The Summer of ‘63

Because my birthday was in late November, I was a year younger than most of the kids in my high school class. That meant I was destined to be a rider months and months before I could be a driver.  I was relegated to those unfortunates who had to shout “Shotgun!” and fight for the front passenger seat.  Failing in that, you were stuck in the depths of the back seat or even worse, be left standing on the curb in front of Rea’s uptown drug store on Market Street watching the privileged drive by and wave.

Market St. Sunbury, PA: it wasn’t the Sunset Strip in California, but it was all we had.

It was just after school let out in 1963 that my best friend Les Briscoe showed up unannounced at the house just after lunch in the early summer. When I opened the front door, he just stepped aside.  There on the curb was a car.  “You drove here?” I looked around for his mother.

“She’s not here,” said Les. I was astounded.  I hadn’t even known it was his birthday, let alone the fact that he had gotten his driver’s license.  The car was a total mess.  The rocker panels were all rusted out.  Ripped headliner hung from around the back window.  The floor was littered with pop bottles and toys.  The whole car had a layer to dirt, inside and out.  The doors had sticky hand prints on them.  I got in and sat behind the wheel.

“What exactly is it?” I asked.

“A 1953 Ambassador Airflyte Six,” said Les as he opened the door and pushed me over. “From now on, I’m Dean Moriarity.”  Dean Moriarity was one of the main characters in Jack Kerouac’s  beatnik anthem On The Road and in real life was Neal Cassidy.  Les and I had fallen in love with the Beats and had read the book multiple times.

“I wanna be Dean Moriarity,” I protested.

“You can’t. It wouldn’t be right.  I have the car and the license.  You’ll have to be Sal.”  Sal Paradise, the narrator of On The Road, was in real life Jack Kerouac himself.  Not bad as an alter ego, but definitely not as romantic as Cassidy, who gained even more fame later by his portrayal (without a pseudonym) in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Ade Acid Test.

 Les started it up and headed for downtown. I couldn’t believe we were actually going to cruise Market Street.  I stuck my head out the window and pounded on the door.  There were no parents in the car.  It was beyond my wildest dreams.  Les drove around the park.  “Babes at two o’clock,” I shouted.

Les slowed down and watched the girls. “You have to ask them if they want a ride.  They’re on your side of the car.”

“I don’t know who they are. No way.  It’s your car, you ask them.”

“Damn it, I can’t go any slower! Hurry up and ask them.”  Les glowered at me.  I silently watched them as we glided by.  The car behind us blared the horn.  Les sped up.

“How are we going to pick up girls if you don’t cooperate?”

“Look, I’ll ask somebody, just don’t be so pushy. I’m not going to put the make on somebody I don’t know.”

“We’re in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, armpit of the world. We’re stuck with what we can find.”

At the foot of the hill, Les turned up Fairmont, turned down an alley, and took Catawissa back to Market for the trip back down to the park. He turned up the radio and lit up a cigarette.  I mulled over the idea of actually asking strange girls if they wanted a ride.  I hung out the window.  Les missed a parked pickup by inches.

“Hey! You wanna kill me?”

“If I have to drive and look for girls, you’ll have to watch out for yourself.”  We were already back at the park and turning to make another pass through downtown.  Les noticed that there were two girls in the car ahead of us.  We followed them around the park, all the way back up Market Street, around the block, and back down.  They saw that we were following them when Les flashed his lights.  We could see them bouncing and giggling.  Les was ecstatic.  “This is it!  They’ve seen us!  Here, Larson, light up a cigarette.”

“You’re already smoking one.”

“It’s for you, meatball. If you’re going to pretend to be Sal Paradise, you’ll have to look the part.  Just puff on it and let it hang out the corner of your mouth.”

The cigarette tasted awful. It coated my tongue and made my teeth feel thick with film.  The smoke burnt my eyes.  I gave Les a dirty look.  The girl driving was watching us in the rear view mirror.  The other kept turning around.  Les waved; she winked.

“Good God,” I said.

“Will you act right and get with the program? They’re probably from Shamokin, and you know about girls from Shamokin.”

I didn’t know anything about girls from Shamokin, but I caught Les’ drift. “So we’re supposed to make out in the park in broad daylight?”

There were no subtle approaches to picking up girls while cruising Market Street.  You had to get their attention somehow if you’re driving a 1953 Nash.

(Rendering by Richard Lytle)

Les leaned forward. “Look!  They pulled in.”  Sunbury had diagonal parking on both sides of Market Street.  Les took the spot right next to them.  Luckily, they were on his side of the car.  Les leaned out his window and smiled.  “Hi.  Why don’t you ride with us?  That way, we pay for the gas.”

“Good God.” I was holding my face in my hands.

Les kicked my leg. He didn’t stop smiling out the window.  “We’re on our way to the Eat-A-Bite.”

The girl on the passenger side giggled. She had on too much makeup.  Her dyed blonde hair was done in a flip.  She cracked her chewing gum and giggled again.  She nervously picked at a pimple on her forehead.  “Yup, she’s from Shamokin all right,” I said into the dashboard.

Les kicked at me again, missed, and stubbed his toe on the heater. He winced but kept giving the girl the eye.  “Who’s your friend?” he asked in most syrupy voice.

The girl turned to the driver. Both of them giggled.  “I’m going to kill you, Larson,” said Larry out of the corner of his mouth.

“Ask her who does her stunning hairdo.” Les ignored me.

“I’m Dean Moriarity. This is Sal.  We’ve just come back from San Francisco.  Took us six days.  Drove this Airflyte Six all the way.  Wanna see the inside?  It’s really cool.”  The fake beatnik routine was really sounding stupid.

I pushed myself against the passenger door, trying to get as far away as possible from Les’ open window.

“Right. Cool as the town dump.”

Les had given up on me. He concentrated on the two girls.  “Have either of you ever been to San Francisco?”

“No,” giggled the driver. “Is it near Pittsburgh?”

“It’s west of there,” said Les.

I started pounding on the dashboard.

“Sal and I are on our way to the Village in New York City. We have to meet our friend Jack Kerouac.  Ever heard of Jack Kerouac?”

“Hey, yeah,” said the girl at the window. “Isn’t he a chiropractor in Pottsville?  I think he cured my Aunt Mabel of rickets!”

Larry put his chin on the window sill. I patted him on the shoulder.  After a minute of silence, he looked up.  “Why don’t we drive to the Eat-A-Bite in our own cars?  We’ll meet you there, okay?”

Without waiting, Les backed out of the parking space and headed for the north end of town. He was convinced we were going to score.  He turned up the radio.  He offered me another cigarette.  I lit it up and threw it out the window.  My mouth tasted horrible.  “How can anybody get near us after they smell our breath?”

“Cigarette breath is very masculine. It means you’ve arrived.  Girls really like to kiss guys who smoke.  It makes them feel important.  Here, take one and hold the smoke in your mouth.  You don’t have to inhale.  The girls will go nuts for you.”

I suffered through a third of the cigarette. It went out the window.  My eyes were watering.  I felt sick.  Les was disgusted.  “A fine Sal Paradise you turned out to be.  Can’t even smoke.  Wanna go home?  I can handle both of them.”

“I can get behind that.” I started rummaging through the glove compartment.  All I found was a bottle of Pinaud quinine hair tonic.  “What’s with this?” I asked, holding up the bottle.  It was half full of something cinnamon red.  “You really drink this, don’t you?”

“Of course. It burns all the way down, but when it hits!”  Les was turning into the Eat-A-Bite parking lot.  The front partitions were pushed up.  I could hear the juke box before we got out of the car.  Les bought two Cokes and started playing the pinball machine.  I sat and read all the titles on the juke box.  Les ran out of nickels.  He scanned the parking lot.

“Maybe they went via San Francisco. It’s just west of Pittsburgh.”

“Very funny,” said Les, sitting on the stool next to me.

“Maybe you should hide your car. If they don’t see it, maybe they’ll stop.”

“Nah. They haven’t even driven by,” said Les.  He was trying to unravel his straw at the spiral seam.  Halfway down, it tore in two.  Les looked at me.  “I can’t figure it.  They were from Shamokin.  That should’ve solved everything.”

A Restored 1953 Nash Ambassador Airflyte Six

I Quest For The Holy Grail

The biggest event in the life of everybody in public school was turning sixteen. All of junior high school was one long anticipation of your sixteenth birthday.  I was convinced at an early age that cars wouldn’t exist by then.  I was gorging myself on science fiction:  magazines, stories, novels, Sunday supplement features, movies, Captain Video every Saturday at the Rialto, the Tomorrow Land segments on the Walt Disney Program and Science Fiction Theater on TV.  They were all fantastic visions of a future that were beyond belief.  How could it possibly include internal combustion?  I sometimes got depressed sitting in the showroom of Zimmerman’s Studebaker dealership watching the cars zooming on out Market Street and out of town.  Was I watching a dying phenomenon?  Would two lane blacktops cease to exist?

I turned sixteen on Friday, November 29, 1963. I ran from the high school down to Dr. Solomon’s office on the square and made it out in time to arrive at my job at The Bon Ton at 3:30.  My best friend Les Briscoe had driven me to the Goodwill Hose Company over lunch so I could take the written test, get my eyes examined, and pick up the forms for The Old Man and Doc Solomon to sign.  On Monday, everything went to the mother of a classmate who for a buck would take them with her to her job in Harrisburg.  She’d run them to the state DMV office over lunch and bring back whatever you were after:  learner’s permit, driver’s license, registration tags, plates.  Monday evening, the Old Man drove me to her house, and I walked out the door holding my learner’s permit in both hands.  Was there anything more to want in life?

Well, yes: an actual license.  But that was months away.  The Old Man had recently bought a two-tone 1955 Chevy two-door Belaire with all the trimmings:  265 V8, three-speed manual transmission, and overdrive.  He never realized he had driven off the lot with one of the most sought-after hot rod dream cars.  [Ed. note:  watch Two Lane Blacktop with James Taylor and Dennis Wilson.]  All he knew was that he got a hellova deal on his trade-in.

 

The ultimate cruise machine in ANY era: a 1955 Chevy with the 265 V-8

 

For two months, the two of us were out most evenings. I learned how to drive a stick shift, how to hold the car right at the edge of the right side of the road, how to know when to shift gears just by the sound of the engine.  When it snowed, we practiced steering out of skids and braking without losing control in the Silk Mill parking lot on weekends.  When the weather turned, we covered the route and routine for the driving test.  Everybody in town knew every detail.  After school, the streets along the route would be bumper to bumper with cars filled with kids and fathers, all going over the course again and again.  You had to parallel park, stay behind the actual and virtual crosswalks, turn around in a narrow alley with only two backups, and the worst of all:  come to a dead stop on Reagan Street hill and start up again without drifting backwards.  For stick shift cars, that one was a killer.

When I finally took my test, I was so nervous that I forgot to put the car in gear. The motor roared, and the car didn’t move.  The state policeman just silently sat there, waiting for my next move.  I tried to put the car in gear too quickly and ground the gears.  As we pulled away, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the Old Man shaking his head.  I was a nervous wreck on the dead start Reagan Street hill climb and almost oversteered in the back-alley turnaround.  But somehow I managed to pass.  I went out of my mind.  I showed the validated permit to everybody.  Then I showed it to everybody again.  From then on, I HAD to drive the car whenever the family went anywhere.

But it wasn’t the same as driving by yourself without parents along. Older people, especially fathers, took away the overwhelming feeling of power.  “The Feeling” came over you when you knew that, for the first time in your life, you could totally control your environment.  It was present when you drove eighty miles per hour and blared the latest rock ‘n roll on the radio.  It was part of the status that placed you above all your friends who still had to walk.  If those friends wanted to ride along, YOU decided where to go and what to do because YOU had the power.  “The Feeling” was the certain knowledge that you could go to all the drive-in hamburger joints, that you could cruise for girls on Market Street, that you could buy gas, put pennies in parking meters, watch out for the cops, get stuck in the snow, take your girl and park at the top of Mile Hill. “The Feeling” was going outside of town on the Snydertown Road and stopping the car, only to floor it in first gear, the pushing back in the seat, the smoke and the noise, the thrill of danger created by you and only you.

Unfortunately, I got my only chance the night of the senior prom. The Old Man was dead set against it.  His entire adult life, he never carried insurance on his car, only on the other guy.  If he got into an accident that was his fault, he was stuck paying the bill out of his own pocket.  It was a very chancy thing to do, but in the entire time I was at home, it never happened.  And he sure wasn’t going to let it happen with me behind the wheel.  Finally, my mother forced him to relent.  I’m sure he was a nervous wreck until I got home sometime after midnight.

Your humble host/author washing the Old Man’s ’55 Chevy in the early afternoon of prom day in May 1964.

 

My date for the prom lived right next door, so my only chance was to leave a little early and cruise Market Street before heading for the high school gym with its crepe paper decorations, me in my rented tux from Bob Newman and my date all dolled up and wearing the corsage my mother picked out. It was my chance of a lifetime, and to add to the effect, I pulled out the overdrive knob on the dashboard.  Every time I let up on the gas while in gear, both of us lurched towards the windshield.  My date didn’t understand and thought the car was breaking down.  I hung my left arm out the window and told her to hang on for dear life…that’s just the way hot cars behaved.  She may have believed me.

On the way down to the park, I searched every oncoming car for prom goers. I went as slow as possible and managed to hit every stoplight red.  At fourth street I revved the engine and looked around.  Nobody noticed.  We were at the park all too soon.  I did a repeat performance back up to Tenth Street.  There wasn’t a single high school kid driving a car.  It was all boring adults in town for Saturday night shopping.  I was performing with nobody to watch.  At Tenth, I pushed the overdrive knob back in and turned south towards the high school.  It was all over in just a minute or two.

The prom and the American Legion party afterwards are only a vague memory. From there to the house was just a couple of blocks.  I parked out front and walked my date to her door.  I drove the car around to the back alley and into our small garage.  The ’55 Chevy still glowed from my Blue Corral treatment that afternoon.  The saddest moment was turning the keys over to the Old Man.  I changed clothes and sat down in the living room.  In just a couple of hours, my mother was making breakfast for me, my date, and two other couples.  Nobody had seen us in the Old Man’s car.  My one moment basking in “The Feeling” was history.

I had to wait six long years before I owned a car of my own.  I was just out of grad school and found a 1949 Buick Special Coupe for sale at the Esso station on the highway in Lewisburg.  I ended up driving it across the country three times while on a three-year adventure of a lifetime.  But sadly, “The Feeling” was gone, left behind with adolescence, never to return again.