16 Cars 2 – Chevrolet, etc.

Cars 2 Chevrolet, etc.

During my college years in Atlanta I owned three cars and two motorcycles.   In Atlanta’s Druid Hills area I bought a classic 1955 Chevrolet “Bel Air” coupe, blue, with the 265 cubic inch V8 engine and standard transmission.  A prior owner had begun to “soup up” this car, which was missing its hood ornament and bumpers.  It was a fun classic, and so I proudly drove it around Emory and Atlanta.  One summer, parked on the cul-de-sac above my mother’s house, I added seat belts, gotten from a junk-yard, to this car.

Later, in the Navy, I drove the car drunk one night along the winding ocean road near where I lived; the car ran off the road into the woods and rolled upside down, smashing in the top.  I was hanging in the seat belt (only used that once); the police came, and I got the car on its wheels again (don’t know how; I was unconscious, remember), and drove it back to my apartment on the same road.  After this incident I was listening on the car’s radio to unaccustomed religious programming while I was fixing my car (chiefly surveying the roof), contemplating God’s protection; I’m sure the accident led ultimately to my being ripe for salvation.  As the windshield wasn’t broken, I continued driving this car, being loath to part with it.

As an upperclassman I bought another Triumph motorcycle with a trailer to haul it.  This bike was their smallest “Tiger Cub” model, with standard 200cc engine.  Driving with my mother to Atlanta the trailer had a wheel bearing seize, which had to be repaired on the spot including the ruined tire.  On a rare snowy morning in Chattanooga I proudly took it to my aunt’s house to show off in the snow.  The next spring I undertook another of my radical T+M modifications, streamlining and drilling the camwheels and reducing the mass of the valve rockers, and drastically cutting down the flywheel in the lathe of an acquaintance on Lookout Mountain; after that, the bike hardly started and wouldn’t run well.

In graduate school at Georgia Tech, I bought a 1954 Oldsmobile model 98 to get around.  This car (whose shock absorbers were probably worn out) bobbed side-to-side at highway speed, and was scary to drive!  At that time my 650cc motorcycle was housed outside Marietta, about 20 miles north of Atlanta.  This car was exciting to drive on my week-end jaunts to Chattanooga.

I finally bought, also in Atlanta, another 1955 “Bel Air” coupe, black with straight six cylinder engine.  It leaked coolant badly and was an egregious burner of motor oil, so my one and only ride in this car was to the carport of my mom’s duplex on Navajo Drive in Chattanooga (she must have been horrified to see me arrive in a blue cloud).  I had economically refilled the radiator with water on my trip, and on a cold night that winter the engine block cracked; after a futile attempt to repair it at a local shop, I left the car at my mother’s house.   I suppose that she disposed of it when I was in the Navy (with my motorcycles, tools, school books and other stuff) because I never saw or heard of it again.