road trip: b&n modified roadster --- part 1

i’m delivering this story in 3 parts - acts, if you will.

when i was a kid, in the 1960s. . . back when i first started going out to the bonneville salt flats, the baddest of modified roadsters (usually, a 1927 model-t body that has been streamlined ahead of the windshield. you can do anything you want as long as you don’t cover the tires and wheels. the cockpit can also have a tonneau cover and roll cage faring.) was the b&n automotive #120 modified.

a brief bio:

after several years in and around the world of drag racing, in its pioneering years, northern californians bert peterson and noel black came together to form b&n automotive and started racing on the salt flats.

after success with a blown gas hiboy, they wanted higher speeds and therefore built, what would become, the world’s fastest roadster.

a few weeks ago, while talking on the phone with my dad, i learned that our partner, jim lattin, had rick peterson (no relation to bert peterson), a veritable magician when it comes to fabrication, restore the historic modified and would be inducting it into his antique race car museum in encinitas, california with a reception at the museum.

after receiving further details from jim and b&n automotive archivist, john sprenger (later a partner with bert following noel’s death in 1970), i decided i needed to be there for the ceremony.

john sprenger

the year noel was killed was my first year to become a part of what would be known as “the b&n bad guys.” i was just a kid shagging parts and receiving melvins from bert’s son, steve, and steve’s friend, frank “jive-ass” silva as we ran the motion 1 streamliner, which was hoped to break the wheel-driven land speed record of 354 mph.

frank "jive ass" silva

it was the greatest time of my youth!

mee sook and i left pebble beach on friday, march 14 at around 1030 hours under a cloud of clouds and intermittent showers on the day prior to the roadster’s induction. we were going to take rt. 1 down to santa maria, then cut over to i-5, but with such a late start we headed east to salinas and jumped on hwy. 101 going south. by the time we reached soledad, the sun was shining and the wildflowers were beginning to open.

i drove east on 46 from paso robles for the most scenic stretch of the day’s drive. the mostly ag-country was bright and green after a fairly moist spring and speckled with fields of mustard blooms and california poppies that were so brilliant the fields looked like they were ablaze.

a quick stop at a fruit and nut stand, alleged to be james dean’s last stop before being killed just west of there, we were on i-5 and heading over the grapevine.

after jumping off of i-5 and onto i-210, it wasn’t long (now approaching 1600 hours) before we were knee deep in traffic as we headed east out of pasadena.

i cannot believe ron wants to move us down to this mess!

before heading down to our hotel in san marcos, we were on our way to my old neighborhood in west covina to visit some very dear friends; popsie and leo, whom i have not seen since june, 1981. before going to their house, however, we stopped by the old thriftimart, now some other small chain grocery store, to grab a bouquet of flowers for popsie (we picked up some chili and lime pistachio nuts at james dean’s last stop for leo). as the automatic door opened to allow us entry, i passed an old mexican man on his way out who was looking at me like he knew me. i’m sure i looked like i was looking at him like i knew him, too.

“is that you, greg?” the old mexican asked.

it was leo!

what are the odds of that?

he had run down the road to grab some avocados for guacamole and was on his way out as we were on our way in.

amazing!

after hugs in the doorway, leo split to get the avocados to popsie while mee sook and i, the only non-spanish speaking people in the market, grabbed a bunch of flowers and headed over to the old neighborhood.

i first met popsie and leo around 1972, not long after they moved into the neighborhood. they quickly became the big brother and sister i never had! i did a lot of growing up at their house. i learned about jazz, how to cook real mexican food and more things than i can mention in this blog. i have missed them dearly and i am so happy to be back in-touch with them after all these years!

it was like i had been over there only a week ago! except that we were all older (gj, their son, who was born after i first became a part of the family, is now the age popsie and leo were when i first started hanging out with them) and leo had remodeled the house, nothing has changed; popsie is still as beautiful as she was when we were young and leo is still the short mexican with big arms and a heart to match.

just like in the old days, we listened to music, ate enchiladas (with popsie’s special sauce) and talked, talked, talked!

i have never loved two people so much, who are not a part of my family, as i do them.

they are the family i have chosen to compliment my family.

their oldest daughter, yvette, whom i used to baby-sit along with her sister nicky, now lives in, of all places, reno and has been there for the past 5-years, or so. i cannot believe it! there’s a good chance yvette used to listen to me on the radio and never knew it was me, since i don’t use my real name on the air.

small world!

far too soon, we had to leave to drive the rest of the way down to san marcos.

the ride down was bittersweet, having seen my good friends and missing them already! i love them dearly!

not-so-bright and not-so-early the next morning mee sook (a little hungover from the wine at popsie and leo’s and the jack daniels and mota in the hotel room) and i headed down to carlsbad to have breakfast with “the gunslinger”, a friend whom, up to that morning, i had not yet met.

i have known of bill for several years and have been carrying on a phone relationship with him since july, but this was the first time we were to meet face-to-face.

again, it was a great time with a great friend! the food, pretty good and satisfying, was not nearly as close to my heart as popsie’s enchiladas. still, i would be willing to return for another meal. it’s just a tough one to top popsie’s cooking! sorry, al!

after breakfast we drove down the coast another couple of miles and up the hill to find jim’s museum. after making sure of its locat, which was not as easy as googlemaps lead me to believe, we went to the hotel for a brief nap before coming back for the festivities.

upon our return, jim’s museum was all i expected and more! what a great collection of historic race cars and antique motorcycles. i had seen several of the cars and bikes at jim’s old museum in pomona, but it was not as extensive as the new locat here in encinitas; indy cars, including ralph de palma’s 2-man miller roadster (besides building winning cars, harry miller designed the engine that would later be known as the offenhausser, which ruled indy in the 40s and 50s), sprinters, midgets (in all variations) and several cars i have been fortunate enough to have driven over the years, including, of course, the redhead streamliner!

mee sook, who knew absolutely nothing about any of the cars, or the places where they raced, for that matter, was completely captivated by all the vehicles, especially the more exotic cars, like the redhead.

but, it was the b&n modified we were all there to see!

and what a great job rick did recreating the look of the car from its heydays back in the mid-60s! the paint (ice blue and midnight blue accents with black cobwebbing in the lighter color) matched the 1967 paint job with the lettering it had in 1965.

i was also able to visit with more friends i have not seen in years! too many to name, but they all asked if my dad was there. when i said “no” they all wanted me to tell him hi, which i would do in two days time.

i was able, of course, to spend time with jim and his son, bill, and john sprenger and frank “jive ass” silva from the b&n bad guys.

damn, we’re all getting old!

when the time seemed right, mee sook and i slipped quietly out and took a short drive down to san diego before returning to the hotel room in san marcos.

it was a wonderful day, but we had more driving to do the next day!

tales to tell: staying warm in a volkswagen

on christmas of 1992, after living in maine for far too long, while talking with my parents who had moved to nevada 6-months earlier from socal, i decided it was time to pull up stakes and head back out west.

at the time i had “retired” from radio for the first time about two years previous and was working for a telemarketing firm (not a scam outfit, thank you) as an office manager traveling from community to community throughout northern new england. we were working in rockland and i was living out of the tradewinds lodge on the waterfront, overlooking the bay.

i was making pretty decent money at the time. but, by living in hotels, i was spending a pretty good chunk of it on eating out 3-times a day. so, very little of it was going into the savings account.

besides: i never did get comfortable living in new england. and in my opinion: there is no worse place in the lower-48 to live in the winter than maine. not that summer is any better; when it’s 85° you can count on the humidity being up around 100%! there is really only about 2-weeks at the end of spring and 2-weeks at the beginning of fall when the weather is tolerable.

so, when we wrapped up rockland, i was in my volkswagen and on the road for the silver state.

there are some things you need to know about my volksy before i go much further into the story.

it was a 1976 super beetle. now, if you know anything about beetles, super or otherwise, you know that the heaters are not the best in the business. it also had a feature they called “auto-shift”. it was sort of a semi-automatic transmission in that you had to shift it, but when you moved the shifter more than a quarter of an inch a servo disengaged the clutch; there was no clutch pedal. that servo turned to junk about 200 miles after i bought the car and it was going to cost more than $2000 to fix the thing; more money than the car was worth. so, i just dealt with it.

one of the problems the servo’s lack of integrity caused was you could only shift it by turning off the engine, shifting it into a higher gear, and turning the engine back on. since it wasn’t like a “real” automatic transmission, it was much like rolling a 4-speed with the clutch out and the key on. only a little smoother; it just fired right up, without a lurch.

it would also not go into reverse! so, i either had to park on an uphill grade so i could let issac newton back the car out or pull all the way through a stall so i could drive straight out.

this was the car the i chose to leave new england in that january.

because of the heater being just about anything but, i bought some vacuum hose and duct tape and directed what little heat was coming out of the heater ducts to just below the front of the driver seat. it worked, but it was still far from a “real” heater.

i just dealt with the transmission issues.

by the time i got the car and myself all packed up it was about 9 in the morning before i was actually on the road and heading south to the maine/new hampster border. not that i could head directly to the border - there were people i needed to say goodbye to before leaving. so, by the time i got to portsmouth, nh, it was dark.

i spent the first night in port jervis, new york on the new york, new jersey, pennsylvania borders.

the morning brought only bad news: freezing rain in the mountains where i needed to travel!

but, i had miles to get under my wheels and hit the road as soon as i got breakfast under my belt.

it wasn’t long, however, before the freezing rain put a thick sheet of ice on my windshield as the defroster didn’t work nearly as well as the heater.

i pulled off of the interstate and, fortunately, there was a mom & pop convenience store at the top of the off ramp.

knowing what it was going to take to get the heat to the windshield from the vacuum hose coming from under my seat, i headed directly to the paper goods isle.

i exited the store a couple of minutes later with 4 rolls of paper towels and began to unroll the toweling from the rolls in the center and began to duct tape the empty rolls to the vacuum hose until the collection of tubing reached the ice-encrusted windshield.

i fired up the bug and stepped out to scrape the ice from the glass as the frost on the inside slowly began to melt.

when there was about 12 inches of clear glass, i headed back to the interstate. it was necessary to keep moving the “nozzle” across the windshield, but i was able to keep the glass clear until i reached the trailing edge of the storm.

when i got into wilkes-barre, pa, i stopped at kmart to grab some handwarmers to, hopefully, add a little more heat to the windshield. fortunately, i did not need to use them, as they didn’t put out enough heat to have any affect whatsoever.

before leaving town, i stopped at a gas station for a fill up.

one of the employees came out as i began to pump the gas and, seeing my license plates said: “you’re a long way from home!”

i told him i was going a lot farther as my destination was nevada.

“nevada?” he said. “you got a lot of balls driving a volkswagen all the way to nevada!”

replying with my motto, which came from a song by the bears, i said: “fear is never boring!”

he replied: “adrian belew!” and pointed at me.

i didn’t bother to correct him. since the song, in fact, was originally performed by the raisins, the other 3 members of the bears, a few years before adrian joined the band.

but, i took that as an omen that the rest of the day would be a good one; adrian being my idol and all.

it was!

i drove all the way to la salle, illinois (on i-80, about halfway across the state) where i spent the night.

the next day was the coldest day of the trip!

i had a thermometer from l.l. bean hanging on the dashboard that never got about 10° on that day. the only way i was able to stay warm was by keeping a blanket over me and trapping what little hot air was coming from the vacuum hose.

i drove all the way to cheyenne, wyoming where i spent my 3^rd and final night on the road.

the next day was the longest of the 3-and-a-half days of travel.

i started out at about 7, drove into laramie for breakfast and began to cross the rocky mountains.

after having spent the previous day in a car where the temperature never got about 10°, i actually drove through the rockies with the window down. there was snow all around the highway, but it was a very pleasant day, maybe in the low 40s.

coming down the western slope, of the uintahs into salt lake, i was loafing the engine in an attempt to save a little gas. the only problem was, i loaded up the sparkplugs and the engine would hardly rev to get up the next range. after a little coaxing, and keeping the transmission in 3^rd instead of 4^th, i was able to clean out the engine and drive comfortably (well, as comfortably as one can in salt lake city during peak traffic-time) into slc and headed west toward my old stomping grounds: the bonneville salt flats and wendover, beyond.

knowing i was in the final stretch, i spent some extra time in wendover, eating a meal i could not find in new england: chicken friend steak, stretching my legs by walking around the casino, and looking at my picture on the wall in the state line casino’s convention center. 1978 was the last year the casino placed 200 mph club inductees pictures on the wall.

from wendover, it was just another 6 hours or so before i pulled into fallon at 1:30 the next morning; my parents, and grandmother, who was visiting from socal, stayed up to welcome me home.

the next morning when i got up and saw all the snow on the ground from the storm that raced across the country and into new england the day before i left i decided i was going to buy nordic skis so i could ski off the patio and into the desert. it was the one and only time i ever saw that much snow in fallon.

but, i was in fallon for the first time in about 40-years and it already felt like home. within a couple of days i was working at the nugget casino as the night club dj.

but, that is another tale to tell.