Homburg
Daring greatly
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2007
- Posts
- 13,578
The truth is if I wore heels that high and thin I'd probably feel like I was dying after walking a block. Then again as you point out there's no real reason to walk anywhere in them.
As we know my Olds 442 was very hawt, but I always preferred the Trimuph Spitfires and Fiat Spiders and my total dream car would be this 1959 Austin Healey.
I was about 6" from buying a TR6 once. Then I decided to set in it. Given my size, it was like a bad sitcom. My lust for those cars become something to be appreciated at a distance. When Mazda came out with the Miata, it was briefly reignited. Until the Sit Test. *sigh* Someday I will find a roadster that does not make me feel like I'm straddling a skateboard.
And a friend of mine had that very car in cream with tan upholstery. Well, it was his dad's, but he drove it any time he wanted, and inherited it.
My automotive inheritance currently stands to be a couple of cars I don't give a toss about, a 90 CRXsi that needs love, a 76 Jeep CJ-5 that really needs love, and a 1950 panhead Harley in pieces.
In short, I'm not crying. I'm hoping my dad gets a wild hair to put the hog back together. He wants to make it a complete stocker resto garage queen. I want to see a ridable greaser scoot (like it was when he was a greaser and rode it). As of this moment, the frame is in my hands, so my idea is technically more likely.
I remember being seven years old, and my dad bringing the hog to our quarters in Ft Bragg. It was the first place we'd ever had an actual garage. It wasn't attached, no, the garages for the units were off in a row on a side street that no one lingered on. He cracked the door into this dusty space with the reverence of a grave robber opening a tomb, and there it was, this hulking blue and white monster encrusted in dust and cobweb, the patina of age heavy upon it. It was so large that I could climb on it like a playground slide. The first time I sat in that wide leather saddle, leaned impossibly far forward and gripped those handlebars, I fell in love for the first time. That moment, that feeling, that memory never left me. That is the instant that crystallised my love for all things wheeled.
No, my first love was no woman. She was a beautiful old piece of motorcyle joy clothed in steel, rubber, and neglect. Her skeleton sits ten feet from me now, as patient as she was that day almost 30 years ago, waiting for that collusion of time, love, and resources, and the rumble quiescient now in her sundered heart will once again taste asphalt beneath thundering wheels. I dearly hope my dad will be alive to see that day, but even if he is not, I will ride her through the mountains of North Carolina, and give her back to the dream of the hill and curve and slope.
http://www.classicinv.com/1950panbackside.jpg
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