My Early Love Life
Don’t get excited. This is “my” love life and it began before puberty reared its ugly head. My downfall into the depths of mindless attraction to women had its roots in the stomach churning social experiment that was grade school.
I attended Firelands schools for my entire public educational career. We called it maximum security when we were there, now it’s a career. My first crush occurred way back in my fourth year at Birmingham Elementary in Erie County. The building was originally built as a high school and was the alma mater of my dear mother-in-law. By the time I arrived it held grades 1 through 4 with kindergarten starting the same year I entered first grade.
The most vivid memories I have of that time are the smells. I remember the sweet odor of the paste and the heaviness of the watercolor paint. Those scents were so enticing they inspired the artist in all of us budding finger-painters. And the delicious aroma of the cafeteria was always alluring. The entire building would smell like mom had dinner on the stove. This was the atmosphere of my first true love.
She was new to town and lived down the road (Rt.113) from me. She never knew my burning desire because the closest I came to revealing the poetry in my heart was riding my bike very near her house. (I was a tad shy.)
Then I graduated to fifth grade and rode the bus to Henrietta where all of us were finally in the same building. There were two other buildings for grades 1through 4.
There was my next amore, a tiny wisp of a girl with red hair. Her round freckled face was a vision. She was popular with a small group of girls who always surrounded her. How could I get her attention so that I might communicate my admiration of her beauty? Being the suave and debonair guy that I still am today, I teased her.
It worked. She noticed me and gave me a sure sign that our love was mutual. She kicked me in the shins, really hard. This was no love tap. It was a passionate, “I’m gonna break your knee caps I like you so much.”
Alas, our relationship (and my shins) only lasted for two recesses. I will have those few precious moments. (Does this sound like Charlie Brown?)
Next came junior high, which is still located across a parking lot from Firelands High School. Now, I was in full-blown testosterone overload. It wasn’t just me. I don’t know how any teacher could actually volunteer to instruct boys that age. Every boy in Junior High was in love with the same teacher. I’ll call her Ms. “Young’n’Beautiful.” Ms. Y was our Government teacher and why we thought there was a prayer she even noticed us is beyond me. I think it has something to do with a synapse malfunction cause by static electricity from our corduroy pants. (We thought we were cool. Turns out we were just walking too quickly.)
Ms. Y was a recent college graduate but not a novice teacher. She had radical ideas and she sat on her desk as she espoused them. I can still recall some of her lessons.
Ms. Y was one of my longest love affairs to that point and it lasted the better part of the school year. She remains the first real woman in my love life. If only she knew the effect she had on me. (She’d probably shower six times a day.)
High school is just a blur. I remember falling in and out of love every 15 minutes or so. It was a time of hot pants and see-through tops, of hip-huggers and tube tops. A guy just didn’t have a chance.
I had so many girlfriends, though most of them pretended not to know it. The two young ladies that were aware of my affections told me they were well aware of my intentions and I could just forget it.
Cary Grant I wasn’t, but I have the fondest of memories of the many women in my life. To all of you, whether you knew or not, I thank you.

Automotive Safety in the 1960s
We get so caught up living in the here and now that we forget just how great things used to be when we baby boomers were kids. It was a time of manly men, womanly women, and really tough short people. There is no better example of this than the 2-ton plus wonders our parents drove. They were tanks without turrets that got even worse gas mileage. Let’s just examine some of the exciting features we boomers and our parents were blessed with.
The windshield of the 60s automobile was a marvel of the times. They were designed to stop you from exiting the vehicle. None of this sissy shatter without shards stuff for us. If you were in an accident and managed to burst through the windshield, your body would be sufficiently slowed to land gently of the other guy’s hood.
But why weren’t you restrained from leaving your seat in the first place? No seatbelts were present in 1960s cars. Even if we’d had them we would have been too cool to use them. We preferred to leave a pinch mark where our buttocks tried desperately to hold on to the seat.
In addition to the windshield, there was another practical safety feature that is out of style now. Before the advent of wimpy air bags our parents were cushioned from the “metal on metal with a hint of comfort chrome dashboard” by us, their useful children. That’s how tough we were. We were even allowed to stand up on the floor of the spacious area between the front seat and the dashboard to look out of the windshield.
Crash design in the 60s was centered on very different criteria than today. In this soft and spoiled age there are crumple zones to absorb the impact of collision and protect the passengers. Ha. It was well known that people were easier to replace than a good car with a great engine. It was the engine one preferred to protect. The passenger compartment was the crumple zone. In the rough and macho 1960s every real man could build a car starting with nothing more than the engine block and a door. Really.
Of course, there were some things that weren’t better then than now. Autos were not as reliable and they tended to breakdown every 50 feet or so. No car and its aspiring mechanic traveled without certain essential tools and equipment. In the trunks, that were roughly the size of most modern living rooms, we had massive toolboxes filled with “English,” not metric, tools. Metric was for rice burners and men of questionable manliness. A partial list of tools and equipment included wrenches, electrical tape, glass tube fuses, extra bulbs, hoses, a hammer, a bigger hammer, a really big hammer, “Bondo,” assorted pliers, several spare tires, and a single flat blade screwdriver. The screwdriver was only used to remove the license plates so one could sneak away. (We weren’t really all that good at roadside repair.)
Our most enduring legacy was the speed limit. We propelled ourselves along in our iron behemoths at 70, legally, and usually a lot faster. We weren’t too concerned with stopping since we had the aforementioned safety equipment and we took pride in our ability to stop using the clutch and artful downshifting. In the event of a panic stop there was always the emergency brake, which only uses the back wheels, for those white-knuckle, teeth-grinding, gut-wrenching, last second stops. (I did this once on an off ramp and the quarter mile length was just the amount of stopping distance I needed.)
Yeah, we were lucky. There will never again be a time when living on the edge and adventure are as close as the garage. But we are the better for it. We survived the 60s.

The North Coast Challenge
Through out the United States and the world, people face natural and manmade obstacles that allow them to improve themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually. Some climb mountains, run marathons, give blood, or eat fast food. Here in Ohio those of us who inhabit the few miles south of the shore of Lake Erie engage in the most treacherous of all sports, driving.
As the foundation of our chosen sport we have developed an intricate system of highways, streets, roads, and slightly upgraded cow paths. We have roads that change names every mile. (Think Mason Road to Cooper Foster Park to Rt. 254 to Detroit Road to oblivion.) We maintain the largest, deepest, and most persistent potholes in the world. Many have been named after smaller canyons and gorges, like that tiny trench called Grand.
In the winter we add a special feature to further increase our enjoyment of driving. We proudly possess a fleet of road surface enhancers, sometimes referred to as snowplows, which reconfigure the pavement by removing painted lines, curbs, and several inches of the surface in selected areas. Then, just when we think we can’t have anymore fun there’s the pure pleasure of road gravel with salt added for color. What could be better than sailing down the highway while your own tires sandblast the paint and suspension right out from under you? It just doesn’t get any better.
Spring brings with it special refinements that gladden the heart of the neighborhood mechanic. The multiple tons per square inch of “road salt” turn what little remains of the streets into dust. This is when we get to take that nostalgic journey that returns us to our pioneer roots. We even get to drive on the actual trails our ancestors blazed since the asphalt has long since disappeared. This is when I like to take my ultra low-slung Corvette out for a spin. Words cannot describe the joy as my body panels assume impossible shapes and my run flat tires prove that they can indeed go flat. And don’t even get me started on the sinful pleasure of the vibrations the football-sized pieces of former, and now free range, asphalt send through my backside as they ricochet off the underside.
Summer is a festival of driving events. The orange barrel slalom is my personal favorite and, I believe, that of many of my fellow roadies. I gather this from the many hand signals and mouthed blessings I observe as we jockey to enter a single lane of berm from the six lanes of perfectly good pavement we were using.
I’ll bet you thought I was leaving out the extraordinary sensation we North Coasters get when the May-June-July-August flies emerge from their two-year slumber and propel themselves onto our windshields. The greatest of sounds can be heard as millions of juicy bugs splatter like torrential rain and take on the appearance of partially masticated pizza. Removing them from one’s grill works takes the combined efforts of soap, water, and number 5 sandpaper. Ahh, now that’s Ohio motoring at its finest.
The best I have saved for last, fall driving. Except for a few bridges and I-71, which will never be finished, the roads have been repaired and the bugs are mostly gone except for that fine film of insect guts you can never quite get off. This is when local law enforcement starts its annual fundraising efforts. Freed from the necessity to dodge craters, orange barrels, and occasional gunfire, we North Coasters put the pedal to the metal and the checkbook to the municipal court. I’ve counted no less than 400 local police agencies just in Lorain County. The police have begun to take some of the fun out of driving over the speed limit and only slowing when someone in the opposing lane flashes their headlights, by setting up toll booths and just giving everyone tickets as they enter each respective enforcement area. I question whether there really is a Greater Mongolian Camel Brigade Township, but I paid the ticket just in case.
Now the world knows just how tough we Ohioans are. There are no wimps on the highways here. We laugh at the whining of motorists elsewhere with their traffic jams (sounds like something for toast) and tires exploding on hot pavement. You want gut-wrenching excitement, hair-curling thrills, and car-devouring fun, you know where to come. We dare you.

My First Car
I remember lying awake at night dreaming about getting my driver’s license and hitting the open road. I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than going wherever you wished, whenever you liked. Yeah, it was going to be the coolest thing to ever happen to me.
Just days after my sixteenth birthday and after studying the driving course through South Amherst down to the last sidewalk stop and turn signal, I got my ticket to freedom in the summer of 1972. Trouble was, I had never given any thought about the car I would actually be driving. I had learned in my father’s 1963 Chevy Bel Aire, a red beast that had already been totaled out by the insurance company as costing more to repair its crumbled rear end than to relocate it (safely and wisely) to the nearest junkyard. Now, it was mine.
I also understood why my father insisted I learn how to work, sweat, curse, and toil on this car. He was letting me practice on the very car I would be risking life and limb in. I was about to embark on an adventure I like to call “Defying Death at Sixteen and the Art of Automotive Repair.”
Of course, I don’t think for a minute my father was intentionally trying to kill me. However, the fact that he gave me used tires he wouldn’t take a chance with on his car, that he made mother go driving with me, and that he never taught me how to maintain brakes properly were just coincidences.
I did learn numerous tricks to get my disintegrating heap back home where it could be built and rebuilt. I learned how to tape a rotor cap (remember those?) that had broken when the engine shifted because the motor mounts were only concepts instead of something to keep the engine in place. I learned how to re-hang a muffler so it looked like it was really still connected and how to drive with the windows down so I wouldn’t be asphyxiated. I became aware at all times of immovable objects I could utilize as possible stoppers when the brake master cylinder went out and the brake pedal went to the floor without any noticeable change in speed. I learned the many uses on “Bondo” and how it could stop heater core leakage from getting into the passenger compartment (but not the actual leak) and that it could take the place of all the metal on a car except the frame.
I found out that tires could be changed in just a couple of minutes, in all kinds of weather, and at any time of day or night. Heck, after a while you can swap tires blindfolded with one hand and a toothpick. I got so good I could even break the tire off the rim with a crow bar, an oversized screwdriver, and a ball peen hammer. Really.
One of the more exciting bits of wisdom I acquired was the ability to drive without a gas tank. How you ask. Well, all you need is a little rust in the right place and off comes your gas tank. Now, it doesn’t just stay there on the road as you blithely drive away. Oh, no, it jams itself between the rear axle and the body and spits out sparks to warn the other drivers away. Safety first, you know. I’m still not sure why it didn’t blow up, but is my philosophy that my father just didn’t have that kind of luck. You’d have thought that after he taught me how to swim with a slippery inner tube in Lake Erie with his back turned, he would have figured out I wasn’t going out easily.
To be fair, the gas tank fell off just once. The second time one of the universal gas tank straps (should there really be such a thing for gas tanks?) broke and the tank merely hung down scraping against the road and spraying sparks, as a frantic driver in a gas tank advantaged car managed to tell me as we barreled down Route 58 at 60 miles per hour.
So here I am, 48 and still around to tell the tale. I always wondered if my mother knew all the close calls I had with my Chevrolet, or as I had named it, “Old Betsy.” After I survived driving the Bel Aire, my father sold it to another kid who promptly wrecked it again. The kid patched it and drove it for years until it finally died in its sleep. Still, it lives on in my memory. That Chevy was my pass into adulthood, freedom, and a deep and lasting appreciation just how exciting driving can be if you do it right.