Cars, Collars, Hair

The picture, here, is one taken by a friend's mother--I don't recall exactly when--when I drove into their driveway on a spring day. She came outside carrying a camera and said since she was sure I didn't have any pictures of myself, I might want one to look at years from now. In that spirit, I posed, leaning against my '65 Pontiac Tempest, with the thought that I was looking through the camera into the future, where my future-self would be looking back. So, now, when I look at this picture, I easily imagine that I am looking into the past with a certain intensity of reality. 

I remember that shirt, for some odd reason. The collar was, you know, like, six inches wide. Must have been the early Seventies. I see, too, that I had hair back then. 

The car was purchased while I was living in California briefly around the early Seventies. I broke my '57 Chevy and was too disenchanted with automotive technology (i.e. laying on my back underneath a car that probably dripped oil on me) to fix it. A friend told me a customer at the gas station where he worked was selling this old Pontiac. (At the time, not really that old, but more about that in a minute . . . ) He told me the guy was convinced that the car had very little life left in it, as it had 118,000 miles on it. Back then, it seemed like everybody regarded 100,000 miles as the limit of a car's life. 

Parenthetically, my theory is that--back then, at least--used car dealers routinely rolled back odometers, so a car like this would be sold as having, say, 60,000 miles on it, rather than the actual 118,000, and so we all went along thinking cars just didn't GO that far. 

Richard Custer, (yes relation,) the friend who knew about this Pontiac, said the guy had it serviced at their station pretty regularly, and in his opinion, it was in very good condition despite the high mileage. I test drove it and liked it and bought it for the princely sum of $300.  We, the original owner and myself, both walked away from that deal chuckling in victory. However, I was the winner. I drove that car until it had almost 190,000 miles on it, still running as it always had. 

Now my memory is running away with me--through the portal of this picture, my mind's eye looks around at the familiar setting and its attendant memories. However, blog posts should only be so long.