A plain Jane little short bed two wheel drive Ford Ranger bought in April, 1995, in El Paso, Texas from Shamaley Ford. It was a replacement for a beautiful 1985 Ford T-Bird that was ruined by a mechanic whose reach exceeded his grasp. We will have more on about this tragic chain of events later.

The Ranger’s engine was the 2.3-liter four banger.  It had a five speed transmission, power brakes standard, no power steering, no radio, no power windows, no power door locks, and standard 15 inch wheels.  But it did have an air conditioner. The cab had the standard three place bench seat. I had installed a very nice after market radio as well as a top of the line camper top.  To add some spice to the little go getter some blue pin strips were added along the entire length from the right behind the headlight to the tail light.

For 11 years and 117,000 miles it did everything ever asked of it.  The little 2.3 liter engine was no rocket but it had a lot of torque. It pulled a 1,700 lb pop-up trailer on many trips to Cloudcroft and Ruidoso, N.M. as well as to Springerville, AZ without a trace of strain. Every month it made trips to the landfill towing a utility trailer full of every imaginable bit of yard and household refuse.

It was dependable, comfortable, roomy, economical, got 17mpg city and 23 highway.  Everything fit together, no bits and pieces fell off, no matter how bumpy the road.  It turned and stopped as expected. In 2001 when we moved to Phoenix that little truck provided endless dependable transportation and hauling.  The tuck was used to tow two motorcycles to Phoenix on a utility trailer, one a 750 pound Yamaha Royal Star Tour Deluxe.  It hauled endless amounts of household items from El Paso to Phoenix and made many weekend trips to and from El Paso.  It never complained, never stopped, was always there when you needed it.  It was easy to drive and maintain. I super enjoyed driving this little beast with its four banger and five speed transmission.

At 102,000 miles the timing chain broke requiring a $500 repair job.  Other than that there were never any major maintenance issues.  In 2005 it fell victim to the “why do we own four cars” question.  It was a true friend during some dark and hard times.  I truly regret having sold this wonderful truck.  I only hope that it got a good home.  I’d hate to think otherwise.

Everyday I go for a walk around downtown Phoenix during my lunch hour.  I do not often, actually never, talk to anybody I see.  I just walk and look at the cars and all the construction going on around me.  But not yesterday.

1. While eating at the Coney Island I struck up a conversation with a guy (about my age wearing a security guard uniform ) about how good and healthy his chicken salad looked.  He proceeded to tell me that he has a 50% clogged artery and needs to eat as healthily as he can.  He has no health insurance and can’t afford the operation to clear the artery.  He his hoping that eating well will help him until he can get some insurance.  But he realizes that with his condition that is not likely to happen.  We talked for a little longer about this and that.  I wished him the best and left.  As I walked away as asked myself, why do I have health insurance and this person doesn’t?  Why am I the lucky one?  Reminded me to be thankful for all that I have.
2. I left to go back to my office but I turned around and headed the other way just so I could walk a little more in this beautiful weather.  A couple of blocks away I stopped to look at a really nice motorcycle, I heard a male voice in well spoken Spanish say, that’s a beautiful motorcycle isn’t it?  I agreed.  The man, about 40 or so, clean, well dressed, of clear voice asked me if I had any work for him to do.  I said no, as we spoke he told me he had just come in from Mexicali, needed, work, food and I place to stay.  I told him that Maricopa County was not a place friendly to people without documentation on and that he might be better off someplace else.  I saw an empty lost look on his face.  I felt for him, told him where the local mission is and handed him my last $10.  I wished him well and walked away, back to my office, the one with health insurance.

I think that the guy with the artery problem liked talking to someone about his problem. I am happy that I could help the man that just came from a far away place with a few bucks.  Not much I could do.

But I have admit, that I walked back to my work feeling like one of the luckiest persons in the world to have so much.  But why me?

Like I said, I never talk to anybody on my walks. Everyday I see all sorts of people, but talking to them adds a different perspective on whom and what they are. This is not meant to be some sort of live changing story or event, nor does it have a deep meaning about life, just a story about my day yesterday. The only reason I am sending this is because it was very different from my usual lunch hour.

By forwarding this to 75 people you will not have some miracle come your way. By not forwarding this you will not be held responsible for destruction of the world as we know it.

Armando

1978 Ford Club Wagon (not mine)

The worst vehicle I ever owned was not a car.  It was not a truck either.  What was it?  It was a van.  A Ford van.  A 1978 Ford Club Wagon (Econoline) van.  But it was not a delivery van.  It was a passenger van.  Yes, back in the 70s, even after the 73 and 78 gas crises (shortages), it became acceptable for families with young children to buy Ford, Chevy or Dodge vans as passenger vehicles.  And, boy, did I fall into that trap.  Every aspect of the ownership experience with this vehicle was a nightmare.  Even the acquisition process was a horror.  Let’s begin with how our van came to be a Ford rather than a Chevy or a Dodge or even a VW van.

I was not necessarily a Ford man, although I was also definitely never a GM guy or a Mopar person.  I just liked the looks of the mid-70s Ford vans.  The Dodges seemed to have too short of a hood and the Chevys, I don’t know exactly what I disliked about their style but I just found the the Ford vans more pleasing to the eye.  On top of that I worked with a very nice, very intelligent guy who swore by his 390ci Ford van.  My preference was for an E-100 (1/2 ton) van but those all seemed to have the short wheelbase and the swing open side doors, rather than the sliding cargo doors which I preferred because they looked cooler.  So after several trips to a San Jose Ford dealer we finally zeroed in on a 3/4 ton van that had the sliding side door and two ‘bucket’ seats upfront with a bus style partial bench seat behind them.  The rest of the cabin was bare bones.  The headliner only went back past the front seats.  Other than that bus bench, there was no upholstery behind the front seats, just painted metal and exposed mechanisms and wiring.  The van had the 390ci V-8 and the Cruise-o-matic AT and PS and AC and a radio.

The car I intended to  replace was a 1975 Datsun (ne Nissan) 610, a very neat little 4-door sedan whose only sins were having survived two major accidents and a blown head gasket (my bad.)  That is the car I drove to that Ford dealer to trade in on my dream van.

The dealership was a typical operation set up explicitly to rip off the customer.  The first order of business was always to separate the customer from his car keys so as to ‘check out’ the trade in.  While that review was taking place in the background, the always awkward, mind numbing haggling over the sale price and trade in value took place in a cubicle adjacent to the showroom floor.  In this case the haggling led nowhere and I eventually rejected their proposed terms and asked that my car keys be returned so the wife and I could retrieve our car and go home.  They absolutely refused to return my car keys.  My wife and I were literally being held against our will in that hateful cubicle.  As my demands became more heated their refusals became more adamant.  I eventually became so agitated that they apparently feared for their safety and ‘found’ my keys and released us.  We drove home not in a dream van but in our neat little 75 Datsun.

Mando (shown accepting a 1st place trophy for his '99 Mustang GT) may not be ASE certified but he can tell blowby when he hears it.

On May 14, 2008, Mando reported the following incident which we take to be an honest and accurate description of events:

Saturday morning I was working in the garage listening to some local (Phoenix, Arizona) talk radio station. I was interested in the conversation because it was about gas mileage and the host said that he was an ASE certified mechanic with 35 years of auto repair and modification experience. Here is what he said:

“I get 20 mpg from my 3/4 ton Sierra pickup. I have not modified it in any way whatsoever. My secret is that every time I come to stop light I put the automatic transmission in neutral. By putting it in neutral the sensors read that there is no load on the engine which then puts the engine in a different operation mode. Just this simple thing has doubled my mpg.”

I heard this, did not believe what I had heard but he repeated it. Several people called in and thanked him for this great idea.

Being me, I started thinking:

1. If this were true, pickups with standard transmissions would have a much higher mpg rating than pickups with automatics seeing as how anytime a truck with a standard transmission is stopped it has no load on the engine either by having the clutch disengaged or because it is in neutral.
2. From what he said, half- one complete half- of all the gas used by his pickup is used while it is stopped at a light. How can this be?

So I did what I had to do. I called the station and challenged his comments on the air. He was not expecting this from anybody. First he asked me if I am ASE certified, then the line went dead.

Was I wrong in doing what I did?

What do you say? Was Mando wrong to challenge a self important blowhard? The unanimous answer is: “No, Mando, you were RIGHT!”

Armando C Muñoz, age 17, in 1963 when he attended El Paso Technical High School

One day I asked Mando how it was that he ended up attending El Paso Technical High School rather than my alma mater, El Paso High School. He gave the matter some thought and responded as follows:

The Tech thing came down like this:

In the seventh grade our class of thirtysome 12 years olds was transferred from Lamar (Grammar School on Montana Avenue) to Houston (Grammar School on Rio Grande Avenue) to make room for younger kids. They needed the room at Lamar for grades below us and they asked us if we would be willing to go to Houston to help the younger kids. (We all know that they did not really ask us, they just pretended to do so). So off to Houston we went. There was no thought of busing us there, they left getting there up to us. Jaime Trejo, Carlos Zuniga and I rode our bikes all the way to Houston every day. That was a blast!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, that was the introduction to hell for all of us. The ninetysome other kids at Houston (they had three classes of seventh graders) decided that because we were from Lamar we had to be inferior to them. The fact that they outnumbered us 3 to 1 helped them. My first fight at Houston (one of many to come) was with a frog eyed jerk called “Sapo”. I some how managed to kick his tail but things did not go well after that. For the next nine months it was one fight after another. I remember being a very nonviolent person who did not understand the need to fight or why I was inferior them in their eyes. I do recall that because I was the same age as these morons I was more than able to hold my ground. Near the end of the year we were asked what high school we thought we might be attending. Because (older brother) Hank had gone to Tech I marked Tech and forgot about it. When it came time to register (for eighth grade) I went to EPHS but was turned away and sent to Tech because of my answer four months earlier. I did not question what was happening to me. Now I arrive at Tech, 13 years old and out of it. Super stupid in the ways of the world, too young to be there. Four things worked against me there:

1) I was too young to be in a school that included really ugly mean people that were as old as 19. A lot of them had been sent to Tech as a rehab program because of their criminal past.

2) The gang from Houston showed up in force and remembered me from Houston.

3) compared to (even) guys my own age I was very immature physically and mentally.

4) I was by myself without friends to help me.

The beatings started and lasted my two years in the eighth grade, the ninth grade and the tenth grade. Four years of this was a lot for me. I am sure that this was a source of many of my mental problems and poor performance at school. The summer between the tenth grade and eleventh grade I spent on the road with Al and Yvonne working with Al loading and packing furniture all summer. When I returned to school I had grown about 4 inches, had lost about 40 pounds and because of a summer of forced hard labor I very was strong and muscular. I am very proud to tell you that I spent the entire year in a “payback” mode. I really put the hurt on a lot of people. I did have some good friends at Tech, in particular a kid named Charlie LaTuna (really) that was always there to help me, taught me some dirty fighting tricks and was there to make sure the fights were fair and I did not get ganged up on. Charlie was a strange type of guy, smart, strong, independent, not a member of any group but nobody ever messed with him. He was the one that told me to kick “Acido’s” butt during a lunch hour when Acido walked up to me while I was eating lunch and told me that as a reward for coming back to school he (Acido) was going to remind me who was the boss. Charlie was sitting with me and told me, “Mando, you might as well go fight him right now. That way if he does kick your butt, by four o’clock you’ll be feeling better.” I went up to Acido and told him to fight me now. He did not want to so I grabbed him by the shirt collar and dragged him to the alley where I actually knocked him out. The crowd saw something they had not expected. The next day, believe it or not, the coach Jeep Gutierrez and two other teachers told me that that was too long coming.

And that, folks, is how Uncle Mando became “The Lion of El Paso Tech.“

RAM and the 1995 BMW 325is he drove to Texas. The car had recently been detailed, thus the brilliant sheen. Despite its age, the car has an on board computer that some say may have malfunctioned during the trip. Balderdash! Before the trip, the car had been taken to a body shop in Tijuana, Mexico to be customized to look like a 1950 Buick. In an amazingly quick turnaround, the shop delivered the modified car in two days with the fuel injected 2.5cc 6-cylinder, OHC engine replaced by a carbureted straight eight (with the Buick Eight logo emblazoned thereon), the factory automatic transmission replaced with a three speed Dynaflow automatic, and the body style converted from a two-door to a four-door sedan. Furthermore, the unibody structure had been converted to body-on-frame. Amazing!

In July of 2008 I participated in a road trip from San Diego, CA to El Paso, TX via Phoenix, AZ. On the return leg of that trip an unusual event occurred. I reported that phenomenon to four analysts on August 5, 2008 as follows:

It was actually somewhere East of Lordsburg rather than “Somewhere West of Laramie” but Laramie sounds more exotic. I was on the road with my traveling companions when somewhere out there in no man’s land something mysterious happened. The odometer and the trip meter readings on my ’95 BMW 325is got out of sync. Being a highly trained accountant and a mildly obsessive/compulsive individual, I had been logging both my trip meter and odometer readings at each fuel stop. When I returned home I crunched the numbers and..what is this? The change in odometer miles matched the change in the reading on the trip meter in every case except one. According to the odometer the car traveled 2,394 miles. According to the trip meter, we covered 2,756.1 miles! Where did these additional 362.1 miles materialize? I thought and thought about it and one night, in the dark, it came to me.

On one stretch of road we ran into quite a squall, a downpour, a turd floater, a frog strangler. Water was flowing deep on the freeway when suddenly, with rain pouring down and next to zero visibility, the car seemed to go momentarily out of control and then go quickly back in control. Then a red light came on in the IP. I asked my co-pilot to check out the meaning of the light in the OM. He immediately reported (this kid was good) that the light meant that the anti skid or stability control algorithms had kicked in. I didn’t even know the car had stability control! Boy, that was unnerving, wasn’t it Guy?

So, lying in the darkness at home days later, I concluded that the activation of the anti skid stuff had affected the trip meter computer, thus explaining the sudden difference in readings. Sadly, my review of the data in the light of day showed that the error had manifested itself, not on the leg between Lordsburg and Casa Grande, where in rainstorm hit, but between El Paso and Lordsburg where it had rained but we never saw the red warning light come on. So, my theory was both shattered and proved false.

My only remaining explanation was that someone had tripped the reset button on the trip meter and that the numbers didn’t revert to zero but somehow added 362.1 miles to the reading. But the meter is digital, not those rolling drums. This cannot happen with electronics, can it? If anything, wouldn’t the numbers decrease rather than increase? So, here I am, in the midst of an enigma, a mystery. Who is there who walks among us who can explain this strange occurrence, in effect, explain the unexplainable?

I received the following responses. First, from my son, Rick:

Dad.
First of all, once again your writing is entertaining and funny. Yes, I laughed. And your story, while theoretically not particularly dramatic, well, the way you tell it and share the little details, makes it a joy to read. Thanks for sharing. I have to say, I really would love to see lots more of this type of stuff (including this email, word for word, maybe with a road-trip photo) on Atascadero. But that is just me… after all, it is YOUR website!

Anyhow, thanks again for sharing this tale. And, no, I have not a clue as to how your trip meter and odometer got out of whack. If anyone can figure it out, my guess is he lives in PHX.

-RG

So I posted my query here. Then came a cryptic note from nephew Guy:

It could have been a result of the co-pilot attempting to reverse-engineer that german engineering marvel of a trip computer without the assistance of the user manual. Didn’t the discrepancy occur about the same time I figured out how to get instant MPG readings?
-Guy

To which I responded (My response later proves to have been both unnecessarily harsh and unfair):

Yes, Guy, this is a possible explanation, if we can accept the ridiculous proposition that accessing the car’s highly sophisticated computer readouts to gather information would mysteriously affect the trip meter readings. Actually, it’s not such a far fetched idea since that computer is programmed to do all kinds of useless functions, one of which might be TO ADD MILES TO THE TRIP METER!! Good contribution copilot person. RAM

Uncle Mando, in a state of denial about his being an accountant and about his OCD wrote:

Not me, I never have reconciled my trip meter and the odometer. Question is, what mystery have I missed? I think I need to add this to my monthly to-do-list? Were you ever within 250 (416.67 KM) miles of Roswell, NM. or Area 51? This might explain this odd happening. Maybe you were abducted by space aliens. No telling what those little green guys do behind closed doors.

Mando

So far, no response from Rod. maybe he didn’t understand the urgency of this desperate call for help.

But wait! We received two contributions from alert reader Mike Cortez in San Antonio, TX. His first explanation is kind of lame unless you allow for the fact that he may have thought the trip meter was being reset at each fuel stop. His first guess:

I happened to read the road warrior story about the El Paso trip. I can see the the similarity of Rick to Monk, the tv series of the same name. I concluded the missing miles account for the round trip miles used on the Ft. Davis trip to see Frank Higgins and noted so as a comment on the post. Rick, Guy Rod and you have been put on the stress-o-meter on this and I was just looking out for a possible stress breaking reason to account for the missing miles. Of course the miles are on the wrong reading, but that would be where I would look first. Proper readings from trip vs odometer.

But his second explanation, now that is genius (if you are able to cast aside the gibberish he purposely put in there to confuse us.) His new take:

Unless you drove a bunch while in El Paso, the numbers all seem to be kilometers. Just saying San Antonio to San Diego round trip is only 2600 miles.

Of course, that’s it! When Copilot Guy was messing with the car’s computer, he inadvertantly set the trip meter to read kilometers, rather than miles. The odometer on a car sold in the USA cannot, by statute, be set to toggle between miles and KMs. That would really mess up a car’s mileage reading, no? So, on that one leg of the trip the trip meter measured KMs while the odo read miles! Thus we award our genius trophies to Guy, who guessed that messing with the computer caused the odd reading, and to Mike, who clarified that the trip meter was switched to KMs from miles. And an award also to the German engineers who programmed the car to read KMs on one readout and miles concurrently on another one.

It’s amazing what great minds can come up with when given a chance.

NEXT ROAD WARRIOR STORY

What will come next? How about the legend about Guy & Linda following a Toyota 4Runner up a snow packed back road on the way to a ski resort in a rental car and waving to the 4Runner’s occupants as G&L slipped past when the Toyota slid off the road into a ditch? Or the one about a person who shall remain unnamed who passed a snowplow during a snow storm on a two lane road on a back road in New Mexico in the mid-60s? No, we’d better keep that last one under wraps.

The Maverick was a huge sales success. Nearly 579,000 units were produced in its first year. This rivaled the record-setting first year of Mustang sales (nearly 619,000), and easily outpaced the Mustang’s sales of less than 200,000 in 1970. <–From wikipedia. (By the way, the complete wikipedia entry is quite interesting and includes a lot of little known facts about the development and introduction of the Maverick)

Our Mavericks

Mavericks, bless ‘em. They sold like hot cakes, everybody had one. As noted above, the wikipedia blurb on the ’70 Maverick is very interesting and mentions attempts by FoMoCo to give the car “European” styling. The car’s style was quite correctly done and is still very attractive. It has a very clean design on the sides with nice full wheel well openings, some nicely done sheet metal sculpting along the sides, a very clean and clearly defined roof line and C-pillar, and a sweeping fastback deck lid. Up front the style is a little bit of a throwback but still attractive. The car in the picture above is more clunker than classic but still shows the clean design elements.

In our family brother Mando was the first to buy a Maverick. (They cost $1,995 new.) He was headed to California and needed reliable transportation. He selected a Maverick for that undertaking. Family friend Frank Higgins bought two of these suckers. At the same time. Actually, he needed to get out from under a fancy Ford pickup and its 5 mpg mileage, so he traded in the pickup on two Mavericks, a green one (base model) and an orange one (base +1). I bought the green one from him in late 1971. Sister Tootsie had one too. That’s the one that nephew Mark backed into a light post. Talk about a bumper that didn’t bump. Mavericks, not unlike other low end cars of the time, had the paper thin bumpers bolted directly to the 8 gauge sheet metal. No need to attach bumpers to brackets or frames, is there? That Mav’s rear end stuck up in the air precariously until its ultimate demise. Mine was green, as I mentioned above, and looked eerily like the car seen in the picture that accompanies this blurb. It had that old Ford overhead valve 6 cylinder engine and a three speed standard transmission with the shifter on the column (three-on-the-tree they called it.) This car was acquired as a second car, to supplement my sweet ’66 Mustang GT. I am sad to say that the Maverick eventually replaced the Mustang as the family’s second car. But that’s another story. This story is about my 1970 Maverick and the piece parts it left strewn along the way.

The Driving Experience

Driving a Maverick offered the same thrill as taking a bus. You got in it. It moved. You eventually got where you were going. Almost every time. No thrills. No chills. No tactile sensations. No pride of ownership. I drove my stripper once from Aurora, CO (near Denver) to El Paso, TX. Left Colorado at 5:00PM on a Friday with my trusting wife Yolanda and infant daughter Christina. Drove south on the interstate in the cold and the snow. Somewhere south of Pueblo the headlights went dim. I could only see about 30 feet in front of the car, at most. There was no place to pull over to check things out. It was cold. It was dark. Very, very dark. It was snowing. I strained my eyes to see. It was a very unpleasant, almost horrifying, experience but I did make it through the night and into the following morning’s daylight. At journey’s end it was determined that the fan belt had come loose so the alternator was putting out a very weak charge. That was a horrible 700 miles. Those were the same 700 miles I had driven in the car headed in the opposite direction in September, ’72. We were moving to Denver from El Paso and I foolishly decided to drive up there by myself in that Maverick. It was a long, exhausting drive but the car did get me there. There was another side to owning a Maverick, though. That aspect was the constant torrent of pieces that fell off the car.

Things That Fell Off

The rear side window. The side windows for the rear seat passengers did not open by rolling down into the body. Instead, they were attached to a frame that clasped the front, top and some of the rear of the glass. This frame was attached to the body at the front by a hinge that allowed the glass (with its frame) to be swung open two inches or so. Ah, sweet ventilation. By the way, the frame around the glass was cool because it matched the metal of the door frame and served to disguise the cheapness of the manufacturing. On many other low-end cars (see Pinto and most Japanese cars built since then) the glass had no metal frame so the cheap construction was in-your-face. As noted, this mode of opening passenger windows has become much more common in cheap cars in the last thirty plus years. I will not claim the the window frame I just described ever fell off my car. That would be a lie. But, on more than one occasion, I unlatched that glass and swung the window open only to see the glass slip out of the frame and fall to the ground with a clunk. As near as I can remember, the glass never broke when it hit the ground, no matter how loud the thud. But there was always a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach each time the glass dropped. I solved the recurring problem with a liberal application of silicone sealer, squeezed out of a tube. Silicone sealer was the duct tape of the 70s.
The top half of the carburetor. Winter mornings in Colorado can be cold, very cold. One such morning I left our warm and delightful duplex, ready to drive to work. I shivered as I jumped in the ice cold Maverick, which spent its nights parked outside, at the curb. I inserted the key in the ignition and cranked the engine over. It cranked but did not fire up. I got out of the car, opened the hood, and glanced at the engine, hoping that a menacing glare from me would convince the engine to start. I don’t think that trick worked. This I do recall: The long, narrow 6-cylinder engine had a large blue air cleaner covering a single barrel carburetor. I decided to remove the air cleaner, why I don’t know. But as I started to unscrew the wing nut that held it in place, the air cleaner lifted up on one side and fell over into the space between the engine block and the fender. Attached to the air cleaner was the top half of the carburetor. The bottom half of the carburetor remained attached to the intake manifold. While I was not particularly thrilled by this development, I seem to recall that I merely lifted up the air cleaner (with attached half carb) and very carefully placed it back on top of the engine. To the best of my recollection I was somehow able to get the car started that morning and drove to work. I drove that car with that detachable carburetor top until I sold the car years later.

The column gear shifter linkage. OK, this part did not literally fall off. Nor did it come off in my hand. What did happen was that one morning, on my morning commute to my job at the Mountain Region Headquarters of Western Electric Company, I wanted to hurry things up so I slammed a speed shift from first gear to second gear. It was a forceful but clean attempt. Fast and furious. Amazingly, the shifter lever moved from down and near (1st gear) to up and away (2nd gear) but the transmission remained in first gear. The linkage had somehow come undone. I drove all the way to the office in first gear. That was one high revving straight six. That evening I drove the car home in low gear, made it home and drove it straight into the garage of our new home on E. Florida Drive. I had spent that day going over scenarios on how I was going to repair the shifter linkage. Once I was under the car in the garage, whatever I saw down there convinced that the best solution was to order a floor shifter from JC Whitney & Co, the mail order parts catalog company. This modification led to our next mishap.

The floor shifter stick. It may be unfair to include this incident as a Maverick failure, since the shift stick came from an after market supplier, but…what the heck. It was written somewhere at that time that I must at every opportunity assert my cheapskate personality. If Leona Helmsley was The Queen of Mean, I was The King of Tight as a String. So, after perusing JC Whitney’s many conversion offerings, I opted for the cheapest one available. How cheap was it? It was so cheap that it may have cost me as little as $4.95 to get it. I really can’t recall the actual price but it can’t have been much over $9.95, including postage. Very soon, the conversion kit arrived in the mail. So I ripped open the box, looked the kit over, and headed to the garage, where I crawled under the car. No jacking up the car to make space to work, no jack stands to hold the car up, just crawl under the car on that concrete floor and get to work. The most difficult part of the conversion was figuring out where to cut the hole in the floor. At first it looked like the front bench seat was going to be in the way of the kit and make the conversion impossible but, in the end, I cut the hole in the floor (hammer and chisel), disconnected and discarded the useless column shifter linkages, bolted the new mechanism to the transmission and successfully attached the new links to the trusty 3-speed. The kit came with a nice, chrome stick (handle?), a knob (of course), a nice cheap boot, and a chrome plate to give the boot a finished look at the floor. I was a little bit in awe that the conversion came together as well as it did and the new mechanism worked as well as, if not better than, the factory set-up. It even had a reassuring little click-click built into the shifts. But there were more shifter adventures yet to come.

The floor shifter was a functional part of the car and the car was more fun to drive using that shifter than with the old set up. At times I even played ‘boy racer’ and tried to run the car (still with its two piece carburetor) through the gears. On one such mad shift from 1st to 2nd gear, the stick broke off at the bottom, where it was screwed into the mechanism. The stick literally came off in my hand. I think I was able to continue my journey at that time by reaching down to the floor with my right hand and manipulating the mechanism with my fingers to move the linkage from one gear to the next. Later, once back home, I was able to extricate from its metallic grave the threaded piece of the stick shift that remained entombed in the hole in the base. Once those remains were cleared out of the crevice, I removed the gear shift knob from the handle, flipped the handle upside down and screwed the handle into the recently vacated mechanism. I then carefully screwed the knob on the other end of the stick and, because there were a few threads left on that end, I had a precarious but functioning gear shift knob again. At least for a while.

The suicide knob. Like the floor shifter above, this knob was not a Ford factory part but this narrative is about things that fell off the Maverick, irrespective of their manufacturing source. One day I was at K-Mart, the big chain discount store that preceded WalMart, where I spotted for sale at a very attractive price (see my penchant for cheapness, above) a nice, chrome and green suicide knob. So I bought it for my Maverick! What, you ask, is a suicide knob? A suicide knob was (they have long since been made illegal) a clamp with a freewheeling knob that could be attached to a steering wheel. Once secured in place, the steering wheel could be turned very quickly by grabbing the knob with one hand and pushing it along the circumference of the steering wheel, clockwise or otherwise. These knobs were also known as lover’s knobs because they left one arm and hand free to cuddle your sweetie as you drove. It really made steering, and consequently driving, a lot of fun. So I installed my bargain knob on my Maverick’s black, plastic steering wheel, and off I went, dashing here and there and turning left and right, as necessary, by grabbing that knob and pushing it in circles. As fate would have it, during one such maneuver, that pretty green plastic knob came off in my hand in mid-turn, effectively separating the steering wheel from my hand(s). The beautiful, chromed clamp remained attached to the wheel but the piece that I had so joyfully cupped in my hand separated completely from its base. I was somehow able to recover in mid-turn and regain control of the car without crashing. But without that knob (it was not repairable) the car was a lot less fun to drive. I actually searched high and low for another knob to attach to that wheel but they had long since disappeared from K-Mart and America’s vast marketplace. I did see one at Kobey’s Swap Meet in San Diego many years (decades) later but there was quite a tussle among buyers to get their hands on (pun intended) that little device so I was not able to acquire it.

A Sad (Not Really) Good-Bye

This is a somewhat fuzzy picture of the illustrious Maverick in its final days with us. The picture shows, along with our two lovely children, a custom paint job. I had painted the window frames, both around the door and side glass, flat black (with a 79 cent spray can, of course) to add a bit of contrast to the factory green body. That was an elegant touch. But more importantly, the picture shows (still fuzzily) the beautiful chromed, reversed (offset) wheels with 5 lug bolts. How was this installation possible on a 6 cylinder 1970 Maverick? This feature was the result of having kept the ’66 Mustang GT’s custom wheels when that car was sold. That Mustang had a 5-bolt pattern because it was a V8, of course. We had the wheels (and tires) and we had the Maverick. How were we able to mount those wheels on the car? Well, JC Whitney & Co came to our rescue once again. In their catalog, they offered adapters that bolted to the 4-bolt pattern on the hubs and had their own 5-bolt pattern attached to an aluminum disk. At first I bought only two adapters 1)because I was cheap and 2)to see if they worked. So at first the Maverick rode on custom wheels and tires on the rear with the stock components on the front axles. Sometime later, after I was able to scrounge up another $15 (or whatever they cost), the front axles were modified to accept the 5-lug wheels. The car looked pretty darned snazzy that way and even received unsolicited compliments from time to time. But underneath it was still a poor man’s car. No air conditioning, no luxury options, no grunt, no pizzaz. And on top of that I had once repaired a leak in the gas tank (which I had caused by scraping bottom while hauling concrete chunks in the trunk) using clay-like mud. The mud had plugged the leak (amazingly) but eventually the mud was sucked into the fuel lines and into the fuel filter. The inevitable result of this process was that the car would periodically stall from fuel starvation. Rather than deal with this problem, the car (that had been acquired for $1,200) was sold for $500 five or six years later. The last time I saw it, it was sitting in the parking area at a gas station in San Jose, CA, awaiting its turn in the service bay. Back then gas stations still had repair garages attached.

In Memorium

The Infamous Maverick in El Paso After a Banzai Run From Denver (Early 70s)

It would be unfair to end this entry without mentioning that the Maverick I ridicule here was the only car I ever owned that I never had to spend money to repair, other than the incidents noted above. In all the years I owned it I never had to replace a radiator hose, repair a radiator leak, replace a muffler, replace a clutch, redo the brakes, nothing. The car just ran on and on. In fact, I may have poured a quart of oil into it once or twice, maybe, but I never did an oil change on it nor did I once replace the oil or air filters. I never even had a light bulb burn out on it. I guess you could say it was a faithful servant.

The Lead Balloon in its glory days with owner/driver Ace Munoz.

The model car project was assigned to freelance modeler Mungooz Munoz because he was the only person the society could find who could be duped into undertaking the task on such a limited budget, namely for free. The astute Mungooz soon found available for sale a model of the ’41 Plymouth coupe sourced from Yat Ming Industrial Factory Ltd, a Chinese enterprise. As a double-whammy bonus, the Mungooz learned that the coupe was available not only as a hot rod, with requisite V-8 engine, tubular headers, dual exhausts and racing tires but also as a stock coupe, with a straight six flathead engine (more on this later) and pre-war tires. Each model was beautiful in its own way, but each was not The Lead Balloon reincarnated because the hot rod version was, unlike the original, plastered with graphics and the beautiful, solid colored stock version was not a hot rod! Each model is shown below, first as the blue hot rod and then as the tan stocker. The Mungooz was able to get his hands on a specimen of each version of the limited edition, hard to find models.

The hot rodded ’41 Plymouth model with mag wheels and blue paint with too many graphics is in the foreground.

The stock ’41 Plymouth with tan paint and wide white sidewall tires and a ‘flathead 6 cylinder engine’ under the hood is shown above.

The Mungooz hatched a diabolical plan to partially disassemble each model and then reassemble the pieces to create one model that more closely approximated The Lead Balloon. It should be noted that Mungooz early on discarded the idea of simply repainting the hot rod version model with a solid maroon or burgundy coat of paint because that would have been just too much darned work and such an undertaking would have required both talent and ability, commodities that were not readily available.

The commercially available models with chassis separated from bodies.

Disassembly required removing six small screws that secured the frame to the body on each model. An additional complication was disconnecting the steering column from the tie bar, since the steering column would stay with the body from which the frame was being detached. Please note in the image above that the blue car’s engine has a large chromed air cleaner and chromed valve covers along with exhaust headers and lakes pipes (sort of.) The tan car’s engine has a much smaller air cleaner and a red valve-in-block head. But it also has the chromed valve covers from the V-8 engine! Very clever, these Chinese guys. Please note also the different tires on each frame.

The racer on the left; the stocker on the right.

The photo above shows more clearly the differences in the front and rear tires on the frames. Also clearly visible is the low restriction exhaust system on the racer version versus the single exhaust (but with two header pipes?) on the stocker.

Why does a flathead straight six engine have valve covers on either side of the block? Oriental engineering!

It is not clear why an in-line six cylinder engine would have exhaust pipes coming from both sides of the engine.

Shown below is the result of putting the racer body with all its graphics on the stock frame with the stock tires. It makes an interesting combination, no? Sort of like an oval track “jalopy” racer mated to a trailer queen show car.

The Pretty 39 body on the stock ’41 Plymouth chassis.

Below is the version of the car we were after, a stock ’41 Plymouth body on a race ready frame. Please note that the interiors were left on the original bodies so the race car now sports a very pretty, stock white steering wheel. Also, the tires and wheels and custom exhaust seem to show better with the tan body than they did on the highly decorated blue body. Reattaching the frames to the contrasting body was a relatively straightforward process but for some unknown reason, matching the stock frame to the blue body was a lot more challenging process than putting the racing chassis on the tan body, which slipped together quite slickly. The six screws were inserted and tightened and the steering column was reconnected to the tie bar on each reassembled model. It was only after reassembly was completed that The Mungooz noted that both versions of the Plymouth had not only a column mounted gear shift but also a floor shifter (with a Hurst handle on the hot rod.) This incongruity was written off as an attempt at humor by the Chinese manufacturers of the models.

Finally, The Lead Balloon model comes together. Compare this completed model to the actual car, below.

While no attempt was made to duplicate exactly the technical components of the real Lead Balloon on the model, the major pieces do match, namely the make, year and body styles of the two and the engine and transmission and exhaust systems. One example of differences is the fact that The Lead Balloon had a solid front axle which had replaced the stock independent front suspension while the model car has the stock suspension components. Another difference is the color of the paint, tan on the model, maroon (burgundy?) on the original. A third deviation is that The Lead Balloon had a flip front end where the model has a regular pop-up hood. But let’s not be such a stickler for authenticity, shall we?

I will leave it up to you, the reader, to decide whether this exercise, undertaken with a very limited (no) budget and with no desire to spend hour upon endless hour recreating minute components to attempt authenticity, succeeded or failed. You are the final judge. You decide whether this model captures the spirit and/or soul of The Lead Balloon or whether this was just another exercise in futility.

A very special thanks to Lucas Pavnoz whose support during this undertaking was inspiring and to the vendor at the San Diego Auto Swap Meet who had such special, give-away prices on his car models. A special thanks too to the directors of the Mickey Bitzko Historical Society for their expression of faith in assigning me this challenging task. I can only hope I lived up to their very low expectations.

The SHOP‘S HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

The ATASCADERO SPEED SHOP. Those four words can transport a tired old mind to a place far away, to a land and to times that still live in the hearts of the fortunate few who ventured there so long ago. To honor that place and those times, this site is dedicated to that speed shop and to its heroic founder, Henry Munoz. Henry was born Enrique Horacio Munoz in El Paso, Texas on January 8, 1939, the third child and first son of a family that would ultimately total seven children. Of the seven children, four were girls- Yvonne, Herminia (Toots), Graciela (Grace) and Corina, all sweet and very special. As noted, Henry was the third child and first son. The other two boys, Ricardo (Rick) and Armando (Mando) were to be Henry’s cohorts in the speed emporium and are the culprits behind this tribute to Hank, who was also affectionately known as Kiki (in his early years) and as Hank later in life. So, now that these few facts have been established, it is with great pleasure and immense bluster that we hereby introduce the magnificent yet humble home of the all-new, all-opinion, all-wit, no-meat ATASCADERO SPEED EMPORIUM web site. We know it will be difficult for this site to measure up to the greatness of its inspiration, but we’re gonna give all we got, yes we will.

At this point we want to thank Rick (Rocket/Spider) Munoz, Henry’s nephew and my son, for his hard work and excellent efforts to get this site set up and running. Thanks Rick.

THE BIRTHPLACE

Although not the birthplace of Henry himself, who was born in a house closer to downtown, the birthplace of the SPEED EMPORIUM can be said to have been that large house on several acres at 320 Tobin Place in El Paso, Texas. It was there that an intelligent, energetic, inventive, curious and strapping young boy first manifested his love of all things mechanical (cars, planes, trains, guns, power, speed, competition), art, drawing, writing and life. Henry was a genius and I do not use this word loosely. His mind instinctively understood the dynamics of mechanisms, mastered mathematics and handled abstractions. He wrote fluently and creatively with perfect grammar and spelling, was artistically gifted and thus could draw any object, any scene with perfection, was a great philosopher, had a great sense of humor and was as complete a human being as you could imagine. He was also loving, compassionate, thoughtful, respectful and sincere. He was tall and handsome but had no vanity. At the same time, he was brave, curious and a bit of a rapscallion.

These recollections might prove to be incomplete at times mostly due to the fact that I, Rick, have a very faulty memory and Mando, who has a steel trap mind, was very young when some of the early events took place.

The CHICKEN COOP

That big house on Tobin Place sat in the center of a very large lot. In fact, today there are homes on either side of the big house that have been built on the land that was part of the big house’s large yard. The lot(s) fronted on Tobin Place. To the south was the Franklin Canal and across the canal Paisano Drive was eventually built. To the north was Vallejo Court, which we then knew as ‘el callejon’, or the alley. Across the street on Tobin Place was a Catholic Church and an associated orphanage, with its coterie of priests and nuns. The house was two stories tall with a full basement and a very large attic. The house was in the center of the three lots, one of which had a row of about three pecan trees. The other lot had a line of fruit trees, mostly pears. The house was in an area that could be considered to be, at that time, the outskirts of town. The location was rural enough and the lot large enough that there was room for animals on the land. And animals there were, including chickens! Of course, the chickens required a chicken coop. Thus came to be constructed on said property a very nice chicken coop, built (not surprisingly) of 2x4s and chicken wire. The coop was constructed by the family’s maternal grandfather, Higinio Mazpulez Gonzalez, a Spaniard who passed away in 1953. For several years beginning in the early forties, in that coop built by Papa Gordito, chickens roamed, laid eggs, were chased and caught, then beheaded, plucked, cooked and served for dinner. Eventually though, for reasons shrouded in mystery, the family got out of the chicken business. This may have been due to encroaching urbanization and zoning laws. But, whatever the reason, the result was an abandoned chicken coop and 2x4s and chicken wire that no longer served a purpose. Slowly, over time the chicken coop deteriorated.

The 2x4s and the SAW

In 1950 Henry was 11 years old. The middle brother, me- Rick, was 9 years old. Mando was not yet 4 years old. At about this age, Henry approached the delapidated chicken coop, found a loose 2×4, removed it and dragged it away. Then, possibly in the shade of one of the fruit trees, using a No. 2 pencil, he drew on that 2×4 the side view of a car, maybe a ’47 Chevy sedan. Using a makeshift sawhorse and a handsaw, he carefully cut away the wood surrounding the drawing of the car. Then magically, out of that abandoned 2×4 came a very credible if rough rendition of a miniature ’47 Chevy. The most intrigued observer of this magical transformation was yours truly.

The Wooden Models That Started It All

Cutting the rough outline out of the 2×4 was just a first step in Henry’s scheme. Using only that hack saw, a hammer and a screw driver, Henry further refined his creation. The front of the front tire and back of the rear tire were already “carved” out. By making slot cuts behind the front tire and before the rear tire he defined two limitations. Then, placing the flat blade of the screw driver horizontally between the two slots, at sill level and much as one would use a chisel if one had a chisel, he struck the screwdriver with the hammer and effectively removed that piece of 2×4 that had remained between the tires. Now the car sat up off the ground with only its front and rear tires touching the ground. Next, using that same screwdriver and that same hammer and even a pocketknife at times, he carved out the three dimensional planes that defined fenders, hoods and rear decks, as needed. The carved surfaces were smoothed out using the concrete sidewalks or steps as an abrasive. The final steps involved drawing the image of the car on both sides of the wood, as well as the top, front and rear. The drawings were very correct and the dimensions and scale were uncannily accurate considering the primitive tools that were used. Crayola crayons were the final step, giving the little cars color and character. So, viola!, toy cars began to appear all around Tobin Place and three young boys could drive anywhere their imagination could take them using little wooden model cars manufactured by a young boy with a lot of imagination, talent and desire. For a few years, maybe from the very late 40s until mid 1953, when the family moved to Noble Street, those little cars served to satisfy the needs of three kids who loved cars.

The BIG PICTURE

Those little wooden cars illustrate Henry’s early fascination with cars and other things mechanical but cars were only a tiny part of the wide ranging interests and inventive obsessions that filled Henry’s mind. In fact, his mind was fascinated by and sought to understand all things mechanical: cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, even guns. His visits to the magazine rack at the drugstore on Alameda Avenue across the street from what at one time had been Burleson Elementary School but was now Thomas Jefferson High School became opportunities to devour information on all his interests. Back in those days, before TV and the internet, magazines were a major source of information. And so they were to Henry and his inquisitive mind.

This is the sad story of a young man and a car, the car being the ’65 Barracuda pictured above. The photo was taken after the car had been disposed of- traded in on a 1966 Mustang GT- and was spotted parked by the roadside. Anyway, in the beginning, the young man (me), was driving a 1960 Ford Starliner with a 292 V-8 and a 3-speed Cruise-o-Matic automatic transmission. Or was it a two-speed Ford-o-Matic? Maybe brother Mando, who has a genius for learning, knowing and remembering the mechanical components of cars that have crossed his path can clear this up for us.

The 1960 STARLINER and the UNFORTUNATE INCIDENT

The Starliner, in its prime, had been quite a looker, with its white top and pale blue body, with that sweeping C-pillar and kickass style. (The picture above is not of the actual car but is a reasonable facsimile thereof.) Back in the day I had replaced its sad-looking stock wheel covers with some nice looking ’58 Ford full disk covers which had a lot more class and dignity than the stock items. The car was snazzy looking, even sexy, and served its purpose, which was to get us around town in style. But, one dark and stormy night, while speeding down a rainy street (Rio Grande Ave) after quaffing a few with some pals and while “racing” Phil Hayden (a fellow Western Electric Company installer with a Triumph TR-3) I managed to do a 360 in the Starliner and pretty much destroyed the right rear quarter panel by smashing into a parked car. I am not proud to admit that, once the car stopped and I realized that my passenger (Rick Young, also a WECo installer) and I were OK, we left the scene of the accident and drove to the nearest bar, The Pershing Inn, on Pershing Avenue in 5-Points. Once at the bar, I rethought my actions, called the police to report the accident and returned to the scene of the crime. The pertinent result of this unfortunate occurrence was that the 4-year old Starliner was basically a rolling wreck. Everything on that car was cherry except that danged (dinged?) right rear quarter panel. That and the fact that the car rolled down the street with a sort of sideways stance. So I dropped Mr. Young off at home, drove to Atascadero HQ, parked up on the lot, close to the garage wall so the body damage was out of sight, went inside and crashed (for the second time that night.) The next morning I had the duty the tell my mother, “Mom, I crashed the car.” She was relatively cool about it, no drama. By the way, I don’t recall having gotten a ticket for this accident, which was obviously my fault, and I suppose my insurance policy paid to fix that parked car, but I can not explain why I did not use that insurance coverage to fix the Ford. But the Starliner was drivable, so I continued to drive it.

UNDOING the DAMAGE

I had painted the word “Ouch” on the damaged quarter panel and went about my business. Some time later, brother Henry (aka Hank), and brother Mando’s acquaintance, Jaime Trejo, and I went to a junk yard in far East El Paso and found a ’60 Ford 2-door sedan with a good right rear quarter panel, which I bought, having erroneously assumed that the 2-door Starliner hardtop and the 2-door sedan models had identical rear quarter panels. We hauled the quarter panel home in Hank’s old Chevy pick up (it is relevant to our story that Hank’s “real” wheels were a very sweet ’64 Dodge Dart GT. It had a 273ci V-8 and a 4-speed stick and was burgundy with a black stripe in the chrome strip.) We hauled that fender to that same dirt lot where I had parked the Starliner that fateful night and I gave Mr. Trejo the go-ahead to cut the damaged panel out and weld in the replacement panel. Please note that this was a major replacement as the panel ran all the way from the back of the door opening to the rear bumper and from the base of the C-pillar to the door sill. Top to bottom, door to back. So, Mr. Trejo, who was apprenticing at a body shop on Wyoming Street, went to work and ripped off that grotesque, twisted body panel. Hank and Jaime and I then placed the replacement panel on the body and there was some good news and some bad news. The good news was that the two models had the same wheelbase and door opening (thank you Ford) so the door, wheel opening and rear matched up pretty well. But, at the base of the rear window, the pillared sedan had a longer top than the pillarless Sunliner, by about one inch, so the top ended a bit short of the new fender. Happily, this was only on that right corner as the trunk lid had not been damaged so all the rest of the car fit together OK. I am also happy to report that Trejo the Apprentice did a bang-up job of welding the car together. I can’t recall how much I paid him but, whatever it was, it was worth it. So I continued to drive the Starliner, now not quite so sexy and definitely a bit askew as it motored down the streets around El Paso. As (bad) luck would have it, the donor panel was from a cream colored car and I did not see fit to spring for a paint job, so, with the cream fender and pale blue car contrast, the body surgery was obvious to all. That Ford and I continued to cruise together until, later in ’64, I decided that it needed a paint job. So, being a bit tight, I opted to have the car painted in Juarez, Mexico and, as a further savings, I selected a black primer to be applied to the whole car! Think about it, could it really have cost less to primer a whole car than to simply paint that quarter panel in a matching blue? The possibility never entered my mind. At this juncture, I enlisted the assistance of brother Mando’s other acquaintance, one Mike (4-Speed) Chavaria, to pick up the car once it was painted. So we drove across the “free” bridge, I paid the man, drove whatever car it was I was in back and let MC bring the Starliner back to El Paso. The car looked amazingly good considering the trauma it had suffered but, sadly, it was the beginning of the end for our time together.

The END of the STARLINER

At some point in time, a moment of lapsed clarity which has long been lost in the rubble of the past, I decided that what I needed was a new car! I was young, I was single, I was employed and had a fairly decent, good-paying job, and I was not thinking clearly. I did not really give the matter that much thought but what I recall quite clearly is that all of us (me, younger brother Mando, older brother Hank and assorted hangers-on ) really liked Hank’s ’64 Dodge Dart. It looked great, had a nice V-8, a sweet shifting 4-speed stick, a classy black naugohyde interior, was fun to drive, had nice compact dimensions. Pretty ideal car for a young man. It is here that my thought processes failed me. Not wanting to get the same car that Hank had (partly because in ’65 Chrysler Corp messed up the Dart‘s looks with silly, cheap-looking bright work and other dumb modifications) I concluded that what I wanted was a ’65 Barracuda which was a Plymouth (RIP) model based on the Valiant, a car that had the same basic underpinnings as the Dart. The major difference was that the Darts had a slightly longer wheelbase. Thus it was that the wheels (PTP) were set in motion for me to buy my first car- a brand new 1965 Barracuda!

The 1965 BARRACUDA

In the mid-60s, across Texas Street from the old Mountain States Telephone Company “Main” building was the A. B. Poe Motor Company which was the authorized Chrysler/Plymouth dealer in El Paso. It was there that a naive young man would acquire his ’65 Barracuda in January of 1965. Curiously, the Plymouth Barracuda owns a little piece of automotive history. While everyone knows that Ford Motor Company unleashed the 64&1/2 Mustang in April of 1964, thus launching the pony car era, few of us are aware that the ’64 Barracuda, the other pony car, was launched 2 weeks before the Mustang, presumably in mid-March of ’64, thus becoming the actual first “pony” car. If the Barracuda had enjoyed the same success in the marketplace as the Mustang, this genre might be known as “fish” cars, rather than “pony” cars. But, be that as it may, both the Barracuda and the Mustang were on the market in January of 1965 when I decided against buying a Mustang (because everybody had one) and opted for a Barracuda, a smaller Dodge Dart, I thought. While the specifics of the transaction are somewhat murky, that January day I visited the aforementioned A. B. Poe Motor Company, looked over its selection of Barracudas and selected a nice, clean silver model with a black interior as my choice. In a stunning move on my part, I brought along as trades not only the diminished (and black primered) ’60 Starliner but also a ’54 Dodge that younger brother Mando had abandoned in that famous dirt lot at Atascadero when he left El Paso to go do some hard time in Uncle Sam’s army, first at Ft. Polk, LA and then in the frozen mountains of Germany. The Dodge
was an actual, complete, running car, only 10 years old at that time, but almost worthless to a young guy like me. Its only real fault, other than being a fuddy-duddy 4-door sedan, was that its semi-automatic fluid drive transmission (a manual transmission that, with the ingenious use of a torque converter, could be shifted without using the clutch pedal) had a problem with the reverse gear, which could not be engaged. I’ll let brother Mando regale you with the story about how he came to be in possession of that car, but I have to wonder what the guys at A. B. Poe thought when this young fool came into their dealership insisting on trading in these two cars on a new model. I’m sure they got the better end of the bargain in every way and all I am clear about is that the purchase was financed by the telephone company credit union and its head man, who we all knew as Murph. Murph was a typical businessman of that time. He had a bad leg and walked with a pronounced limp. It is just now that I think maybe he was a Korean War veteran (America’s forgotten heroes) and that the limp was the result of a war wound. Or maybe it was due to polio and he spent the war in a barroom. I never asked, I was not much of a people person, as this narrative attests. Murph came to a sad end from a self-inflicted wound shortly after a scandal was exposed asserting that there were some questionable transactions taking place in that credit union, but that was not until much later, after Murph had financed a second new car for me. Anyhow, the Barracuda, quite pretty if you allow for the fact that it had styling that some considered “odd duck” while others preferred to describe it as “ugly duckling.” The car had that same 273ci V-8 that was in Hank’s ’64 Dart, the same 4-speed manual transmission, plus tinted glass and a radio. It came with 13″ wheels. Yes, that is as sad as it sounds. Curiously, that same Dick Young who had been in the Starliner with me the night of the crash bought his own ’65 Barracuda shortly after I acquired mine. Dick later gave the car back to Murph and the credit union and it was bought by Jack Boebinger, yet another young buck installer at WECo. That car was white with red “racing” stripes over the hood, roof and tiny rear deck (most of the back of Barracudas was glass.) I guess it was Barracuda time at WECo. At the end of this exchange, Hank and I, who had driven to the dealership in separate cars, drove back home together in my new car. I was a pretty proud Barracuda owner now.

IMPROVING the BARRACUDA

It was not long after its acquisition that I was induced to “improve” my new car. First, I ordered a new set of rear wheels, which were stock steel 14″ wheels bought at the parts department at A. B. Poe. These were soon installed on the rear axle of my car with a pair of used tires, I’m sure. Next, I installed a 4-barrel carburator, an improvement suggested by assorted Atascadero devotees. This might not have been a brilliant move as the exhaust side of the equation remained those stock, twisted cast iron exhaust manifolds MoPar had been forced to use in these bodies in order to maneuver around the steering box. There was now a lot of gas going in, but how was it getting out? The final intentional modification was to torque the torsion bars (corporate-wide MoPar front suspension in lieu of coil springs or McPherson struts, which might not yet have been invented by Mr. McPherson) to raise the front end. This supposedly gave the car a racy look. That is pretty much how I drove around in this car for the next year. During its first 6 months someone, quite possibly me, had to do a panic stop , probably on Yandell Avenue, maybe while headed home. After that little incident, the brakes were never quite the same again. It seems that those little 13″ wheel appropriate Valiant brake drums (Detroit was just at this time discovering that European cars had been using disk brakes for some time) had warped under the stress of one hard stop. As a result, all stops now included an irritating shuddering caused by the front brake shoes grabbing on those warped brake drums. Sad to say that, in spite of all the improvements and making allowances for the grabby brakes, the Barracuda was never quite as satisfactory a car as that Dart that inspired its acquisition.

The END of the LINE

So, where does this narrative logically lead? In this saga, the Barracuda transmorgrifies from a young man’s desirable first new car into a car that just didn’t quite satisfy. Two memories of time in this car stick with me. One is taking a very, very pretty young girl (Yolanda, who was to become my wife) to the Red Rooster, a genuine drive-in hamburger place, just like in those movies about the 60s. The Red Rooster and the Oasis (on Mesa Avenue) were the two most popular places for cruising, back in the day. At that Red Rooster, sitting in the Barracuda, Yolanda and I each enjoyed a soda. As we sat there, a guy in the car next to us looked the Barracuda over and said, in a stage whisper, “I wonder what they’re going to do to improve those cars next year?” Maybe I was showing too much pride of ownership. On another occasion, I was at a birthday party at a friend’s house when Yolanda showed up with my friend’s brother. Yolanda and I managed to slip out together and I took her over to the car and showed her how the rear seats folded down and provided vast cargo space. I might even have kissed Yolanda as she sat on my lap in that very comfy front bucket seat that night. But slowly the thought crept into my mind that it would be neat to be rid of this vehicle and get something else instead. This idea took hold but at first there was no specific option selected. Yet the desire for change remained strong. Finally, in January of 1966, a visit to the Ford dealer near the airport resulted in a test drive of a fastback (2+2) V-8 Mustang. I remember sitting in the back seat of that car while brothers Hank and Mando sat up front as we test drove the car. This memory then melds into a recollection of visiting El Paso Ford on Montana Avenue and testing out a ’66 Mustang GT 4-speed coupe. It was black over red (interior) with the requisite stripes just above the door sills and double red lined tires. (In the picture below the car has after market slotted chromed reversed wheels with spinners and triple red stripe tires, quite an eye-catching combination.)

A deal was struck with El Paso’s volume dealer for a trade of the Barracuda for this Mustang coupe. It was to be financed by the same Telco credit union run by our friend Murph. The initial loan request was rejected by the CU but after an advance of $200 (to grease the skids?), Murph OK’d the loan and I said good-bye to my first new car and became the proud owner of a very, very nice new Mustang. It was a heck of a sweet car whose only misfortune was that I was to be its owner. The Barracuda vanished only to be spotted around El Paso a time or two in the ensuing years. It gave the impression that its new owner appreciated the car and it continued to look nice and well cared for. It was at one of these sitings that the accompanying picture was taken. As to the blue/black Starliner, that car too showed up back on the streets of El Paso, on Montana Avenue, of all places, eerily close to Noble Street, the home of the Atascadero Speed Emporium. I had to assume that its new owner was a GI from Ft. Bliss and that the car was well cared for and appreciated by said individual.

The OTHER 66 MUSTANG GT

In a slightly curious twist, Hank (Henry) liked the Mustang GT so much that he ended up trading in his 64 Dart on a 66 Mustang GT that was identical to my car in body style, color and options. Here is a picture of that jewel.

That is brother Mando standing in front of Hank’s car. Behind the Mustang is Hank’s early 60s Chevy pickup with the revolutionary duo-articulated steering front wheels.