Fire Engine Red

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A 1971 Chevy Belair.   Fire Engine Red.   That was my first car.  My wife and I married at the end of junior year in college.   We moved my things from my dorm room to the married student housing using the big basket on my bicycle.  My parents told us they would buy us a car as a wedding present, but they insisted that it had to be a full size car, and it had to have air conditioning.   My only requirement was what I considered the ultimate luxury–an FM radio.   Before coming to college, the only place I heard FM radio was in the dentist’s office, playing classical music.  But in college I became a fan of Boston’s WBCN 104.1 FM.

My family had always owned Chevys–I grew up next door to a Chevy dealer in Brooklyn where as a kid I would get a sneak peak at the new models every fall as they were delivered.   The new cars were clad in canvas, but of course they had to remove the canvas to get them off the truck carrier.   The new models would be parked safely inside the garage, but my friends and I could peek in through the mail slot.   That’s where I got my first look at the famous “Teardrop” tail lights on the ’59 models.

1971 was a recession year.   Auto sales were in the tank, and there were plenty of “leftovers” that fall when the ’72 models came out.   My wife and I went to Seymour Chevrolet on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge to see what they had to offer.   There we saw it.   The Fire Engine Red Belair sedan.  It had air conditioning, it had an FM radio, and they took $1000 off the price.   Such a deal!  Living in Massachusetts, we also bought a pair of studded snow tires for the winter.   Don’t see those around anymore.

That car served us well for nearly six years, all through our moves to Arlington and Brookline.   And then, in 1975, we drove cross-country as I did my interviews for Internship after medical school.   The photo is from Los Angeles where we arrived in the middle of the fire season.   From there, we headed east along the southern tier–Las Vegas, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, and along the Gulf Coast heading toward Miami.   As we passed Pensacola, the car began to vibrate, but I found if I kept it at a steady 63 mph, the vibration would cease.   We drove a further 500 miles to Miami, where I decided to bring it into a repair shop.   The mechanic put it on the lift, and found that the universal joint on the drive shaft was about to shatter.   While he was removing it, I checked the tire treads.   One of the rear tires was so thin I was able to indent my finger as though it was a balloon.   Imaging dodging not one but two bullets on the same trip.

We wound up moving to New Haven.   There we traded in the “Fire Engine” for something much classier–a 1976 Plymouth Volare with a vinyl top.  We had arrived in the suburbs.

Tin Lizzy

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My dad lost his Chrysler dealership, due to bad business deals and the UAW going on strike, leaving him with no inventory, in 1967. My mother’s 1967 Plymouth Valiant was the last car to come from that dealership. I student taught my senior year at Brandeis and needed a car, so I bought it from her in 1973 for $1. Dan, my boyfriend…soon to be fiance, came to Huntington Woods, MI and helped me drive the car back to Waltham, MA for the beginning of the Brandeis school year.

I dubbed it “Tin Lizzy”. It didn’t have much mileage on it, as my mother NEVER drove on a highway. In fact, she barely drove. It was in good condition; bench seats, lap belts only in those days, but I knew nothing about maintaining cars. I was happy to have my own set of wheels and freedom. I student taught in Arlington, many miles from campus, during the gas crisis of 1973 when gas was rationed, and on one foggy morning, couldn’t figure out why traffic was so slow. I finally realized I was in a gas line! I learned to navigate the streets of Boston and Cambridge, which are challenging.

After graduating in 1974, we married and found an apartment in Waltham. After two years we moved to Acton, some 20 miles away. At this point the car was showing wear and tear. Besides automatic steering and shifting, nothing else was automatic and by this point, things were falling apart. The knob controlling the heater had fallen off and been lost, so I went a winter without heat (it never occurred to me that it could be replaced). I didn’t have the car serviced regularly, so the gasket began to go and I leaked oil like crazy. My gas station attendant knew to “check the gas and fill up the oil”. Lizzy met her maker when, in an absent-minded fog, I rear-ended someone on my way home from work in 1977. She wasn’t worth much and was declared a total wreck. I had stitches in my lip, as I flew forward and hit my face on the steering wheel. Dan’s grandfather died two days later, so we bade farewell to two members of the family in the same week.

 

My 1966 Plymouth Valiant convertible

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My parents bought the car in the fall of 1965. It was a 1966 model, and they custom-ordered it with all the features they (and I) wanted. I was 14 years old, a sophomore in high school, and the age to get a driver’s license in New Jersey was 17, so I clearly wasn’t going to be driving it for a while, but it was understood from the beginning that it was MY car. I got to pick the color (bronze), and I chose to have a convertible, although it also had air conditioning because my father wanted to be comfortable in the summer. The salesman thought it was crazy to get air conditioning in a convertible, but my father insisted. He knew what he wanted. He would even run the air conditioner when the top was down.

I didn’t actually take possession of the car until the summer of 1972, after I graduated from college. My parents had taken great care of it for those first seven years though, and it was still in pristine condition. I loved that car! It was beautiful, and also very powerful because we had ordered a V-8 engine instead of the slant 6 it usually came with. I drove it around Cambridge for the next two years while working for the US Department of Transportation. I even took an auto mechanics course for women at the Cambridge Y, where we learned how to work on our own cars. I knew how to gap the sparkplugs and change the oil and do a bunch of other things I have since forgotten. I washed it and waxed it and kept it looking great. I also had my first accident in that car coming back from a ski trip to Vermont, when I skidded on a patch of ice and went off the road. I went into deep snow which slowed me down, and then into a telephone pole. I remember it seemed like it was all happening in slow motion. My sunglasses flew slowly off my head, and then there was the thunk of hitting the pole and stopping. The people whose lawn I ended up on helped us push the car back onto the road. It was still driveable, luckily, and I made it back to Cambridge okay, although I think the radiator was leaking.

In 1974 I drove my beloved Valiant from Cambridge to California for law school, with all my possessions packed into the back seat and the trunk. Alas, I had my second accident on that trip, at a tollbooth in Indiana. I was wearing the clogs which were so popular in the ’70s, with enormous platform soles, and they were making it hard to drive, so I decided to kick them off while I was stopped in line, waiting to pay the toll. Foolishly, I took my foot off the brake and the car started rolling forward. I went to tromp down on the brake and accidentally hit the accelerator instead, so the car lurched forward and rammed into the Cadillac in front of me. A tall black man in fancy clothes and diamond rings jumped out of the Cadillac and came over to me, yelling. The main thing I remember him saying was “Lady, what’d you wanna go and hit a $50,000 car for?” We somehow moved our cars over to the side of the highway and waited for the cops to come. When they did come, they were very nice to me, and didn’t give me a ticket or even a warning. They told me they had had their eye on this guy for a while. I gathered they thought he had drugs or other contraband in the trunk. I don’t know what happened to him. My car got towed to a shop in Gary, Indiana, where I spent the night in a motel and waited for the car to be fixed.

I happily drove that car for the three years of law school. It was a perfect car for California, even though I had no idea when I chose it that I would end up living here. It was especially good during those drought years of the mid-70s, because I could ride with the top down all year round. However, the headlights were sort of pointing in different directions, which made it a little hard to drive at night. The body shop in Indiana hadn’t done the greatest job of straightening out the front end, and I had never bothered to have it fixed.

When I graduated from law school, my parents bought me a new car for a graduation present. I wanted another convertible, and in 1977 almost no car manufacturers were making them. So I ended up getting an Alfa Romeo Spider which only came with a manual transmission. alfa_romeo_2000_spider_silver_1985I had never driven a stick shift before, but I learned on the way home from the dealership. I didn’t trade in the Valiant though, because they only offered me $100, which was an insult. I later sold it to a man who loved old cars and promised to take good care of it and restore it to its former glory. He paid me $500 for it. It was hard to say good-bye, but I knew it was going to a good home. And I spent the $500 on a really dynamite sound system for the Alfa.

Crossing One Off The Bucket List

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As far back as I can remember I dreamed of traveling. There were so many places I wished to see. The term “bucket list” had not yet even been thought of but had it been, I would have needed a “bucket wheelbarrow”. Over the years I have been blessed to have traveled to many places around the world. Some trips involved auto racing, some competing in The Olympics, some fishing or hunting while others were for pleasure or business, all of which remain as cherished memories. But recently my girlfriend joined me on what was a very meaningful journey of sorts.

It’s amazing to me that this journey began over 50 years ago. When I was 14 years old my father and I drove from Oregon to Yellowstone Park which in those days was on everyone’s bucket list. After spending a week there we drove on down to Colorado to visit my favorite aunt and uncle. I have such fond memories of my aunt and uncle and the time we spent with them and all the moments we shared. When my uncle realized my exuberant passion for fishing he invited me into his den. I recall how my heart felt as if it stopped and standing there with my mouth wide open in awe. His den was filled with fishing rods, photos, fish nets and lots of other fishing paraphernalia including a large table in the center of the large room covered with fly-tying selections of lots of beautifully colored flies. Later that evening my uncle brought me a small paper box with about 20 beautiful hand tied flies inside. He said, “Gary, here’s a little something for you. If you ever come back to Colorado be sure to bring these. I guarantee these will catch the big ones.” I thought I had died and gone to Heaven and that I had just been given the most wonderful gift in my life.

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On the long drive back to Oregon, every time my father drove along a river or stream I couldn’t help but sit up and look for a good spot to try my new flies that my uncle had gifted me. For years all I could dream about was returning to Colorado some day to try out these flies and hopefully land a big trout.  For 50 years I managed to keep that small box of flies in a safe place and from time to time found myself opening it and remembering how much they meant to me, as well as the rush I got when my uncle handed them to me and most important of all, reliving that dream of someday returning to fish with them in a Colorado stream.

Having been personally involved with auto racing and an Olympic sport, I had been to Colorado multiple times over the years but somehow finding time to fish there kept eluding me until recently. A couple of months ago my girlfriend and I made arrangements to fish in the beautiful world-class Conejos River in the south of Colorado and it was while getting our fishing gear together that once again I stumbled over the box of flies. It was then that I realized I was very close to crossing something very meaningful off my bucket list. I sat the box of flies aside making sure I wouldn’t forget them. Over the next few days I began reminiscing my uncle and how long I had dreamed of using the flies. I found myself wishing he was still alive so I could ask him which streams he enjoyed fishing at in Colorado so many years ago. It was then that I decided to call my aunt to find out if she knew where that might have been.

One evening while dialing my aunt’s phone number I was startled to find her number had been disconnected. It was then that I began to worry about all of the what ifs. Unfortunately after a few investigative phone calls my worst fears were realized as I learned my favorite aunt had just recently passed away. While expressing my sympathies to a close family member I mentioned why I had been attempting to reach her. With his help and knowing she had remarried many years after my uncle had passed away I was able to get her widowed husband’s phone number and called him. He was a retired doctor and a fine gentleman and we had a wonderful heart-felt conversation. When I mentioned the story of the flies and my hope of speaking to my aunt to find out where my uncle used to fish I was surprised to learn that not only did this gentleman know where my uncle used to fish, but in fact used to go fishing with my uncle. You can only imagine my surprise when he began telling me how he was best friends with my uncle long before he passed away and the many times they went fishing together. He said, “Not only do I know what rivers he liked fishing, but I can tell you exactly where we used to camp and what sections of the rivers he fished.” Then he said, “There were three favorite rivers we fished, one of which was the favorite stream of none other than John Denver, The Conejos River.”  I couldn’t believe my ears!

Call it fate or call it destiny but there seems to be times when our travels take us places that were just meant to be and somehow the plans for these journeys began falling into place even decades ago. As fate would have it, my uncle was absolutely right, the flies he tied 50 years ago caught big trout and while we were there, my girlfriend tied a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers which we floated gently down the stream as what seemed like a fitting tribute to both my aunt and uncle. It seemed that somehow everything had come full circle.

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John Steinbeck once wrote, “A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”   All travels are special and some more meaningful than others but once in awhile there are journeys like this one that seems to stand out and become more like a moment that should be placed upon a pedestal and cherished for eternity.

In The Summertime

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Summer camp was a major part of my childhood experience. Not only the eight weeks I spent there each summer, but the letters back and forth to camp friends for the other ten months of the year. We poured out our hearts to each other in ways that we would never do with friends at home. I wish I had those letters now.

The first camp I attended was Camp Wasigan, in Blairstown, New Jersey. I went there in 1959 and 1960, when I was almost-8 and almost-9. (My birthday is at the end of August, which was so unfair, because I never got to celebrate at camp OR at school. But that’s another story.) It was a fairly small camp, eight cabins for girls and eight for boys, although at the time it seemed huge to me. This camp was what was known in my family as an “acka-wacka-bicka-wacka” camp. Not sure where the term came from, but it refers to camps where there are Native American (or as we said then, Indian) names for everything, and a “color war” for most of the summer, where the entire camp is divided up into two teams (“tribes”) that compete with each other in all aspects of camp life. At Wasigan each tribe had its own songs and cheers, some that were used every summer and some that were made up for the particular year. There were kids from both tribes in each cabin though, so you couldn’t be too competitive, because you had to get along with your cabinmates. Both summers that I went there, my tribe, Minnetonka, aka the Blue Team, was victorious over the other tribe, Mahowee, aka the Red Team, which felt very good to me. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to spend the whole summer competing and then lose the war. Two summers at that camp were enough for me, because by then I was old enough to go to . . . .

National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan, my second camp. My sisters and cousins had been going there for years, and I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to go. I went in 1961, 62, and 63, which I think was before John Z or Betsy got there. This camp was about as different from Wasigan as it could possibly be. It was enormous. I went there by plane instead of by bus. And it had uniforms and schedules and very strict rules. The uniform for the girls was a blue shirt (white shirt on Sundays), blue corduroy knickers, and high socks whose color denoted which division you were in — navy blue for Juniors, red for Intermediates, and light blue for High School.

Junior Girls Division 1962 I am in 3rd row, 7th from the left.

Junior Girls Division 1962
I am in 3rd row, 7th from the left.

Schedules were decided in the spring, when we sent in our applications. As I recall, in the morning were the substantive classes, which were in the area of music, drama, dance, or art. In the afternoon were physical activities like archery and boating. Then in the evening there were always concerts or plays to attend, which you went to with your cabin. I know in various summers I took courses in drama, modern dance, choir, and orchestra. My first summer I took a fabulous course called Music Talent Exploration in which, over the course of the summer you got to try playing every single instrument in the orchestra for at least one day, even including the harp, and then pick the one you wanted to concentrate on. That was how I decided to play the oboe (which I still play!), and for the next two summers I played oboe in the orchestra, having taken lessons at home during the year. After three years there, it was time to move on, because my parents had gotten into a big argument with the administration, and we were persona non grata.

The last summer camp I went to was dramatically different from both of the previous camps. It was called Lincoln Farm Work Camp and was in Roscoe, New York, in the Catskill Mountains. This camp was just for teenagers, and was promoted as an alternative to conventional camps. It was founded by lefty New York schoolteachers who were friends of my aunt (also a lefty New York schoolteacher), and was made up almost entirely of affluent Jewish kids and African-American kids on scholarship. However, there was no sense of economic or racial differences among us campers. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s sons went to this camp, although they had a different last name by then, and we weren’t supposed to know that that was who they were. Leftist views and solidarity with workers permeated everything we did. Each week we chose different activities. In the mornings the choices were construction, farming, or forestry projects. (My first summer I worked on the construction of a new dormitory, and my second summer I lived in it. How cool is that?) In the afternoon we had typical camp activities like ceramics and painting and swimming, but also auto mechanics, woodworking, metal shop, and other skills that would help us be productive workers. We learned a lot about social justice, and sang protest songs from the civil rights and labor movements. We performed an original oratorio about Martin Luther King and his I Have A Dream speech. Every weekend we took overnight trips to interesting places like the Pennsylvania Dutch country and Montreal, and we rode there in the back of big open trucks that had bales of hay to sit on. There was always at least one guitar in the truck, and we sang for hours.

All three camps I went to gave me valuable experiences, but Lincoln Farm had the most profound influence on me. It shaped the political beliefs which I still hold to this day, about freedom and justice and equality. It opened my eyes to so many things. And after working on many construction projects, I’m pretty darn good with a hammer and nails!

Sound the Call to Dear Old Interlochen

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I spent six glorious, formative summers at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. Founded in 1928 on an old logging camp, in a pine forest, between two lakes, it is the granddaddy of arts camps and was heaven on earth for me and like-minded friends. We waited all year to get there and not be misfits…to belong somewhere. I made the friends of a lifetime there.

I was a voice and drama major, though as an Intermediate taking Operetta (we performed Gilbert & Sullivan) I couldn’t be in the drama, so wasn’t accepted as a drama major my first summer in High School Division and had to patch various courses together to fill out my roster: Operetta, Chorus, Vocal Techniques, Dance, Costume Shop. I learned to iron that summer, a good life skill, never acquired by my mother. But I longed for the stage and got there the next summer.

We all adored Clarence “Dude” Stephenson, the director of Intermediate and HS Operetta for more than 50 years. At 88 years old, he and I remain in close touch. He no longer teaches, but has a summer cottage in Interlochen and returns each summer.  He memorized everyone’s name within the first few days of camp (there were about 125 kids in HS Operetta) and always paid attention to what everyone did on-stage. He somehow got the whole troop to move around and make sense of the movement. The featured photo is MIKADO in 1967. I am in blue just to the right of the blade of the axe with the “OH” expression. I am still in close touch with the fellow who played the Mikado (the Emperor of Japan). This is the most famous of the G&S Operetta’s. For the Mikado’s entrance, Dude had us enter from way off-stage after sunset with a sparkler procession, the Mikado was carried by several strong chorus members on a litter. Being the shortest person in the chorus, I led the front row of the procession. A stage hand stood just where we entered with a bucket of sand for our sparklers. The boy behind me forgot to deposit his, panicked, put it in the sleeve of kimono and nearly set himself on fire!

As young girls, we spent more time in our cabins and formed closer relationships with cabin mates and counselors. In High School Division, it was our classes that mattered and we bonded closely with others with similar interests. Those bonds remain strong to this day. Through the years I visited many times, I served six years on the National Alumni Board; with one friend I gave a half scholarship for Operetta, which we stopped when they stopped producing a full-lenghth operetta. Facebook allowed us to re-establish ties with others we’d lost touch with. Once one has been to Interlochen (rebranded Interlochen Arts Camp some years ago), there is a common link that is very strong, indeed.