Road Hugging Weight

Welcome to my new blog. I have decided to retire the old one, but you can still read the archives online.

Since I have become a contributor to Hemmings Classic Car with my monthly column, “Detroit Underdogs,” and after eight years editing a car club newsletter, I find that I want to focus on driving in the United States rather than just backing out of my driveway at the trailer park, where I reside with my co-pilot, Rose Marie, my rescue puppy.

How much more can I say about manufactured living? But, to those fans of the trailer park trash existence, I will pepper this new blog with anecdotes from the mobile life when apropos.

For those who don’t know me, I belong to seven antique car clubs, three that are gay, and four that are make specific. I prefer the independents to the Big Three, but I have owned my share of Mopars and Fords along with AMCs over the years. Presently, I own two cars, a 2011 GMC Canyon base-model pick-up with a steering wheel, a radio and little else. It has roll-up windows and manual door locks. Surprisingly, it has a bed liner and cruise control. I drove it cross-country last year with no problems even though seven people insisted I rent a car with a trunk. I don’t take advice well.

My other car is a 1954 Hudson Jet Liner. Unlike other Jet Liners, this one has no fender skirts, continental kit or full wheel covers, and that is why I bought it because those are three things along with fins that I do not like. For future reference, the Canyon is Caroline Appleby and the Jet Liner is Fred Mertz. I used to name my cars after Bewitched characters, but that only resulted in them leaving a trail of smoke and fire every time I took off and having to page Dr. Bombay every couple of months.

So here goes …

It is the middle of winter. The weatherman said we have actually passed the coldest part of winter, but I am inside and I cannot feel my fingers or toes or other things that stick out … like my nose. Yesterday, or was it the day before, Atlanta got hit with a rare blizzard that dropped three inches of snow on the ground, causing a traffic situation that was indescribable. Every time I see something like this, I think of what would happen during a terrorist attack. Every car in the pictures of the mess was either an SUV or front-wheel drive sedan, and they were black, gray or white. I miss colorful cars. There were also an inordinate amount of eighteen wheelers stuck in the malaise.

Several years ago, there was a twenty-minute thunderstorm in Rockville, which knocked out power lines. It took almost three weeks to get the power back on, so we have our own problems, which is why I don't live in Rockville anymore.

Back to the South. I grew up in the South in southeastern, Virginia. Yes, that is the South because it was an hour south of the capital of the Confederacy. We didn’t get a lot of snow, but on the rare occasions we did, we got whoppers, and many times they were ice storms. These were the days before every man had front wheel drive and every grandmother had an SUV. With the exception of the hippy professor types, I can guarantee you we drove big heavy cars with rear-wheel drive.

As luck would have it, I was always the one who was stuck at work in these freak blizzards with a 1973 Ford LTD – a yellow four-door with a brown vinyl roof. Yes, it was that ugly but a nice car to drive. Going back a few years before I learned how to drive, my brother became a man in 1972. No, not like that. That was the year of his Bar Mitzvah. Aunt Honey and Uncle Sam and Aunt Min and Uncle Iz came down to stay with Grandma in her one-bedroom apartment. Uncle Sam was the only one with a license and a car – a green four-door 1972 Chevrolet Nova. It was December, and they had driven down in a snow storm, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. Uncle Sam said, “The secret to driving in the snow and ice is letting the car take off on its own before applying the gas.” He was right.

The problem is not everyone met Uncle Sam, so we ended up with the situation on the roads this past week. However, I think we have another problem – overconfidence.

When we drove rear-wheel cars, we knew the limitations. We knew that you couldn’t go the speed limit in the snow and you only drove in ice if you needed to get someone to the emergency room to have a limb attached and only if there was a sixty percent chance of saving it!

Although I remembered what Uncle Sam said, this didn’t matter to my parents. During a blizzard, they would call me at work every ten minutes telling me to go home. It was annoying and embarrassing, and once, when I was in my late twenties, I threatened to report them to the FBI. It didn’t work; they called back ten minutes later. I worked as a manager in the food service industry, and they expected me to drop everything and leave with customers sitting in the establishment. One time, I handed the phone to a customer and said, “Tell my mother you are waiting for your lasagna.” She thought it was one of my friends.

At the end of my shift that winter in 1979, I was ready to leave, and there was no more traffic on the road. In addition, no snow plows had come through. At the time, I worried about that, but sometimes if they plow without salting and sanding, they just create a sheet of ice.

I called home to assure them I was leaving, and I hung up on my father mid-sentence, which I know pissed him off, but I had already spoken to him three dozen times that afternoon.

One of my co-workers needed a ride home, so we brushed off all the snow on the LTD. Speaking of which, why don’t people do this? I hate being behind someone and being pelted by ice sheets and big-ass snowballs.

Kristine, my co-worker, asked if I knew what I was doing. I assured her I did even though this was my first time driving in this kind of weather. I had a positive attitude even then. My parents thought I would die, but I was sure I would get home safe and sound.

I was parked behind the restaurant, and I needed to negotiate a small road before hitting Warwick Boulevard in Newport News. Remembering Uncle Sam, I let the car take off on its own, which was easy with a 429 cubic inch four barrel V-8 under the hood, and off we went.

She lived off two side streets, and I even managed to pull into her driveway and back out without slipping or getting stuck. Keep in mind, this car had rear-wheel drive and no positraction. The drive home required me to go down Warwick Boulevard, make a left on Main Street, and go through an underpass. I felt like Lucy with the Pontiac stuck to the Cadillac. Although I was the only car within sight, I still followed the traffic signals because I always follow the rules. The light turned green. I allowed the car to make the left then eased on the gas and picked up just enough speed to go under and emerge on the other side. Well, that was easy, and there was no other car stuck to my bumper.

I then had to negotiate the winding section of Main Street and managed to do so with no slipping or sliding. I was really beginning to appreciate “road hugging weight.” Then onto Beech Drive to our house on Dresden Drive. Now, I had managed to get through all these streets with no problem, and I knew when I arrived at the house, I would need to have enough speed to get up the driveway or that was the most likely place for me to get stuck. I thought I was such an expert driver at this point.

I rounded the corner, eyeing our house, which was the second one on the right, and what did I see? My brother and father standing there attempting to shovel the snow and standing in my direct path. I beeped the horn and waved my arm for them to get out of the way, and instead, my brother started giving me signals as if he was guiding an airplane into an arrival gate. They wouldn’t move! What did I do? I stopped the car and got out, and I said, “I didn’t want to run you two over, so get it up the driveway, yourselves.” I then went into the house.

Needless to say, my last nerve was plucked from all the phone calls, I just piloted that tank of a car along a treacherous route and just when I needed to have a clear path into the driveway, I risked making my mother a single parent with one angry child.

I will not share what happened after they managed to get it into the driveway, but let’s say there was more screaming than on an episode of All in the Family.

I never got credit for driving that car in a blizzard. I had the best driving record in my family, and my friends usually asked me to do the driving, but you wouldn’t know that to ask them. I was caught in many a blizzard in that heavy Ford LTD after that, and I never had a problem.

From the mid-1980s to about five years ago, I jumped onto the front-wheel drive bandwagon, and that is when I witnessed what had become of drivers now that most of us were driving cars pulled by the front wheels or all wheels. They go too fast. I actually do not like driving front wheel drive cars in the snow. I don’t know what it is, but being behind the wheel of a light car that is low to the ground is not my ideal, and I am not fond of an SUV either.

Recently, someone asked, “What is the best car you ever drove in the snow?” Many of the younger ones mentioned Pathfinders, Cherokees and Blazers, etc. No one mentioned a front-wheel drive car, but I think I was the only one who said a 1973 Ford LTD was the best car I ever drove in the snow. The second best is my GMC Canyon, which only has rear-wheel drive.

If this global warming keeps up, maybe I should buy another ‘70s Ford LTD?

For my column, “Detroit Underdogs,” subscribe to Hemmings Classic Car, for my books, visit www.miltonstern.com. You can also follow me by adding your email to my distribution list.