To All The Cars I've Loved Before

I think it fair to say that, in general, men are much more emotionally attached to their cars than women are.  This brings to mind a verse from the lyrics of Shania Twain's song, "That don't Impress Me Much"...

You're one of those guys who likes to shine his machine
You make me take off my shoes before you let me get in
I can't believe you kiss your car good night
C'mon baby tell me-you must be jokin', right!

Clearly, women just don't understand the male attachment to motorized transportation.  I suppose this might serve as evidence that women are much more practical than men ... if you dismiss the stereotypical female who can't seem to stop shopping for shoes, even though she already owns a hundred pair for every conceivable occasion, including (but not limited to) solar eclipses that occur precisely at the vernal equinox.

But I digress (as usual).  There's no denying that cars tend to be more important to men than they are to women.  The cars we drive become part of who we are.  To some extent, people judge us by our cars, and this includes women.  Momma always said there's an awful lot you could tell about a person by their car. Where they're going. Where they've been. I haven't actually owned all that many cars for a guy of my age.  I'll be fifty next month (but don't let it get around) and I've owned exactly five cars since I learned to drive at sixteen, and only two of those were purchased new.   I bet if I think about it real hard I could remember my first car (this is where the picture gets all wavy and blurry and we fade to the flashback scene).

Of course I can remember my first car.  A guy's first car is like a woman's first love.  We never forget them.  No matter how many cars come afterward, that first one always holds a special place in our hearts.  Mine was a 1974 Dodge Dart, although I didn't become its owner until 1980.  Before that, it was the family car and belonged to my dad, who handed it down to me when he finally bought a new car; a 1980 Chevy Malibu (dad always had a flair for picking cool, "babe magnet" cars like that). 

Since the Dart was a hand-me-down from dad, it was the four-door family sedan variant; somewhat boxy and nondescript in appearance.  Naturally, I would have preferred something a little sportier, like a Porsche Carrera or, failing that, at least the two-door Dart Swinger variant, but I was not one of these spoiled teens who gets to be choosy about his first ride.  I had to take what I could get. 

Ironically, Chrysler re-introduced a new Dodge Dart this year after having put the model on ice for several decades.  The new Dart is much sportier than its predecessor, being based on Europe's Alfa Romeo Giulietta design.  Why couldn't my Dart look like that?

Still, I grew to love that car.  It wasn't flashy, but it was a tank!  It had to be in order to suffer the neglect with which I treated it, yet still keep rolling.  I had to run it without oil twice before I finally managed to kill it!  After the first time, it just made loud, rattling noises whenever it ran but, like a faithful dog that licks the hand of the master who just beat it, it forgave me and continued to serve me faithfully.  Besides, the rattle was useful in its way.  I still had the car during my first year of college, where I befriended a blind classmate who declared that mine was the only car that he could recognize whenever I rolled into the school parking lot in the morning.

That car and I went everywhere together.  It would take me on scenic suburban cruises on Sunday mornings when I was supposed to be in church.  It got me out of several speeding tickets.

Policeman:  I clocked you at sixty-five.
Me: That's impossible officer.  This car can't do over fifty.
Policeman (looking that Dart over):  My mistake, son.  Move along.

I could tell a million stories, but I'll limit myself to the time that I decided to drive the car down a narrow, gravel lane that ran through an area that was otherwise overgrown with brambles and high grass.  The lane was just barely wide enough to fit the car, which was precisely the reason why I chose to drive down it; just to see whether it would fit.  Unfortunately, the lane turned out to be more of a bike path and, as such, I encountered a couple of cyclists coming at me in the other direction before reaching the far end.  What with the narrowness of the lane and the fact that it was overgrown on both sides, I could hardly turn around and, my Dart being the bigger, heavier vehicle, it was the cyclists that finally had to leave the path and relinquish the right of way to me. 

The skull grinning out at them from the top of my dashboard may have helped to intimidate them as well.  You see, I had made a ceramic skull in my high school art class (I called it Yorick) and, not having any better uses for it, I decided that it would make a nice dashboard ornament for my car.

After I finally managed to drive the Dodge Dart into the proverbial ground, there came a car-free period as I was still a college student with a part-time job who apparently couldn't even afford oil for his old car, much less a new one.  As such, I didn't get my next car until after I had finished school, landed my first "real" job and had, in fact, been working at it for over a year.  On the other hand, my next car was my first new car, and it was another Dodge; a 1984 Dodge Omni.

Although it was purchased new, I didn't exactly pick the Omni myself.  My dad sort of picked it for me.  See, I had never purchased a car before, having only ever owned the hand-me-down Dart and I didn't really understand standard financing practices, what things to look for in a vehicle and possible pitfalls to avoid, so my dad took it upon himself to help me find something practical and in my price range.  As it turned out, "help me find" turned into more of a "choose for me" situation, but I never resented it.  He had my best interests at heart and, I must admit, the Omni was a pretty good fit for me at the time.

Like the Dart, the Omni was a fairly nondescript car (another example of dad's keen eye for style), but it had the advantage of being bright red and therefore just a touch sportier in appearance.  Still, I couldn't help feeling just a bit emasculated when I opened up the newspaper one day to see a car dealership advertising the Omni and pushing it as "The ideal second car for the lady of the house". 

I bought the Omni about a week before my first date with my wife who, unlike the Omni, is still with me to this day. I correctly surmised that any girl willing to be seen in that car might not be overly choosy about potential romantic partners.

As I was somewhat older and my wild oats had been well sewn (and had, fortunately, not borne too much evil fruit) the Omni and I didn't have near as many misadventures as did the Dart and I.  Being a four-door hatchback it was, once again, very much a family vehicle and proved a faithful, if somewhat sickly, work horse over the eight years that I owned it. 

It must have been one of those notorious "Friday" vehicles (you know, a vehicle that came off the assembly line on a Friday, when the factory workers' minds were already more on their weekend than on the task of assembling an automobile) because it seemed that things were constantly breaking and/or falling off that car.  Usually, it was little things like a dash light going out or a side-view mirror seizing up.  It went through more headlamps than Bugs Bunny went through carrots, which turned out to be a symptom of a larger problem with the voltage regulator. 

I'll never forget the day when, driving home from work, I noticed all the cars behind me leaving a large, respectful distance between themselves and me.  I discovered the reason for this when I parked in my driveway and got out of the car, to find my rear bumper literally hanging by a thread!  Of course I had heard the noise it made dragging along the road behind me, but the Omni always sounded like that, so I thought nothing of it.

The Omni was the car in which I had my one and only collision that was serious enough to leave the car in an undrivable state.  In fact, my insurance adjustor reported that it was a coin toss as to whether or not to simply write the car off, but it must have came up "heads" because the insurance company ended up paying for repairs.  Needless to say, the car only became even wheezier and more finicky after that.

In a way, it was the car's tendency to have weird things go wrong with it that caused the accident in the first place.  You see, it had rained the night before and water had somehow gotten into the car even though all the windows were up.  In retrospect, I can only speculate that it somehow leaked in through the open dashboard air vents.  Unfortunately, I hadn't noticed the water when I first got into the car, as it had pooled mostly on the floor of the front passenger side, and there was no-one in the car with me to complain about wet feet.  As I approached an intersection, I suddenly heard a strange sloshing sound, which finally alerted me to the puddle on the passenger side floor.  That distracted me enough that I didn't notice that the light at the intersection had changed to red and... well, it got ugly after that.

Unlike the Dart, which was towed away by a scrap dealer, I actually managed to trade the Omni in to a dealer for a surprising $1,500 discount on my next vehicle; which was a 1992 Chevrolet Lumina minivan (also purchased new).  By then, I was a family man with one child confined to a wheelchair, so I needed a minivan, but I was getting tired of driving these mild-mannered, unassuming family vehicles all the time, so I at least chose a minivan with a little style to it.  I loved the aerodynamic, wedge-shaped appearance of the Lumina.

Ironically, it was this same aerodynamic, wedge-shaped appearance that apparently put a lot of other potential buyers off.  People used to worry that it would be difficult to park because the slope of the front end made it impossible to see where the nose ended from the driver's seat.  While this was true, it was never a problem for me.  I recall reading a review of the vehicle which declared that "...the large, sloping windshield was meant to whisper 'panorama' but, instead, screams 'parking nightmare'!"

Equally ironically, while I chose a minivan partially because of my disabled son, a sales rep for a company that converted vehicles for handicapped access later told me that he would not have recommended the Lumina because the shape and size of the sliding side door made it impossible to install an electric wheelchair lift.  While this was, again, true I didn't want one anyway.  I had purchased a couple of simple telescopic metal ramps which I placed up against the side entrance and along which I simply pushed the wheelchair.  Actually, truth be told, I often dispensed with even the ramps and simply lifted the wheelchair into and out of the minivan manually.  My son's small, light build made this possible but, should any ladies reading this feel impressed at my apparent herculean strength, please feel free to swoon.

I might mention, in passing, that the Lumina is the other car which was involved in a collision, but that was more of a "fender bender" and I was able to drive away from that situation.

While I owned the minivan, I also came into possession of a Ford Tempo.  I say "came into possession of" as opposed to "bought" because I inherited it from one of my wife's uncles after he passed away.  As such, I wasn't even sure of its exact model year (circa 1993).  This was the only time at which our family owned more than one vehicle (my wife doesn't drive).  I drove the Tempo when I didn't need the minivan (mainly to and from work) because it used less gas.

Much as I hate to denigrate the Ford Motor Company or, at least, its products, the Tempo was the least impressive of all the vehicles that I owned.  To this day, I'm not certain whether my wife's deceased uncle had bequeathed it to me because I had incurred his favor or his wrath.  It didn't exhibit the weird component failures that the Omni did, but the body and the underside literally corroded away around me.  I only had it for about 3 years.  I bought the Lumina before getting the Tempo and I still had the Lumina for another four years after I finally sold the Tempo for $200 which I used to buy a pair of bookcase speakers, which I considered to be a trade up. 

Of all the cars pictured here, the Tempo is the only one that isn't the actual car that I owned (although it is the exact same colour and style).  That's because I have no pictures of my Tempo; not a one.  It wasn't a car that we "did" things in as a family (we used the Lumina for that).  It was just something that took me to work and back and, truth be told, in my heart of hearts, I never really adopted it as my own.  You might say that the Tempo was the bastard child that I never loved.  In that regard, it stands in stark contrast to my PT Cruiser.

When Chrysler introduced the PT Cruiser in 2000, I was smitten!  I so wanted one of those.  It was just something about the retro styling that attracted me. 

I'm apparently not alone in this.  Just Google 'PT Cruiser' and you'll find all kinds of PT fan boy sites full of examples of customized and embellished PT's.  I haven't known many cars to have such an apparent cult following as the PT Cruiser has.  There are even two songs about the car that I'm aware of; one by the Beach Boys (or, at least, a good sound-alike group) and one by Sha Na Na).  They seem to sell well too, because you see them all over.  It baffles me why Chrysler decided to stop building them.

Sadly, I had to admire the PT from afar for several years as my budget wouldn't allow the purchase of a new vehicle and they were impractical for wheelchair transportation in any case.  But my son passed away in 2005 and the thirteen-year-old Lumina was showing its age.  It was time for a new vehicle and I no longer really needed a minivan, so I consoled myself by at least buying the car which had so attracted my wandering eye those past few years.

Unlike the Omni and the Lumina, the PT Cruiser was not a new car, but it was almost new.  I bought it used from a Chrysler dealership.  It was a year old (the 2004 model year) and had 28,000 kilometers on it.  I had considered getting a new one but this one was the right colour (red is my favorite), it was several thousand dollars cheaper than a new one and it was in "like new" condition so, again, practicality trumped idealism and I settled for the used one.

I still own it to this day, and it's still going strong.  I don't mistreat it like I did my Dart and, unlike the Omni, things on it don't break or fall off every other week.  It seems that Chrysler and I have matured together.  Like all my other vehicles, it's not overly showy.  It isn't the turbo GT model (although I often wish that it were) so its acceleration and speed are somewhat underwhelming.  In the words of a review that I once read about the car, "It does what its name says it does best".  It doesn't have heated seats or individual climate control or even ABS for that matter (which even my Lumina had).  It's just your basic four-door family sedan with a bit of retro styling.  It does have a surprising amount of cargo room for its size.  It actually compares well with smaller minivans.

Like many guys, I do have a certain emotional attachment to my cars (except for the Ford).  It has a lot to do with the memories they evoke, both good and bad.  I think it also fair to say that, like pets, cars have a way of reflecting their owners' personalities.  In their way, the two cars that I chose for myself certainly reflect mine.  So here's a tip of my proverbial hat to all the cars I've loved before.  Thanks for the memories.

UPDATE: May, 2020

After almost 15 years, it's finally time to retire my beloved PT Cruiser.  Sadly, the old girl is costing me more and more with each visit to my mechanic so, like a faithful but sickly old dog, it's time to put her out to pasture.

I've just purchased my 6th vehicle; a 2019 Hyundai Kona SUV.  This, like most of my previous vehicles, is pre-owned, although it has under 1,200 km on its odometer, which makes it practically new.

I had always sworn that I would never be an SUV owner because I consider them to be pretentious, overly-large gas guzzlers in general.  The Kona, at least, is small as SUVs go.  In fact, it's classified as a "sub-compact SUV", which to me sounds like a term something akin to "jumbo shrimp", only kind of the opposite.

At the time of this writing, I haven't even taken possession of the car yet, although I obviously did take it for a test drive.  For now, I'll say that the ride was smooth and quiet, and the on-board gadgetry was impressive.

I will also add this note:  Remember the ad that I saw for the Dodge Omni, which touted it as "The ideal second car for the lady of the house?"  Well, I got to wondering where the Kona got its name, and came up with the following after a little Google research:

"The name of Hyundai’s soon-to-be released model was also intended to capture the attention of female drivers by reminding them of Kona coffee, one of the world’s top three coffee beans grown in Kona (Hawaii), according to Hyundai Motors."

"Intended to capture the attention of female drivers?"  Again??? And the color, "tangerine comet pearl", doesn't sound exactly butch either!  Why don't I just hand in my "man card" right now?

The Laddie Fancies Himself A Poet

Those famous words from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" once applied to me. In my younger days, I wrote many poems. There was a time when I even dreamed of becoming a famous poet. Hey, it seemed better than working for a living!

My poems usually rhymed, because I happen to like rhyming poems. During my adolescent years, the high school English teachers who read my work often suggested that I focus more on non-rhyming poems. I sensed a kind of snobbery that seemed to suggest that rhyming poems were of a lower order than non-rhyming ones, more suited for greeting cards and other such common frivolities. Hmph! Tell that to Poe, Byron, Wordsworth or even Shakespeare!

Well, I never did become a famous poet and the poems of my youth are now hidden away from the world in an obscure attic drawer ... or, at least, they were until now. At risk of seeming presumptuous, I've decided to use this blog as an exhibit for a few modest examples of what I consider to be among my better poetic works. I thank you, Dear Reader, in advance for your kind forbearance, and I invite your comments, as always.

We begin with a poem that was inspired by something that I once saw. There used to be a derelict CF-105 fighter aircraft rusting away in a field in my home town. I discovered it while riding my bicycle one summer and I immediately clambered all over it. While doing so, I noticed a dead baby bird lying on the ground beneath one of the wings. It seems that its mother had unwisely chosen to build her nest inside the wing, just in front of the aileron. The nest had probably fallen out of the wing and the baby met its fate when some curious passer-by had moved the aileron up and down, dislodging the nest in the process. The poignancy of the sight inspired this:

Brought Down

In a wide and lonely field
A fighter aircraft stands
A touch of glory past it yields
Made by human hands

Its wings no longer touch the sky
Its engines roar no more
The plane which once flew fast and high
Brought down by raging war

Beneath its wing a dead bird lies
In quiet, grassy lands
Eternal peace within its eyes
Made by Gods own hands

Its wings no longer touch the sky
Its body cold as stone
This creature that was born to fly
Brought down by death alone

I'm sure most people are familiar with "Footprints In The Sand", about a person walking along the beach with God. I decided that it would be even better if it were put to rhyme...

Footprints In The Sand

I had a dream the other night, like none I've had before;
I dreamed that I was walking on a beach beside our Lord.
My life flashed by across the sky as we walked hand in hand,
And as we walked I saw that we left footprints in the sand.

And as the story of my life flashed by in front of me,
I noticed something else becoming very plain to see;
We left two sets of footprints during times of joy and fun,
But during times of pain and sorrow, I saw only one.

This troubled me and so I said, "Lord, I don't understand
The mystery that lies behind those footprints in the sand.
You said that, if I followed You, You always would stay close,
So why did You desert me when I needed You the most?"

The Lord replied, "My precious child, I never left your side.
You see two sets of footprints when life left you satisfied,
But when your life was hardest you see one instead of two,
For in those times of suffering, t'was then I carried you."

Here's a short, whimsical verse reminiscent of Ogden Nash, if I may be so bold...

Question

René Descartes: Philosopher. A wise and learned man
Said "I can prove that I exist. I think, therefore I am!"
I'd like to pose a question, though, that puts him on the spot:
A table doesn't think, so does that mean that it is not?

...and, finally, a bit of musing on the dangers of the cold war era, appropriately entitled...

The End

I saw the jets go flying
First one, then two, then three
And found myself admiring
Man's vast technology

I watched them go in wonder
Till I saw them no more
And then, like distant thunder
I heard a growing roar

I saw the mushroom rising
It belched forth scarlet flames
And found myself despising
Those horrid silver planes

Okay, so "New car, caviar, four star draydream" it's not. Still, I hope you enjoyed them.

The U/C Airplane Follies

My profile, as well as some of my previous posts, tell you that I'm an aviation enthusiast. I love flying, and I love airplanes. I prefer airplanes to helicopters. Admittedly, helicopters seem much more versatile than airplanes, but there's a certain aesthetic beauty to an airplane, its clean, streamlined contours and the way that its wings are outstretched to embrace the sky. Helicopters, by comparison, tend to look like bulbous, squat, ungainly beasts; noisy, flying egg-beaters. If Don Quixote had ever seen one, he would surely have jousted it full-tilt.

Sadly, I'm not a pilot but I compensate for this by filling every empty nook and cranny of my life with airplanes. I surround myself with airplane pictures and airplane calendars. My computer's desktop wallpaper and screen saver often feature photographs of airplanes. I spend a fair bit of time flying Microsoft's Flight Simulator on my home PC. I've taken a couple of introductory flights in small Cessnas over my home town and, for the past few years, I've gone soaring in gliders at least once each summer. In both cases, I've taken the controls for brief periods. In the winter, I wear a small bush plane pin on the lapel of my jacket. I also collect toy airplanes, and airplane models and miniatures. Some of those toys and miniatures have flown.

When I was about 13 years old, my dad bought me a U/C Cox P-40 Warhawk. U/C is an acronym for "U-Control", meaning a miniature flying airplane that's tethered to the flyer by a pair of strings. On the flyer's end, the strings are attached to opposite ends of a small control handle that the flyer holds in his hand. On the airplane's end, the strings are attached to opposite ends of a moving lever, called a bellcrank. By pivoting the wrist of the hand holding the control handle with the strings attached, the flyer moves the bellcrank which, in turn, moves the airplane's elevators up and down, causing the airplane to either climb or descend. There is no lateral control since the airplane, being tethered to the flyer, simply flies around him in a wide circle.

Seems simple enough, right? If all you have to worry about is climbing and descending, how hard can it be? Well, let's just say, if you saw me trying to fly this thing, or any U/C airplane, for that matter, you'd probably agree that it's a good thing I'm only a wannabe pilot.

I recall the first time that I attempted to fly the P-40. Dad and I went to a nearby schoolyard. It was summer, and school was out, so there was plenty of space, or so it seemed. The first lesson I learned that day about U/C flying is that it's a very good idea to pace out a complete circle around the spot at which the flyer intends to stand and ensure that there are no obstacles or obstructions inside that circle.

Dad took the airplane and walked away from me with it until the control lines became taut. He then fueled up the little .049 "Super Bee" gas engine that powered the craft, attached a battery to power the glow-plug, wound back the propeller on its starter spring and let it snap back. After a couple of false starts, the little motor sprang to life. I extended the arm holding the control handle in anticipation, and gave dad the "thumbs-up". He released the airplane, and it trundled away from him, quickly gaining speed. The tail lifted from the ground and then, just as she was getting light on her wheels, they (the wheels) caught the edge of a lawn that had rudely planted itself right in my flight path.

Well, okay, thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure that the lawn was in the flight path before we ever started the engine. This is why it's so important to check for obstructions inside the flight circle. It's not enough to have a clear, flat space for the airplane to taxi along at its starting position. That clear, flat space has to continue all the way around the circumference of the flight path. In my case, it did not.

Do you know what happens when a fast-moving airplane hits an immovable obstruction with its wheel struts? Pretty much the same thing that happens when a fast-moving person hits an immovable obstruction with his shins. The wheels (or shins) stop dead, but the body that either is attached to wants to keep going. Damn you Isaac Newton! My P-40 nosed unceremoniously into the dirt, and one of the wheel struts snapped. The little propeller managed to mow a three-inch diameter of the school's lawn before sputtering to a halt. Thus was my maiden U/C flight pre-emptively aborted.

I can't suppress a rueful smile when I think about how the scene would have looked to any of our neighbors that might have glanced out their windows at the time. First, they'd have seen dad and me, proudly strutting toward the schoolyard, carrying a shiny replica of a P-40 Warhawk and then, about 15 minutes later, they'd have seen the two of us, walking the other way, somewhat more slowly, me cradling my broken aircraft and wearing a decidedly dejected frown.

I was never able to fly the P-40 again after that. Although the engine still ran and the airplane itself was still more or less airworthy (despite a nasty crack along the nose and canopy), the broken wheel strut turned out to be an impassable barrier to flight. It proved impossible to glue that spindly piece of plastic back together with enough structural integrity to support the airplane through a successful takeoff, much less a jarring landing.

Having destroyed a relatively cheap toy that was made from rugged plastic and ready to fly the moment it came out of its box, I did what seemed the only sensible thing, which was to purchase a considerably more costly flying model airplane kit made from fragile, brittle balsa wood, which would take many hours of painstakingly careful assembly before I could even attempt to crash- er, that is, fly it.

Mind you, this wasn't until years later when I was in high school (it took me that long to get over the trauma). This time, it was a German JU87 Stuka dive bomber kit designed by the Paul K. Guillow company. Coincidentally, it could be configured as a U/C model and could be powered by the same Cox .049 Super Bee engine that had powered my old P-40 and, even more coincidentally, I still had it (the motor), although the P-40 itself was long gone by then. I hadn't considered, at the time, that mounting the power plant which had belonged to my ill-fated first flyable aircraft on this new model might be inviting disaster. Perhaps the motor was cursed! Perhaps it was still possessed by the ghost of the old P-40 (a natural enemy of the JU87 to begin with, being an American airplane) and was just waiting for its chance to visit the kind of destruction that its previous host had suffered on some new and unsuspecting airframe. In hindsight, that certainly appears to be the case.

The Stuka was built alongside my best friend, Mart, who had himself purchased a model of a de Havilland Mosquito, also from the Guillow's company. Mart was, if possible, even more foolhardy than I, having chosen a two-place aircraft. Do you know what it's like trying to start two .049 Super Bee engines anything like simultaneously? These engines tend to behave like finicky lawnmower engines. Whether or not they decide to start, when turned, depends on a number of variables including the ambient air temperature, the alignment of the planets and how nicely you talk to them. One engine would start and the other would fail. Then, after several more unsuccessful attempts, the second engine would finally fire, just as the first engine sputtered out, having exhausted its minuscule fuel supply. It was an exercise in frustration, to say the least.

Mart and I spent months assembling our respective models, carefully cutting the frames and formers, painstakingly running the stringers along the wings and fuselage, connecting the bellcrank and control rods to the elevators and, finally, covering the finished skeletal structures with a delicate tissue paper skin that was then painted and strengthened with a layer of fuel-proof "dope". I wasn't content to simply build my model as per the instructions, either. Oh no! I had to add a number of my own, personal "enhancements", such as building small, box-like compartments with forward-facing grilles under each wing. My idea was to fill these compartments with talcum powder. When the airplane picked up speed, the air flowing through the grilles would blow the talcum powder out the back, simulating a stream of white "smoke" trailing behind the airplane. This gives you some idea of my overconfidence in my own abilities at the time.

For the finishing touch, I added a custom bit of paint work to my finished model. Remembering how certain pilots during the war liked to name their mounts, I painted the name "ZERSTÖRER" (German for "DESTROYER") along the nose of my aircraft.

Given all the painstaking work that we had put into our models, Mart and I didn't rush to fly them. We waited patiently for the perfect day; sunny, dry, calm and windless. When that day finally came, we again made our way to a local schoolyard; not the same one where my P-40 had made its ill-fated maiden flight, mind you. No, this time, we went to a school closer to my old neighborhood, in an older section of town, densely populated by mostly Portuguese immigrants.

Although it was again summertime and the school was again closed, Mart and I couldn't evade the notice of a number local Portuguese teenagers as we made our way to the schoolyard. When they saw the two of us, carrying our airplanes, glow fuel, batteries and crying towels (just in case), they became naturally curious and followed us. As we prepared for our flights in the schoolyard, the somewhat rowdy Portuguese kids (whom Mart later affectionately referred to as the "Julios") watched with interest from the sidelines as they shouted taunts and encouraged us with their sincere hopes that we might entertain them with some truly impressive scenes of destruction.

I went first. Having learned my lesson from the P-40 debacle, I ensured this time that my airplane had full clearance and that there were no obstructions anywhere along its flight path. Having satisfied myself of this, I once again took the control lines while Mart fueled the plane and started the engine. He released it. The aircraft rolled along, picking up speed. The tail lifted from the ground and, this time, it TOOK TO THE AIR... a little too suddenly.

Perhaps it was over anxiousness on my part, still smarting from the memory of my P-40's demise, to get those wheels off the ground. Perhaps it was simple impatience to see the fruits of my labors airborne. Whatever the reason, I had tugged on the "up" line a little too eagerly, and my Stuka leaped into the sky in a steep climb.

Alarmed by this sudden rapid gain in altitude, I over-compensated and jerked on the "down" line, immediately putting the Stuka into a steep dive toward the schoolyard's asphalt. This immediately elicited a cacophony of excited whoops and cheers from the Julios, who prepared themselves for a splendid crash.

Horrified, I jerked the "up" line, again overcompensating, causing my Stuka to pull out of its dive scant inches from terra firma and again begin a steep climb, accompanied by a sullen chorus of "Awwww's" from the Julios, which sounded not unlike the disappointed exclamation that one hears from crowds of spectators watching a professional golf tournament after the golf pro narrowly misses sinking a long putt.

Overcompensating once again, I put the Stuka back into a dive, which changed the Julios dejected "Awww's" back into hoots and cheers. It went on like that for several more minutes with my Stuka executing an undulating series of parabolas worthy of NASA's infamous "Vomit Comet", accompanied by alternating cheers and "Awww's" from the Julios.

Then, at the apex of its last steep climb, my Stuka did something completely unexpected. It winged over and came directly at me! As this maneuver brought it inside the radius of its flight path, my control lines went slack and I lost all control of the aircraft. At that point, I did what seemed the only sensible thing. I dropped the control handle and, covering my head with my hands, I ran for my very life as the Julios exploded into a gleeful chorus of cheers.

Since I had my back to the Stuka, I did not see it when it smacked into the asphalt at the very spot that I had only recently occupied. I only heard the sickening crunch of splintering balsa wood a split second before the motor was, again, ominously silenced.

The body of my P-40 had only suffered a single crack after its jarring introduction to the ground. My fragile balsa-and-tissue Stuka was not so forgiving. The entire nose section was completely shattered, with serious damage to the wings and other sections of the aircraft. As I gathered up the debris in an attempt to salvage whatever parts that might be useful in my future attempt to rebuild the airplane's shattered nose, I came across a small scrap of doped tissue paper, with a few fragments of balsa stringers still stuck to its back, on which was inscribed a single, poignant, word ... "ZERSTÖRER". I understood, at that moment, how The Third Reich must have felt in 1945.

(Click to enlarge)

CKMS, HBC, HUH and Other Obscure Acronyms

Recently, my buddy, Mart, reminisced on his blog about a radio show that he and I used to do at the University of Waterloo's campus radio station, CKMS-FM, back in our younger days. That triggered some fond, and humorous, memories for me, so I've decided expound a little on the subject myself.

Mart said, on his blog, that he owned a radio and cassette recorder during his teenage years, but he just didn't use them. That's not entirely true. He didn't use them in the same manner that most other teenagers would use them; that is, for recording and playing music. He did, however, use the cassette recorder to create mock radio broadcasts. His repertoire included a soap opera parody that he called "General Crisis", a classical music show called "Classical Masterpieces" and, most bizarrely, a series of news reports by a pair of anchormen named Herb Jennings and Earl McGumphrie, representing an Imperial broadcasting network. By "Imperial", I mean belonging to the galactic empire in George Lucas' Star Wars universe. These "Imperial Reports" were meant to be the kinds of news reports that citizens of the Galactic Empire might expect to hear if Imperial journalists were on the scene during several key scenes from the Star Wars movies, describing the unfolding events. Jennings and McGumphrie always seemed to run afoul of these situations and get themselves in trouble. During one report, for example, McGumphrie accidentally managed to get himself locked inside one of the pods carrying an imperial probe droid just before it was launched toward the Hoth system.

Mart initially conceived of and recorded these things on his own (apparently he was badly in need of a hobby in those days) but he eventually played the recordings for me. Since he and I always shared the same quirky sense of humor, not to mention a certain fanaticism with regard to all things Star Wars, I was naturally taken with the idea and soon got into the act.

I should explain, at this point, that Mart was always more original than I. He was the "idea man". I, on the other hand, had a way of taking his ideas and extrapolating them into ponderous mutations of their former selves, to the point where they bore only the faintest resemblance to Mart's original, simple concepts and tended to scare away small children and the elderly. You might say I was the Bill Gates to Mart's Steve Jobs.

Mart's recordings reminded me of an audio version of a Canadian comedy show by the Second City comedy troupe that was on television at the time, called SCTV (the Second City Television Network) so I suggested that we develop Mart's recordings into a radio version of SCTV, which we called HBC (the HUH Broadcasting Corporation).

"HUH?" I hear you ask. What does "HUH" mean?

* Sigh! *

It stands for "Highly Uncontaminated Humor" but, to really explain things, I need to go back even further, to Mart and my pre-adolescent days.

You see, Mart and I used to be neighbors. That's how we got to be best friends. Then came the day that I moved across town. Now, that wasn't really so very far away, but neither of us was of driving age yet and we did live a healthy bike ride apart, so we kept in touch by mail for a while. (Note: for the benefit of my younger readers, "mail" in this context refers to the non-electronic variety, involving the delivery of paper documents by the postal service, a process which generally takes several days).

It wasn't long before we began enclosing extra things with those letters; drawings, jokes and such. This evolved into a full-fledged, home-made, hand-drawn comic book roughly resembling the satirical magazines that were so popular with pre-pubescent males such as ourselves at the time, like MAD and CRACKED magazines.

We called our magazine HUH Magazine, "HUH" being, as I said, an acronym for "Highly Uncontaminated Humor". Don't ask me what "contaminants" were supposedly missing from this particular form of humor. I suspect the most appropriate answer might well be "anything that could be considered to be of cultural or intellectual merit". I offer for your consideration a rather elaborate parody of the original "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" movie poster that I drew for an early issue of HUH Magazine. I won't divulge how long it took me to painstakingly hand-render this, except to say that I wore out at least two cases of colored markers.

So, you see, HBC was a sort of transformation of HUH Magazine from a paper medium to audio.

It's also worth noting at this point that, later on, around the same time that we did our stint at CKMS-FM (remember CKMS? I'll come back to it. I promise!) Mart and I decided that drawing cartoons might be a neat way to make a living. Hey, it seemed preferable to actually working (no offense to Mssrs. Adams, Schultz, Ketcham et al) and we actually went as far as assembling a portfolio of material and submitting sample comics such as the example presented here to United Features Syndicate and some other places.

The astute reader will have surmised from the fact that neither the names "Halma" or "Mielke" are today revered among the echelons of great cartoonists that every last publisher whom we approached respectfully declined our proposal. On the other hand, I still maintain to this very day that comic strips such as Kit 'N' Carlyle stand as irrefutable evidence that there is, indeed, no justice in this world.

As I mentioned earlier, Mart was the idea man while I had a tendency to realize his ideas beyond any reasonable justification. The concept of recording funny programs to tape was Mart's, but it was I who decided that we should develop it into a full-fledged parody of a radio station. Mart came up with most of the subject ideas and invented most of the characters. Aside from Jennings and McGumphrie, the Imperial newsmen, there was Luthor Heinberg, the classical orchestra conductor, Stan McGee (yet another reporter, but without the Star Wars slant) and a food critic whose name eludes me at the moment. I, on the other hand, found it necessary to sit down and draw caricatures of several of the key characters, such as the one of Earl McGumphrie, shown here. Somehow, creating a physical image made the characters more real to me.

Did I also mention that I'm a pack rat? By now I'm certain that Mart, who follows this blog, is likely picking his lower jaw up off his desk upon seeing that I've actually kept all this material for all these years.

So what has all this to do with CKMS-FM? Simply this. During my high school years, I met a Danish chap by the name of Peter Karwowski (well, okay, he was Polish; in fact, he still is, last I checked) who also remains a close friend to this very day. Peter was also interested in recording and broadcasting at the time and, in fact, briefly started a career as a radio announcer after finishing college. His interest in the broadcasting arts led him to CKMS-FM, where he volunteered as an overnight announcer on weekends. When I learned of this, I saw an opportunity to share HBC with someone other than just Mart and I asked Peter if we could use the station's recording facilities to do a somewhat more polished version of HBC and whether he might be willing to play segments of our work on his show.

Peter entertained the idea but, as it turned out, the good people at CKMS-FM were foolish enough to give Mart and me our own show which we imaginatively dubbed "The Andy & Mart Show" (guess which one of us chose the order of the names), so we started broadcasting HBC ourselves, rather than besmirching Peter's show with it, a small mercy for which I'm sure he remains grateful. We defined HBC for our listening audience as the "Hosehead Broadcasting Corporation" rather than the "HUH Broadcasting Corporation", partially because Bob & Doug McKenzie were very much in vogue at the time, and partially because we didn't want to have to explain what the acronym-within-an-acronym "HUH" meant, for reasons which, by now, will be all too clear to the reader.

The Andy & Mart show featured the usual combination of music interspersed with weather, news items, and special features including our own HBC segments and we always infused it with a liberal dose of our off-beat brand of humor, such as the time that we made finger shadows for our listening audience. In fact, the station's Programming Director, David "Doc" Hight (who wasn't a big fan of our show, I must admit) once sarcastically introduced us as "The Andy and Mart Comedy Carnival" just before surrendering the microphone to us at the end of his show, which immediately preceded ours. Much to his dismay, I took his pointed jab as a compliment and enthusiastically adopted the new name from then on. You just can't insult some people.

It would appear that I have once again taken Mart's quick, off-hand reference to our days at CKMS and inflated into ... this. I guess some things never change, as they say.