boy, did we get into trouble that week. Johnny’s dad had a beautiful Thompson wood runabout on Coralville Reservoir, with a big 110 hp Mercury outboard. And his grandpa had a cabin on Lake McBride, which was a smaller reservoir separated from the bigger reservoir by a rock dam. Johnny, who had an unwavering predilection for trouble, came up with a typical harebrained idea.
A bunch of us drove out late one night to where the boat was docked, thanks to a friend who had a car. It was my job to somehow get the motor running without the key (this was all without permission from his dad). I took off the motor cover, and somehow got it running (I can’t remember how). And I had to stay back there with the exposed motor to control it, as the remote control was still locked out. Or something like that (we were already a bit under the influence having consumed some beers, but were in the hunt for more). I can still hear that Mercury straight six “tower of power” screaming inches away, as I pulled on its throttle linkage right to the stops.
We roared upriver to the dam that separated it from Lake McBride, tied the boat up, and climbed the big rock dam. And then we jumped in with a waterproof flashlight or two and started swimming across the lake to the cabin. Why? Because there was beer in it, of course! Anything for beer! And Johnny thought it would be a good idea to break in and float it back to the boat.
Well, someone sitting out on the deck of another cabin saw the flashlights way out there right in the water, and called the sheriff, thinking that someone’s boat had capsized or sunk. When we arrived at the cabin, the sheriff deputy was waiting for us. Johnny tried to make up some utterly BS story about me having a health issue, but he wasn’t buying it. Mr. Nash got a call, drove out, confirmed that the cabin (and Johnny) was in the family, and the sheriff went on his way. Man, was his dad ever hot! And the next day we had to retrieve the Thompson and spent the day cleaning it up immaculately and doing other drudge chores. And I was not feeling very welcome anymore.
So I hopped on a Continental Trailways bus, to St. Louis, to Jerry and his sisters. I snagged the front seat across the aisle from the driver both for the fine views of the Mississippi as well as to watch the driver work the big gearshift and steering wheel. I knew I wanted to be a bus driver someday, a wish I fulfilled some years later.
The Gateway Arch had just been finished a couple of years earlier, and going up it was highly memorable. I can still feel it swaying gently as I lay on my chest to look down and out of the viewing windows, which angled down some 45 degrees.
There were some other memorable experiences too, with Jerry and his sisters. The oldest one had just gotten her license, so now we piled into the Dart in search of…whatever kids did in these vast and rather sterile brand-new suburbs of the day. The brand new mall was a magnet for the girls, so we tagged along. And in the evenings we’d find ourselves at the usual suburban teen drinking parties; at whoever’s parents were out of town. Or just very lenient.
In some ways, it was racier and more fun. But the innocence of that summer in Towson was gone, as was that wonderful, aromatic three-girl boudoir. The older girls each had little and slightly musty rooms carved out of the huge basement. And although Sam was a bit less cool to me after a few beers, but she still wasn’t interested. Oddly enough, it was his older sister and I that hit it off the best, as we both had shared interests now in psychedelic music and pot. There was a decidedly new smell in her room.
I flew back to Baltimore on a TWA 707. As I was flying student stand-by, I was last to board. As I got on, I passed the first class lounge at the front of the plane, and asked one of the stewardesses, who wasn’t all that much older than me, if it was ok for me to sit there. She gave me a whatever look and shrug of permission.
After she was done serving lunch, she sat down there too, across from me, and pulled out a paperback: Love Story. Ali MacGraw looked just like an older version of Sam, and I fancied myself looking more than a bit like Ryan O’Neil. I just sat there and stared into those dark eyes.
I tried to imagine what fulfilled love was like. I wished the stewardess would tell me; but then maybe she was still trying to figure that one out herself. Maybe she’d get to the end of the book before the flight ended and have a good explanation.
When I saw this Dart a few blocks from my house the other day, I wanted to open the door and take a sniff. There’s no sense more evocative than smell, able to instantly and fully transport one back to when a certain scent first became indelibly connected with an intense experience. I’d like to think this Dart will smell like Mrs. J’s Dart did, of teenage girls, wet bathing suits and towels, Coppertone, unfulfilled desire, and Dr. Pepper.
It’s just as well that it was locked; it was bound to disappoint, especially in our wet climate. And it’s probably been occupied by males.
Wow, what a wonderfully evocative piece of writing. There really is nothing like those summers atmage 12 or 13, even if one’s disposition was more on the tame side, as mine was. And all it takes to unlock the door and be mowed down by those memories is the right car.
There’s the beauty of an old car, whether your own or just on the street somewhere. As nice and shiny and powerful and safe and reliable and whatever a new car is, only an old one has the power to take one back, to re-experience sights, sounds, and especially scents in one’s mind. A new one needs to work (or be worked) hard for a lifetime to get to that point and until then has little actual personality of its own.
This may be one of your best posts, and even ties in a car or two. Question, a friend said that there have been significant power outages in Eugene this week, have they effected you? Based upon the number of posts, it doesn’t seem so.
FYI, I was in graduate school in St Louis from ’67 – ’69 and flying stand-by was a mostly great experience. I remember sitting at the gates at St. Louis Lambert Field and watching the McDonald Douglas F-4 Phantom flights take off 2 at a time being shuttled to Vietnam.
Thanks for the excellent writing.
Biggest ice rain storm in many decades, and yes, with many power outages. But not at our house, fortunately. And the thick ice coating is still on the trees three days later; quite magical, in the sun, or in the moonlight, during my walk last night. Like a Swarovski wonderland. We’re having rather unusually cold temps for this part of the world.
The town has pretty much shut down. Not much to do but go for walks and write long rambling reminiscences. 🙂
Great post. I remember how disappointed I was in 1970 when I attended the first year of high school and the girls that were in junior high quit wearing mini skirts and were wearing jeans instead.
Definitely a +1 on what might be Paul’s best post ever. When I was reading it I somehow became 50 years younger, at least for a few minutes. Lots of the country seems to be having odd weather this week; it has been relatively cold here for the past several days but started warming up yesterday afternoon. This morning the temperature reached 65 degrees but now the cold front is passing through and the temperature has dropped more than 25 degrees in the past hour. Just south of here there is a line of violent thunderstorms which is expected to spawn tornadoes.
I will have to agree with the others on the literary efforts of Paul’s latest posting. He hit it right on the nail as far as the cars, boats, sights, sounds, smells and desires growing up in this time period. I can relate to all of this very well. Oh the memories of our youth. I am glad he has weathered the ice storm without too many problems.
I remember very well the ice storms in Portland in ’78 & ’79. I had just bought my first house and it had a 20′ long carport and I had installed a wood stove. I broke out the two Coleman stoves I had, my 8′ folding table and went around inviting the neighbors who brought their food and we had an outdoor communal kitchen and dining area complete with lawn chairs and dish washing faculties. The ones that did not have a fireplace were welcome to camp out in my living room or the nice heated basement as that is where the wood stove was and the old floor furnace grate allowed the heat up to the main floor as I had taken out the old furnace and had the wood stove in the basement. Everybody thought it was great fun and an adventure, I have pictures of it somewhere.
There are a few cars I’d like to find that evoke stories from my life. A ’74 Plymouth Satellite Suburban with plastiwood. A ’69 LeMans hardtop coupe. A ’73 Dodge Charger with triple opera windows.
Hahaha, my Dad came from a French Catholic family, one of 7.
This story hits so many buttons of my youth.
The numb feeling of slow dancing with a girl who has the same lack of interest in me that I have in her (but there we were anyway), the combination of joy and fear seeing and walking even remotely close to the high school cheerleader goddess that floats by ignoring me while leaving a trail of perfume in her wake, and – of course – how just seeing an old car can jump start these long buried memories.
When that big Mercury outboard started up in the video, I almost felt I needed to reach out to put my hand on the exhaust to verify that the water pump was doing its job and spitting out warm seawater. It got warm, maybe hot, but never too hot to touch (if it was working right).
Thompson wooden lapstrake boats from the 1950s were identifiable from the more common Lymans by a varnished mahogany gunwale strip at the top of the white painted hull. They were highly valued and usually meticulously maintained by their proud owners (as you found out).
Nice read about a time in life that haunts and beguiles many of us.
Riplaut, I too had the urge to check the water on the outboard motor to be sure the water was there and the sounds were exactly as I remember. Having had my own boat and motor when I was twelve( my dad gave me his old 12′ boat and I bought the 5hp motor with my paper route and lawn mowing money which also paid for the gas and upkeep on the both the boat and motor. Around the Lincoln City, OR area the wood boats were made by local boat builder Caulkins. Here is one of their most famous designs but they also built a lot of runabouts and Chris Craft style boats. https://bartenderboats.com/history/ – http://www.ernestbloch.org/home.cfm?dir_cat=77541
Excellent writing Paul. My miserable powers of persuasion never convinced my parents to send me on any big adventures at that age.
One of my cousins in the Netherlands scored a summer in Canada by writing to all her aunts and uncles asking if she could come. Once she had six letters inviting her she then approached her parents. Smart kid!
I can’t remember how this came to be, but I don’t remember much pestering. I think my parents were just glad to be rid of me for a few weeks. 🙂
I felt like I was there. Gorgeously written, evocative (to echo JP Cavanaugh’s word) piece. What a treat.
This is going to sound really corny, but the thought of these three, hot sisters and the time period (late-60’s) had me thinking of hotter, PG-13 (or R-rated) versions of the Lennon sisters from the Lawrence Welk show.
I liked that your homeboy Johnny was your troublemaking friend. Have you kept in touch?
Thanks for this wonderful piece of nostalgia, Paul.
Beautiful text, Paul. Makes me regret (yet again) that I was born far too late in the 20th century. The mid-60s in the US always has that feeling of a straight-laced culture bursting at the seams. I know the movie’s set in the late ’70s, but this piece had me thinking of Sophia Coppola’s “Virgin Suicides”… Positively cinematic writing. Thank you for having posted it.
Just gotta have this song in the background while reading it…
Yes. YES! The Virgin Suicides was exactly the vibe I got reading this, but couldn’t put my finger on it, exactly. Great stuff. That big freeze out in Eugene has done a world of good. Nothing like a blast of arctic air to clear out the cobwebs and get the creative juices flowing.
Paul your wonderful trip down memory lane tripped some similar memories in me.
Northern Minnesota had water filled old iron ore reservoirs; and we would drive out to the “pits” in my 1950 Studebaker; my dad bought for me for $8 (reg and license were a lot more- $15) and jump from a 25-30 ft cliff; and if you didn’t hit the water just right it could hit your head like banging it against a board; or give you a “water burn” if you belly-flopped; would look like you had sun-burn.
Two years before that;1962; 8th grade graduation dance was out at Superior state park resort; and the prettiest blonde girl in the class that I had watched from afar for two years; chased me down for the “girls choice” (I didn’t run too hard) dance. I still remember how that old lodge building & her perfume; smelt–mixed with the sweat from my hands–of course we moved to Wyoming for the summer and never saw her again. Oh; the missed opportunities of youth! Thanks for the memory jog.
It’s funny you chose this title. This car is the same shade as estrogen tablets.
Ha!
Please let me reiterate what many others have said about this post: This was a great piece of writing Paul…. and totally takes me back in many ways. I live in this area, worked at Black & Decker in Towson at one point in their Engineering department, had a best friend with two hot sisters (who I was not allowed to touch, although I briefly ended up dating one of them… the other was not interested ;o)… and their mother schlepped us kids around in a Dodge Dart, albeit about 8 years newer. (I’m about 6 or 7 years younger than you.)
I never got out to the Beaver Dam Swim Club… that place was for the rich preppies back in my day… but when I eventually worked at AAI in Cockeysville/Hunt Vally, I heard PLENTY of stories about that place and how much fun it was.
Oh, and my first plane ride at 14 years old in 1974… a TWA Boeing 707. And I still recall those United DC-8s flying over my house to enter right downwind for Runway Two-Eight at “Frendship” (BWI).
Ah youth….. again, great read, sir.
There was another Beaver Dam Club nearby that was built around a small quarry, more like a big pool. It was a real club, and very preppy. Beaver Dam was decidedly more downscale, but it was better swimming and my father would have nothing to do with the snootier clubs. I did go there once or twice with some friends. Quite different.
And I think it got redeveloped or closed for other reasons many years back. At some point Beaver Dam switched to club status, to keep out the worst of the rabble, but the membership was not high and it didn’t become snooty.
Good job Paul ! .
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I can only echo everyone else, I was there once and again reading your prose .
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-Nate
You really painted a vivid picture. I can’t relate to these events as well as many other Curbsiders can, for various reasons, but I very much enjoyed being immersed in this story. Scent is a crazy thing and it really can summon memories.
It’s funny how childhood/adolescent encounters with certain cars can stick with you and paint your perceptions of some cars, like how you associate Darts with women. The only two people I knew who had Daihatsu Charades, for example, were mature-aged women so I’ve always associated that brand with an older audience. And yet, I’m not sure if the demographic makeup of Daihatsu buyers actually backs that up.
Thank you! This transported me back to a similar place of my own, a place that was warm and sunny, free of adult headaches, and where innocence was starting to erode rather quickly.
This was a delight, especially on a day when a bit of escapism was highly needed.
I concur, this is a solid piece of litterature right here, it’s one of your best posts. There are just so many levels to a story like that, and there’s more to it than just being a question of cars. It reminds me of the Maserati Dreamin’ post from way back when, which was the first piece I recognized you from, that made you stand out as a writer. It’s almost a pity this piece is hidden on a car blog, because it would hit right home with so many people that doesn’t necessarily look for stories like that on a car blog.
I’m still working my way through the post. Damn that Merc “Tower of Power” was so cool. I miss those so much.
What a terrific piece of writing. Of course, it resonates with me having been born and raised in St. Louis (was Northwest Plaza the new mall mentioned? At one time, the sprawling outdoor complex near Lambert field was the largest shopping center in the world – the preferred term before they became enclosed as “malls.”)
It also recalls my time in the airline world as a flight attendant and after nine years with Ozark joined TWA when we were purchased.
What a wonderful vision of a time I came along far too late to experience, and of adolescent desire that I think we’ve all felt at one time or another. Every car has a story, and sometimes the story isn’t really about the car at all.
Great read on a dreary winter’s evening. Evocative indeed.
Wow lots of memories for me here… I think I recognize the house, was it a block or so off Allegheny Ave? I swam at Beaver Dam, went to Elem School a block or 2 from Towson Catholic, and our next door neighbor in Chestnut Hills was Kathryn Black, the divorced wife of the Mr. Black of Black & Decker, it wasn’t far from their offices on E Joppa Rd, She got the house as part of the divorce AND a new Cadillac every couple of years. A very sweet lady, then in her 60s.
As to Darts and family wagons, I knew of several ’60s families for whom that was a useful combination, none with 10 kids, but in both cases the Dad drove the Dart, one of them a ’63 stick shift Dart, he as chief of Endocrinolgy at Univ of Md Hospital on Redwwood St in the city, and she with a ’66 Coronet with a slant 6!
No; it was on Maryland Ave. between Burke and Aigburth, not far from Towson High.