A Buick for Tommy

When I was about to turn 16, just old enough to drive in Colorado, I bought a car for $1. It was a 1940 Buick Special, a four-door sedan that looked like a streamlined stagecoach.
Something tells me there was an undisclosed business arrangement between my Dad and Harold, the man who had owned the car. But as far as I knew at the time, the sale price was one antique silver dollar.
 

Harold was also the scoutmaster of the Boy Scout and Explorer Scout organizations to which my brother and I belonged. Dad and a couple of other men who were teachers in Brighton were assistants to Harold.



Curbside in Laramie, ca 1963

Looking back, that car was quite beautiful, a quiet, smooth automotive wonder with “suicide” rear doors. It was jet black, a luxury car for its time. It was a sort of foreshortened limousine.

 It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was what I was allowed to have. The Buick’s eight cylinders were in a row, not in a “V” like the quick Fords and Mercurys that were laying rubber all over town. Horsepower- challenged, the Buick was unable to spin its rear tires. A stopwatch indicated the car would reach 60 in 25 seconds. Eight or nine seconds was common at the time.

I can’t deny the Buick’s attractiveness. Still, had I had my own way, I would have acquired a ’49 Ford two-door hardtop. I would have added Turnpike Cruiser skirts, maybe a continental spare tire kit. I would have lowered the car in the rear, and I would have put three-point “Fiesta” star spinner covers on the front wheels.

Oh, and dual exhausts and shaved hood and trunk. A car-club plate would have hung on chrome chains from the rear bumper, dragging just a little bit when we drove into the A & W. At least I could dream. You could get girls if you had a car like this, or if you played the saxophone. Or both.

 Along this line of dreams, I asked my friend Gary Barnard, a fantastic artist, to make me a design of a rearing horse, a “Black Beauty” which I thought would make an attractive addition to the rear fenders of the old black Buick. Gary made right and left prototype drawings.

Dad got wind of my project. It was very threatening to him. He became apoplectic. He confronted me. His face turned bright red. The veins bulged out on his neck. He yelled. He threatened. He postulated ultimatums. He cursed and waved his arms a lot.

Embarrassed, I had to tell Gary that all was for nothing. He would not be allowed to paint his two beautiful Black Beauty designs on my car.

 A short time later, I borrowed a pair of clamps designed to compress coil springs. I “raked” (lowered) the front of the Buick with these devices. The car became cool, scraping the front mudguard going into the drive-in.

I drove the car this way for one day. Apoplexy struck again. Real bad apoplexy this time. I returned the borrowed lowering kit.

Giving up, I returned to daydreaming, longing for the day when I didn’t live in my parents’ home, when I could have a damn lowered rusty Ford and paint a picture of a damn frog on it if I wanted to.

To add to my pathetic teen frustration, Dad by some quirky thinking did not believe the Buick could be repaired. He fixed his own vehicles, including school buses, but he thought the Buick wasn’t eligible for fixin’.

I drove it for years putting up with the “Buick Lurch” going around corners, over rough roads or across railroad tracks. This uncomfortable and dangerous condition was caused by worn-out shock absorbers.

The shocks weren’t like those we know today. They were of a design featuring an oil cylinder and a double-bend arm linked to the coil-spring suspension.

So we bounced and lurched all over the roads between Brighton and Aurora and Laramie and Boulder. Dad insisted the shocks could not be repaired. He also insisted the shock absorbers would not be repaired.

Knowing well by then the critical point at which domestic peace turned into apoplexy, I made no further effort even though I knew the vehicle was unsafe.

Years later, I saw replacement shock absorbers in a catalog. In the same Buick-specialty book, there was an advertisement promoting repair of these devices.

A valet at a Denver parking garage slipped the Buick clutch all the way to the sixth floor. It was burnt out. The car became unusable.

Miraculously, Dad permitted a repair. The mechanic installed incorrect parts, so we drove the car the rest of its life with us with an ill-performing clutch. Re-do or take-back was not permitted.



When I started banging into things like fences and garage walls, Dad permitted repair of the master brake cylinder. But new tires? No way. The four unmatched and balding skidders were good enough until I got stranded in a Wyoming blizzard. Mom bought new tires.

When Annette and I got married, it was our only bouncing-bubble family car. We drove it to and from Wyoming summer and winter.

After the baby (Jaye) was born something changed with Mom and Dad and they bought us a brand-new Ford Econoline van. It also was monumentally underpowered, but it came with new shock absorbers. I put bigger wheels and tires on it, and seemed to get away with that modification. It wasn’t a Buick, I guess.

We tried the two-car thing for a while. Then Annette’s father died and we came into possession of the 1950 Ford F-4, a two-ton truck with a pickup box.

The Buick went to Brighton for storage. Over the years, I tried various restoration projects, but my efforts all failed because classic cars are expensive to repair, to drive, to own. Cash and time. I had neither.

After moving the Buick out to Idaho, then back to Brighton and then to Greeley, I sold it to my friend Ray, who greatly admired it and had “low-rider” on his mind. Ray let it set out in the sun for years, which I had never done, and he eventually gave it to his son Rick. I don’t know what Rick did with it.

Tressl Road, Blackfoot, ID, ca 1975
Tom, Jaye, Monica, Tamara, Benjamin, Annette

Sometimes in my dreams I have the Buick back, and I am repairing it, restoring it. Upon awakening, I realize I still don’t qualify for classic, antique Buick ownership: Time and Money.

Besides, in our garage at this very moment sits a 1968 Ford XL 500. It has one immense V-8, and it goes like a striped-ass ape. And no rust. It will spin the tires. Happiness abounds.

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 Word of the Week: Apoplexy. Latin and Greek. To strike down, or disable by a stroke. Medically, it means sudden paralysis with total or partial loss of consciousness and sensation, caused by the breaking or obstruction of a blood vessel in the brain. Webster’s exemplary sentence is, “He was apoplectic with rage.” Hmm.