(Revised since first being published July 3, 2013) The 1977 Impala seems to have become one of the more rare of the downsized B-bodies and simply aren’t seen very often. Upon finding this specimen, a flood of memories from a nearly forgotten road trip washed all over me. I’m still tying to determine if such a stimulus dredging up long lost memories is good or not.
For those trepidatious about seeing another B-body, don’t worry; this won’t be professing fondness for, or poetic platitudes about, the downsized GM B-bodies. From what I am told the ’77 Impala belonging to my grandparents was a real turd – even about the same color – and was one of two reasons they took a fifteen year sabbatical from purchasing any GM product. Not all B-bodies were bastions of amazement and grandeur.
In September 1983, my mother was concerned about my younger sister and I possessing scant memory of her maternal grandmother. I had met her once in mid-1975, when I was two and my sister was just a few months old. To satisfy my mother’s concern, I traveled with my parents, sister, and maternal grandparent’s – “Albert” and “Iris” – to my great-grandmother’s house near Houston, Texas.
We made the trip in Albert and Iris’s 1977 Chevrolet Impala over Columbus Day weekend in October 1983. I had just turned eleven.
When learning of the trip, I was concerned all six of us would be stuffed like sausages into my parent’s 1983 Plymouth Reliant. Such was not to be; we were going in the Impala.
The trip from my grandparent’s house, south of Scott City, Missouri, to Houston was about 14 hours and 725 miles. Grandpa Albert’s focus in getting to Houston was legend within the family, so I was looking forward to seeing what would happen. Unfortunately for me, he had mellowed by age 59.
Sitting in the middle of the front bench seat between my father and grandfather, I kept an eager eye on the speedometer; sadly, it never went above 60 mph. Part of this was due to the Impala having been born with a 250 cubic inch inline six; it was pulling a fair amount of weight and, with 110 horsepower, it was no thoroughbred.
Somewhere around West Memphis, we made a pit stop at a rest area. Once inside, I got my first exposure to the foibles of the digestive system in aging men. Standing there next to Grandpa Albert, I hear a loud “rrrruuuppp.” Without missing a beat, Grandpa says “Damn floor has a squeak in it, Jason.” The floor was concrete; why would he say that?
Time has certainly opened that treasure box of knowledge.
My father soon took over the chore of driving. Being 6″ shorter than Granpa Albert, I had to contort myself such that I was peering out the right front window while we merrily chugged down the interstate. My mother and Grandma Iris were catching up about the various people they both knew. At some point, it was mentioned somebody had a drinking issue. This triggered a memory in Grandma Iris.
Now, about Grandma Iris….she’s a patient person but has a short fuse with stupid. One time when talking to my grandfather’s older sisters, she made the statement “that was enough to make me lose my religion.” Unable to forego a prime opportunity, my grandfather replied “that doesn’t take much to do.”
Anyway, Grandma, while not a prude by any means, has no tolerance for alcohol. I got to learn part of the reason why.
“Albert, I hope you remember your brother Clem’s wedding. You were dipping beer out of a bucket with a soup ladle and drinking as much as you were dipping. Then you claimed to get hot and cut the sleeves off that brand new dress shirt. When I finally got you hauled home, you started whining about feeling nauseated. You plopped down on the couch holding your army helmet between your knees so you could puke in it.”
Grandpa acted as if he hadn’t heard a word.
“I called the girls in to watch the show you were putting on. When you finally got to the toilet, you were hanging your head over the bowl, sounding like a dying cow from having the dry heaves. I called Sherry and Connie in and said, ‘girls, look at your father. See what drinking does to a person?’ Anytime a person drinks very much, they just end up making an ass of themselves.”
The rest of her aversion to alcohol goes back much further. Born in 1927, she was the granddaughter of a Prohibition moonshiner who would take her and her two older sisters to various churches on Sunday mornings and then sit in the front row. His arrival signaled his availability and he would take orders after the service. She has never appreciated being used as a prop for the sale of home-brewed hooch.
The Impala was like a locomotive for the entire trip; acceleration was best described as nose bleed, but once up to speed, it did an admirable job of doing what was required. Other than having oxidized paint, a complete inability to track a straight line, and a trunk that collected water like a cistern, it wasn’t a bad car.
After an overnight stop, we arrived bright and early at my great-grandmother’s house. For reasons I’ve never learned, Grandpa Albert called my great-grandmother “Bill”. How he got that from Pauline is a mystery.
A short while later, Grandma Iris’s sister Margie came by in her Grand Marquis as did their oldest sister Wanda. Both of them referred to Grandma Iris as “Charlie”. With Grandma Iris having been the third child, everyone had been hoping for a boy and nicknamed her after Charlie Chaplin.
As a reminder this was Texas in 1983, Wanda, who drove a red International Scout, wore a t-shirt announcing, “I Love to Hate J.R. Ewing”. At the time I couldn’t understand why people in Houston were so interested about events in Dallas.
The Impala later carried us to John and Margie’s house near Cut-and-Shoot; their son Clay and his overwhelmingly pregnant wife Joyce arrived shortly after. Sitting outside, we watched them approach in Clay’s Pontiac Formula. Margie said, “Charlie, watch this, it’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
After Clay shut the engine off, he dutifully got out of his Pontiac and opened the hood. Joyce spilled out and waddled around to the front of the car. She leaned over the hot engine and heavily inhaled about four or five times. She then paused and did it again.
Margie had tears in her eyes from laughing. “Charlie, girl, isn’t that the damnedest thing? I know pregnant women get weird cravings, but can you believe this? She’s been doing it for three months!” The rest of us sat in disbelief, amazement, or complete confusion – I’m not sure which; maybe it’s all three.
Everyone’s childhood helps form who they become as an adult, maybe this trip is part of why I’ve turned out the way I have.
We left the next day and spent the night in Texarkana.
Grandpa Albert’s concept of roughage in his diet is eating biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Since he had been commenting for two days how he was in the mood for some, and one particular restaurant had had billboards for miles, this place seemed to be a natural. Pulling into the parking lot at 8 am, nobody was concerned the parking lot was empty and we were the only customers. This place had biscuits and gravy, dammit.
We were served the greasiest, most wretched, foul, and distasteful biscuits and gravy I’ve ever had. I’ve seen diarrhea that looked more appealing. I couldn’t eat it and took my leftovers with me.
Later that morning when making a pit stop, I shoved the remainder of my biscuit in the ashtray and slid the door shut. Getting out, I threw the container in the trash. Problem solved, right?
Somewhere south of Little Rock, Grandpa Albert found himself in a talkative mood. He started talking, but addressing it to my father.
“Ed Shafer,” – he always calls my father by both names – “you remember the flood on the Mississippi River back in 1948 or so?” My dad would have been four for most of 1948, so it’s probable.
“This old boy had a big old dragline out by the river. Hell if I remember what he was doing. The river was rising and several people told him to get that thing out or it would flood. He was too hard-headed, so he left it there and sure enough it got flooded. It then sat there for two years. One day I saw him and asked if he wanted to sell it. He thought I was crazy but shot me a price of $75. I pulled out my wallet and bought that drag-line. I went and bought a case of dynamite and a sheet of plywood. Clem and I went with our older brother Lyle and started scrapping it. Clem and Lyle would put charges on that dragline and then run the line to where we were hunkered down behind that plywood. Clem would drop the hammer and we would knock some more off, load the pickup, and head to Cape.
“One day this old boy was out squirrel hunting with his dog. He saw what we were up to and said we’d get ourselves killed. But he wanted to watch so we told him to find a spot. We’re all hunkered down behind the plywood when Clem drops the hammer. Just when Clem is dropping the hammer, that dog spotted a squirrel and was ready to take off. That old boy grabbed that dog by the tail and yanked him back just before it got hit with a chunk of metal. When the dust settled, that old boy stood up and said ‘You bastards are crazy!’ and left.
“I made a boatload off that dragline.”
Grandpa later explained the beauty of fishing from a john-boat in the Mississippi River while using dynamite as a fishing lure. Dynamite does make a trot-line obsolete.
Two weeks after we got back, Grandpa discovered the biscuit in the ashtray. It had fossilized, but not molded. I was the recipient of a coaching and counseling session on leaving items behind in the automobiles of others.
The Impala stuck around until 1985 when my grandparents unceremoniously traded it for a new Dodge Aries two-door which was then replaced by a Dodge Dynasty in 1988. They left Lido for the General in 1992 when they purchased a B-body Buick Roadmaster. With the Roadmaster requiring 2 engines, 3 transmissions, and 5 torque converters, they were two for two on shitty B-bodies.
I’ve been looking for a ’77 Impala for quite some time as there are actually many snippets I remember from my time in one. Finding this Impala, and writing this story, has made me realize how it’s sibling was such a supporting character in my younger years. Having grown up around such regular and unpretentious people has certainly kept me grounded in life. That’s a lot like how the Impala was the regular and unpretentious B-body.
Found in Quincy, Illinois, Summer 2012
Thanks for the story, Jason. I think extended family must be especially vivid to 10-12 year olds. My strongest memories of mine all seem to come from that period.
Re: Grandma Bill. Big old families must have been less hung up on names than we are today. I had an Aunt Ben (Benedetta) on one side and a Grandma Bert (Bertha) on the other. There were others whose nicknames had less to do with their given names. I don’t really remember what Uncle Count’s real name was, no one ever used it.
I had a Great Aunt Lillian, whom everyone called Uncle Lilly. She died when I was too young to remember (lung cancer), but from stories I’ve heard, the name was fitting. In a time when it would’ve been considered “not proper”, she got a divorce, sometimes wore pants, and would even don coveralls to go out and fix her own car. She bought a brand new ’49 Nash that was such a lemon that she got the dealer to take it back and replace it with a ’50.
My other relatives have some some strange things, but they didn’t have strange names. 🙂 Except perhaps my Grandad. People called him “Frenchie” for fairly obvious reasons. Even my Nana called him that.
Family names can be a hoot; my grandmother was named Myrtle but answered to Bert. I have no idea how this came about but I remember a couple of aunts using that name. My grandfather (Myrtle’s husband) was called Droops by these same aunts. I do know this was short for “Droopy Drawers” but have no idea how or why. I’m guessing it is a reference to my grandfather’s clothing; my one aunt is still alive, I should ask her about this before it is too late.
In my family my sisters and I are the first in generations to be known by our actual names! My mother is Spike instead of Pauline and the men are mostly called by their second names. My maternal grandfather was known as Gussie instead of Gustav so the changed genders goes for men too
Both my mother & my father had family nicknames that still make no sense to me even today. How you get Bud out of Vern and George out of Kathleen I will never know.
Looking forward to the rest of this weeks series.
Wonderful story, Jason. I agree with the Capn that extended family is a great source of memories (and thus stories). My family is also populated with women with masculine nicknames – there was my Grandma Johnnie (her maiden name was Johnson) and my Aunt Dean (Eldean).
My law school roommate picked up a well-used 77 Impala coupe around 1984. His was a 305 car with a/c, but was otherwise pretty plain. It had started life as a rental, then was owned for a long time by a secretary at a law firm he was clerking at. It was a helluva lot nicer than the 75 Mustang II that the Impala replaced.
The paint on his was that silver-blue color that was dulling a bit. I will say that I liked the car. I think I liked these as Impalas better than I liked them as Caprices. There was something about these that never made them very good Brougham candidates to me, but they made perfect basic family sedans.
Heh, a high-school friend got a ’77 Impala in ’84. I have a CC coming on Saturday in which I share a photo I took of it that year.
My first job out of college was working as a production assistant at a local tv station’s newsroom. The station had just bought four identical ’78 Impala sedans for the assistants to run errands, transport reporters to news stories and drive rare tape from news crews back to the tv station when a “live” truck was not available.
The cars were “stripper” models that did get the smallest V8 and A/C. While still being large and ponderous, the new B bodies were a huge improvement over the land yatchs of the past. Driven by young and enthusiastic assistants, they survived 50, 000 miles per year for about fivecyears when they were sold off for scrap.
I am reminded of one time my grandparents were watching me, and we took a trip to the mall in their beater Olds, a 1968 Delta-88 I think. It was a purply-blue color and the paint was oxidized and chalky. I was probably 5 or 6 at the time. I was sitting in the front seat between them. I pointed to something on the dash and asked what that gauge was. My Nana told me it was the clock. I thought that seemed odd because it had some lines on it but no hands. Was it some kind of sundial??? Much later, I figured out that it was the block-off plate where the clock would have gone. It was stylized to look vaguely like a clock face, possibly to remind the original owner that they cheaped-out and didn’t get a clock.
I always love those “blanks” its like a constant reminder from the manufacturer of what you were to cheap or poor to get.
“No rear defroster huh? Maybe you should have paid more attention in school slacker! “
The clock block-off is the very first thing to go when a clockless gem is added to the collection!
Early GM intermediates (Olds & Buick) had offensive (huge) block-offs…about as bad as the pre-’71 Deltas & ’67 Bel Air & Biscaynes 🙂
LOL Carmine
Oh yes, the infamous block-off plate, and we had the gigantic one on our stripper ’67 Bel Air, along with an equally large gas gauge. Still it was nice to have a round speedometer in that car, so different from the strip speedos typically used in the era.
Those 67 Chevys were maddening. Three HUGE instrument pods on the IP, and other than the speedo, you had the world’s largest gas gauge on one side and the world’s largest block plate for the missing clock on the other. I would rather have the strip speedo taking up all the room.
The U14 option transformed the meh into one of my all-time favorite instrument clusters. Too bad it’s such a rare option and only available on V8 cars.
My guess is that the original design was based on this beautiful cluster…then decontented for the “regular” customer base.
Almost every car we had while I was growing up was without a clock. My mother always said “car clocks never work”. Turns out, she was right, at least until the LED era. Our cars were usually quite well equipped, but every one had that plate with the lines etched in in place of a clock.
I think the worst clock blockplate was on the downsized Pontiac LeMans/Grand Prix in the late 70s. If you didn’t have a clock, it was a huge blank the size of the speedometer. The gas gauge was over to the right. Our Grand LeMans had the clock, but of course it stopped running when the car was a couple of years old, but even the stopped clock looked better than nothing at all.
My father had a ’78 LeMans he bought of the lot at the end of the model year with the stripper dash and no AC.
It had that giant silver speedometer sized emptiness that said Pontiac where a clock or tach would be for those who factory ordered.
Oh the humiliation. As a testament to my middle class access to affordable credit all of my new cars have been factory orders with nary a block of plate in sight.
What’s weird is that the ’78-‘8? Pontiac intermediates offered that rolling-dial “digital” clock which mounted in the thin trim strip above the glove box.
It was actually extra-cost on the Grand Prix which means the large standard analog clock is replaced with that silly dummy plate with itty-bitty “PONTIAC” lettering in the center. At least a tachometer could be ordered to fill the void.
As I recall from scouring the Owners Manual in those pre-Internet days there were two optional clocks. One in the instrument cluster, a traditional clock if you will, and another analogue ‘digital’ on the passenger side dash.
There were other weird things in that manual. Two different types of rear widow defogger. The useless blower kind and the grid on glass type. There were two kinds of space saver tires. One that was inflated and another that required an air bottle to inflate. And at least two, if not three, types if side mirrors.
Talk about build variations…
Ideally the best combo would be the full gauge cluster with the tach and gauges, and the rotating digital clock on the passenger side, its hard to read over there, but it would be broken anyway….
Yep, I’ve never had a car with a working clock, It’s strange, electric clocks will usually last forever, but the ones they put in cars are sure junk.
I believe it is the vibration from being in a moving vehicle that does them in, at least that is how it was explained to me years ago. I can’t ever remember being in a car where the analog clock worked.
The two things that stop these clocks are lack of oil and letting the car battery go completely dead.
Many owners manuals I’ve read on these older cars actually state, “have your clock oiled by a competent serviceman every two years”. This can be a complete PITA on cars like the ’68-’72 Pontiac “A”-body, ’68-’69 Cutlass, any pre’73 Chevelle, most Chrysler products, etc. I can’t imagine anyone actually having this service performed.
If a battery is allowed to completely go flat, it will usually take these clocks out in the process.
These clocks are nearly identical to those old Robertshaw Minute Minders you used to see in the kitchen. Instead of a hammer striking a bell when the spring tension exhausted, two contact points would touch each other, completing the circuit to a very small solenoid.
This solenoid “punches” the points (with attached movement) apart with enough force to wind the clock back up for a minute or two. As the power source gets weaker and weaker, the solenoid’s “punch” weakens and eventually, the solenoid can no longer punch the points apart so they remain connected. This dead short across the solenoid fries it despite the weakened state of the power source.
Occasionally mechanical parts break but this is not as common. Asleep yet? For the record, I collect car clocks 🙂
Junqueboi, maybe you and TTAC’s Murilee Martin should start a car clock collector club.
In 1967 Joe the Farmer parked the rusted out ’54 Chevy Station Wagon out by the Sheep Barn , I was poking ’round inside it and discovered the clock worked after I wound it up and set it .
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I asked was the car to be ever used again and they said no so I took that clock and had it in my Mother’s house until she went into assisted living in the ealy 200’s ~ every time I visited her over the years , I’d find it , wind and set it and it always kept *perfect* time .
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One of the few (possibly the only) functional mechanical vehicle clocks I ever saw .
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I loved these Impalas , L.A.P.D. bought them with the 350 V8 and the older Boys In Blue still remember them very fondly .
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-Nate
They got much better when they started using Quartz in them, the big silver “QUARTZ MOVEMENT” clock on the passenger side of our 79 LeSabre kept humming away for 20 plus years while the rest of the car was pretty much a rolling dumpster.
In old Mopars at least, the OEM clock was actually mechanical. As the clock wound-down, a set of contacts would close, which energized a solenoid and rewound the clock and opened the contacts at the same time. Every few minutes, you’d hear “thwack!” from the dashboard in the vicinity of the clock. Either the contacts would get burned or the mechanism would get gummed-up, and that would be the end of the clock.
I initially converted one of my Chryslers using a generic quartz movement from the craft store and some home-made framework to hold it inside the original clock housing. It worked fine, but whenever I disconnected the battery, I would need to reach all the way up from under the dashboard to the back of the clock to reset the time. I later converted to application-specific aftermarket replacement quartz movements, which allowed me to set the time from the knob on the face again.
Exactly! Since the mid sixties, there were mainly only two types of clock movements: General Time or Borg. Both General Time and Borg units are found in Chrysler, Ford, and GM products. Fords & Chryslers with the GM General Time movements usually have G.T. etched into the back of the cases instead of “General Time” 🙂
Many of the movements are interchangeable between the Ford, Chrysler, & GM cars which is cool. What’s odd is that sometimes the same exact clock style may have both types of movements which are NOT interchangeable.
For example, in my box of ’71-’73 full-size Oldsmobile clocks, about half are Borg and the other half General Time. They are identical in appearance but completely different on the backside. Even the metal cases are different due to where the wiring connections exit.
The Borg units are a little easier to work on as the coil units are screwed on versus staked on.
Little-known fact: The current-gen Cadillac CTS has only an analog clock. There is no digital clock to be found, either in the instrument cluster, or within the infotainment screens. I genuinely believe it was an oversight.
If anything, it has taught me that some of my friends don’t know how to read an analog clock!
Time illiterate friend: “What time is it?”
Me: “Um, there’s a clock right there.”
Time illiterate friend “Oh.” (discreetly pulls phone out of pocket to check time)
Scary!
I doubt it was an oversight, I’m betting they were expecting the purchaser to be older than 20 something, be able to read an old school clock, and appreciate having a “real” stand alone clock.
My ’80 Volvo 242 had a quartz-movement clock, and it worked accurately right up to the day I sold the car, in June 2003. Can’t say the same about the odometer (the infamous VDO unit with the plastic gears)!
My ’88 Volvo 780’s analog clock still keeps perfect time.
Well, it does when the battery is charged, anyway, which is not the case currently. But through a host of electrical issues that killed one battery, the clock didn’t blink. Juice up the battery and it goes about its clocky business.
I’m pushing 70 y. o., so I well remember car clocks quit working by the time they were 3 or 4 y. o..
But the analog clock in my ’85 Town Car, my daily driver, still works fine and keeps good time. I think that it does have a quartz-type movement, though, not the old type with a spring, electro-magnet, and set of points. The points must have gotten dirty and/or corroded… and that’s why they quit workin’.
Jason that was an excellent story thank you
I like the clean front end of the early downsized Impalas, the simpler grille and lack of a stand up hood ornament make the whole front end cleaner and more “honest” in someway.
I would love to find a 9C1 version of an early Impala, but thats gonna be tough,
Your story was a hoot, Jason. It reminded me of a trip in 1948, when my mother and I rode along with her oldest sister and his husband from our place near Auburn, WA, to Solvang, CA, in their maroon 1937 LaSalle coupe. I probably would have better memories of the trip if I hadn’t spent most of it on the fold-down seat in the back, and if the LaSalle hadn’t vapor-locked on the Highway 99 bridge over the Columbia River between Vancouver and Portland during evening rush hour.
Her sister Elise always went by Lee, and it wasn’t until decades later that most of the other Solvang relatives referred to her behind her back as General Lee.
Entertaining write-up Jason!
This actually reminded me of a very similar car my older sister & her (ex)husband had back in the 80’s. They lived around Denver at the time & I remember probably six of us piled in their ’77 or ’78 brown/beige/gold Impala sedan for an hour or 2-hour interstate trip somewhere. I was probably nine or ten at the time.
To be respectful, let’s just say that a few people in this car were very large making the car heavily loaded. I felt sorry for the car as it struggled to maintain 65-70mph. Slight inclines forced frequent downshifts that really spooled up the poor 305-2bbl engine. It’s funny how people’s perspectives differ: “non-automotive” dysfunctional conversation ensued between all passengers except me of course…I just couldn’t get over the hell that car went through.
They kept an extra hot battery loose in the trunk and had a 20 foot set of jumper cables which would be attached whenever the starter wouldn’t turn the car over. I remember this happened a lot. It was the solenoid because the starter either cranked the car over with no drag or it just clicked.
I just noticed the LF replacement wheelcover on the feature car is correct for a 1977 Delta 88. It’s wrong but in a right sort of way I guess.
When the box B-Chevy was still a common taxi down here, almost all of them had at least one component from another non-Chevy B-body on it.
I’ve seen a Crapice rolling on Buick wires with a different colored Delta 88 steering wheel and Parisienne pillow top seats.
What a lark, mixing up bits from different GM divisions! Reminds me of Torah prohibitions of linsey-woolsey. But has anyone done the unspeakable & put a Chevy motor in a Ford, or vice-versa?
Like 90% of “Hot Rods” with Chevy SB in a Ford?
Neil, I know a guy that put a SMChevy V-8 into a two-seater Thunderbird!
That Impala really reminds me of my old ’79. A great car, would still probably have it if some jerk hadn’t stolen it.
I used to work for a man who had founded an aluminum company with his two brothers. They were also a Tier 1 supplier to the Big Three and several other foreign firms. By the time I knew the gentleman in the late 70’s/early 80’s, he was quite wealthy. But he chose to keep a low profile, his cars of choice were a string of Chevy Caprices. The one I remember vividly was a 1977 Caprice coupe with the “bent” rear window, with a 350 and nice leather interior. As a young man, I couldn’t understand his desire to camouflage his wealth; but I guess maybe that wasn’t the idea.
I believe he chose to remain close to his roots; they were not wealthy people when they started out, but he would dote on his wife and child. I appreciated that.
He drove that car until the mid 1980’s, after that he bought a Honda Accord which he was truly enamored of. Additionally, his company had become a Honda supplier at that time, too…
I knew GM was in trouble when someone like this man switched from a B-body GM car to an Accord. Change was blowing in the wind.
Regardless, I’d like to have a B-body, but more like the Olds Holiday 88 we had when my wife and I started out…
Your story reminds me of a lawyer I worked with years ago. He was a dedicated GM guy, and finally could afford a Cadillac. In 1981. After 5 years of living with his V-8-6-4, he decided that it was really not worth it all and bought an 86 Honda Accord. He drove nothing but Hondas from then on. He could have afforded a lot better, and bought each Honda with cash.
Love the story like all the rest of yours. Keep them coming. Subject cars lack of tinted glass by 1977 is unusual. I remember my Dads 67 Fury II having a tinted windshield but not the rest and thinking that was a least a little bit of class since it did not have air. When did tinted glass become standard in most all cars?
Probably when air conditioning became standard in most all cars.
I, of course, want to hear more about Wanda and her Scout!
The only other nugget I know about it is one Christmas shortly thereafter my grandparents received a Christmas card from her signed, “Bob, Wanda, and her red Scout”.
Cool, it sounds like the Scout was considered a part of the family as many are.
Yes, They are like the crazy aunt or uncle, never quite right, but everyone loves them anyway…just my my 61 CC Scout.
Funny how the same colour combo looks so drab with the vinyl roof, yet my dad’s ’78 Caprice with the same light tan and bronze two tone paint looked so snazzy! The interior shot shows a common problem, the different vinyls fading to different shades over the years. The armrests were particularly bad for that.
GM vari-fade plastics. Tan interiors were the worst! My ’79 Malibu has at least 6 different shades in it of plastics that used to be the same color. Some of them are no longer anything resembling tan, having faded to a pinkish-rose color.
I had to check the author’s name again. For a moment I thought it was Mark Twain.
They are both from the same neighborhood, I believe. 🙂
I missed this the first time around, so I’m glad you re-ran it. Even in an Impala, and with two of them not full-sized, 6 people in the car for a 14 hour drive must have been a challenge! Hopefully that Impala had A/C…
Reminds me of a trip just after college where five of us piled into a ’93 Accord to visit a friend who went to grad school in Athens, Ohio, then take in a football game in Columbus. It’s a shorter trip–that was about 8 hours from Raleigh–but definitely close quarters.
Fun story. My paternal grandparents had a ’77 (or ’78?) Impala, which replaced Pop’s ’71 Pontiac T-37 sedan, which had rusted to bits.
My grandmother Rosie was a stern, cold, and frugal woman who ruled with an iron fist. The new Impala was the “Good Car”, and as such was reserved for use only when necessary, otherwise her ’73 Dart was the standard vehicle of choice. Mind you, the Impala was ordered with literally nothing but an air conditioner, which was considered an extravagance, but one they’d allow themselves for infrequent use during their retirement. It was white over powder blue vinyl, with dog dish hubcaps.
Rosie was so resistant to anything remotely wasteful that when my grandfather and I took a trip to Virginia to visit his eldest daughter she proclaimed that we’d be taking the Dodge. So it was that while the new air conditioned Impala sat in the garage at home my grandfather and I rattled our way down I-95 in the sweltering pea green Dart, with 3 on the tree, rubber floor mats and no radio. Pop read her the riot act when we returned, because somewhere in Maryland he picked up an expensive speeding ticket due the the Dodge’s speedometer needle wagging violently back and forth at any speed above 35, thus rendering it useless. She tried to justify the wisdom of putting miles on the older car and using less gas (supposedly) due to its better economy, but it was one of the few times when I saw my grandfather really read her the riot act for being such a pain in the ass. I hope I’m as much of a character when I’m old (er) as some of the depression era folks were, and are.
Great story MTN!!!
My neighbor had a 79′ Caprice beige on beige and that was a real pile.
The beige interior was 20 different shades of beige (all of them FUGLY) and the thing had a lifter tick at 30000 miles that sounded like hell.
My granny’s 77′ LTD was slower, handled worse, and had weaker A/C ( HOUSTON TEXAS ) but it was a 1000% better place to be.
It was DOVE gray with DOVE gray interior and it was like a Lincoln compared to that Chevy..
That Caprice was like a big cheap Chevette inside!
The speedo and other gauge faces looked ( TO ME ANYWAY ) like black painted cardboard done in the cheapest possible way………
Nasty.
My uncle’s 78′ Bonneville was MUCH better but it had it’s own issues and when they took their yearly road trips they always took Granny’s LTD.
They did it ONCE in the Pontiac in 79′ but in the mountains (Monarch Pass i think ) it gave trouble (NO POWER and stalling) and they never tried it again,, plus the LTD was just more comfortable and roomy.
This is a trip back in time for me. My grandfather had a tan ’77 Impala with a V8 which was his tow vehicle for his 23′ camper trailer! That was quite a sight. I used to get dropped off by my parents and I’d spend summer at the campground with him. I’m sure my parents enjoyed the break from dealing with me and it allowed me & him to form a close bond. Good memories there. It’s funny how the most mundane vehicles can have such an impact on us sometimes.
Sadly I had the chance to inherit the car when my grandfather passed. In my youthful ignorance, I decided that it wouldn’t make a very good dirt-track race car, and therefore I had no use for it. I believe a distant relative ended up receiving it and pulling the engine for another project.
I owned a used 79 Caprice from 1985 until 1990….Two tone….black with silver mid section….I washed and waxed it constantly so the paint still was nice and shiny….It had round gauges….one for speed, one for gas, and a third was a fuel economy gauge that measured from min to max….It worked off engine vacuum so the harder you stepped on the gas, the closer to ‘mininium’ the gauge needle would go.
My Dad’s ’77 Caprice Estate was a real pile of crap. Moldings, emblems and hubcaps fell off that car constantly. It had rust all under the back windows and it was only three years old at the time! Plus the electrical system was messed up – it used to blow fuses randomly when you used the power door lock button so you had to make sure you manually opened and locked the doors and not use the button. And the driver’s side power window was never right either. It would work intermittently – you had to push down really hard on the button to get it to open and close. The digital clock worked for maybe a few years, and it was installed crooked from day one. The tan vinyl interior was about five different shades. And lastly the lighted vanity mirror never worked right on the passenger side. Those are the issues I remember – there were more, trust me – my father HATED that car. He replaced it with a 1982 Country Squire that was a million times better made than that Chevy.
Hahaha! Glad that’s recorded for posterity.
Dare we ask what relationship Clay and Joyce’s child has with cars today, inoculated or indoctrinated?
Good question for which I have no answer. I haven’t seen their son since he was seven.
What an incredible, well-told narrative. I feel like I was also on that road trip. “Albert” and “Iris” feel like my own kin. That generation that lived through WWII had a no-nonsense quality I miss in people (my dad was born in the late 1920’s; my maternal grandparents were born in the Teens). Your grandparents’ (unintentional?) comedic timing seemed like it was on-point a lot of the time. Great read, Shafer.
Both of my parents where from Mississippi. When I was a child we would occasionally go visit the families. I was very confused who was who. I guessed we were all somehow related. Fun fun fun.
My father with the baby of his family. His mother was very old, mid 19th century born I believe. More fun fun fun. Families should be avoided whenever possible. At least for the Young.
Riko, THAT sure is the truth: “families should be avoided whenever possible.”
Thank God we can CHOOSE our FRIENDS!!!