Tex, the Midnight Rambler
Where, oh where is my 1966 Rambler Ambassador?
It was my first car, and a recent story in the Wall Street Journal made me think about the car that I drove during my upper classman years at the University of New Hampshire and the first year of my job as a newspaper reporter in the mid-1970s.
The Journal story told of how some middle-aged men have become obsessive about their first cars — not just remembering those cars, but actually finding the cars. "It's like trying to find a needle in the haystack," the Journal quoted Keith Ingersoll as saying. Ingersoll is founder of the Lost Car Registry, a Web site devoted to finding, as he says, "the ones that got away." In fact, he's looking for his father's '69 Mustang Mach I that he used to drive.
What is it with baby boomers who are reaching so far back in their past as to want the wheels they drove as teenagers? According to the Journal, researchers say that people form their preferences for music, clothing, cars, etc., during the late adolescent to early adult stage, and those preferences tend to carry forward for the rest of their lives. But the tendency to focus on cars, say the researchers, rests almost exclusively with men.
I bought my Ambassador in the spring of 1973 from a UNH hockey player I knew from the dorm. The car cost $475 — $300 from Mom and Dad, $175 from me. I needed a car for the newspaper internship I was going to be doing at the Gloucester, Mass., Daily Times during the first semester of my junior year. Its color was azure, or "az-u-ah" as my New Hampshire co-horts liked to describe it. It was registered in New York State, my family's home at the time, and the plate number was 566-TEX. Thus my Rambler became known as Tex, the Midnight Rambler.
It certainly had its quirks. The windshield wipers, for example, did not operate off the car's electrical system. They worked off an air pump, and as the pump got faulty the wipers became less and less able to function in the rain and snow. I had to tie a rope to the driver side wiper and snake the rope through the window vent.
When I needed the wipers I'd turn on the switch to activate the pump but I'd have to pull on the rope to help the wiping process along. It also had an 8-track stereo system, and for the life of me I could never figure out a way to select a particular song I wanted to hear.
My first grown-up car was the 1976 Dodge Dart that I bought new after a year of working as a reporter.
My motorhead friends loved this car — Donny Dart — two-door, three on the floor, slant-6 engine. I wasn't sure then and I'm not sure now exactly what slant-6 means for an engine, but it was very impressive to those who understood the meaning of a slant-6.
I have great memories of that car — it took me and future former-wife to the West Coast and back on a leisurely six-week driving tour of the United States in 1977. It was a car that, even for a non-motorhead like me, was simple enough so that I could change the oil, even change the spark plugs.
With subsequent cars, such as the Volvo sedan that replaced Donny Dart, I opened the hood, took a look at the electronics inside and said my days of being a backyard mechanic, however limited they were, are completely over. The last time I saw Donny he was in the parking lot of my sister's apartment complex probably 25 years ago or so.
Where's Tex? Where's Donny? Long gone to the scrap heap I imagine. I don't miss Tex so much. As for Donny Dart, that's a car I wouldn't mind seeing and driving again. But let's consider — it didn't have air conditioning, only AM radio, hand-crank windows, a clutch that required he-man strength. Hmmm .... on second thought, maybe some things are best left in the rust pile of yesterday.
Paul Briand writes a column about the fun, fears and flab-fighting foibles of middle age. Go to www.boomerangst.com for an archive of his columns. His e-mail address is pbriand@seacoastonline.com.