For your travel comfort.  Drawings here.

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My father returned to General Motors after a brief fling with Ford and finally made it to his dream – a cadillac.  This was the four door sedan.  I always thought it was a very elegant looking car- particularly the sedan and for whatever reason always believed that the design was inspired by Italian designers.

Since I was in college, I don’t have any really strong memories of this car.  My folks would pick me up from school in the Spring and take me back in the Fall.  I have stronger memories of the car after this one- a 1963 Cadillac hardtop with leather because we drove it to New Haven for graduate school, stopping in Detroit and Niagara Falls with a brief detour through Canada.  I always thought that this ‘61 was one of the best styled Cadillacs ever.

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The Enicycle

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In 1953, my family made it’s most ambitious road trip.  We visited Washington DC.  My two brothers and me in the back of the Chevy Sport Coupe above (same color too).  My parents must have been masochists to do this before air conditioning and DVD players.  I was twelve and my brothers were seven and eight.  I planned the trip to take us throught all the state capitols along the way (yes I was a weird kid).  In DC, my father rented us two rooms at the Statler (now the Hilton).  It seemed very classy to us as our home base as we visited all the sites.  My father knew our congressman and he got us tickets to a White House tour.  We saw all the monuments, the Smithsonion, the Supreme Court, the Capitol and made excursions to Arlington National Cemetary and the Lee House either nearby or on the grounds.  A high point was a trip to Mount Vernon.  I doubt that we were there for more than three days.  I truely don’t remember but we did see everything.  Funny I don’t remember much at all about the long days in the car coming and going (no interstates in those days and few two lane roads).

Those were the days.

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St. Louis Arch, 1966

This weeks nostalgia is a visit to the St. Louis Arch which was completed in 1966.  The architect was Eero Saarinen, probably the preeminent American architect in the mid 20th century.  It is located on the Mississippi River in downtown St. Louis, Missouri.  You can ride to the top of the 630 foot high arch and look out over the vast midwest vistas.  Somehow, the pictures never seem to impress.  Because the arch is so big and yet so gracefully proportioned, it seems wimpy and out of scale with the office buildings nearby.  Yet when you visit the site, it’s quite another experience.  Each base is massive.  It is also a unique experience to be at one end of the park and view the arch head on where it takes on the character of an obelisk (like the Washington Monument).  Another aspect of the monument which I have never read about is the museum under the arch.  It depicts various aspects of opening the west but the remarkable thing about the museum is that it is like a time capsule of the 60’s.  I don’t think that the museum has been touched since it was first conceived.  The layout and the exhibits have a naive simplicity and garish colors that takes me right back to college days.  The only things missing are orange shag carpet and avocado appliances (but maybe I missed them).
Many of Saarinen’s buildings are forgotten or torn down (like my college dormitory) but many remain (like Dulles Airport).  Perhaps his greatest building lies hidden in the overbuilt JFK Airport complex.  It isn’t torn down but no one seems to know how to use it.  In it’s time, the TWA terminal symbolized flying when flying was sophisticated (you used to dress up to fly). It’s sweeping curves predated the Sydney Opera House and Frank Gehry’s curvaceous museums.  Flying TWA from JFK  made flying sublime, so different from the cattle car experience of today.  No wonder they don’t know what to do with that magnificent building.
Check out more about Saarinen and the wonderful TWA terminal, if this interests you.

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Photo by xsv phtgrphy

My first new car was bought for me by my father, the week I got out of the Army.  It was not the car I wanted.  And certainly not the one I deserved.  But it did serve me well through graduate school and well into my professional career.  There was a sporty version of the Chevy II with a big engine.  Mine was a servicable 6 cylinder (it’s amazing that a six cylinder engine used to be considered small) not the big V-8.  It did have a stick shift on the floor (my first and last).  And it was exactly the color of the one in the photo.

I was a different person after nearly two years in the Army.  Not exactly the trained killer the hippies considered me but more independent and with some income of my own from the GI Bill.  I never regarded my parents home as mine after the Army and so my Chevy II represented my independence as I began to make my own life.  I remember driving back to Connecticut listening to the ‘new’ Bob Dylan singing Lay Lady Lay, feeling  like a grownup (and don’t you think that at 27, it was about time).

I survived the Black Panther takedown in New Haven, finished my degree, met and dated my wife using my trusty Chevy II and it brought me to California once school was finished.  I finally sold it in 75.  Looking back, my father was right.  That Chevy II was the right car for me at that time in my life.

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1959 Chevy Impala Convertible

The hottest family car ever purchased by my father was a sharp black 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible. This one looks great in red but our black one was super.  I know that we bought it during 1959 but I don’t remember taking it to the prom. What I remember most is driving to the Art Institute in Kansas City during summer breaks home from school with the top down and Stevie Wonder on the radio. It was a pretty classy set of wheels that I am afraid I didn’t appropriately appreciate in my youth. All I remember is how hard it was to get the top to latch. I also drove it to Fort Leonard Wood when I was stationed there. Somehow it disappeared by the time I got back from the Army and my father bought me a car. More about that car later.

Here are a couple of youtube reminiscences. The first is Dinah Shore and her backup singers singing the praises of Chevrolet. “Its the one.” The second is a loving caress of an imperial blue four door sedan. Looking back from this era of dull cars all of which look alike, the flamboyance and flair of the late 50’s is amazing. To imagine that the best selling car of the time had those incredible horizontal fins sweeping out from the trunk seems impossible today.   And yet today’s folklore is that the 50’s were boring. Maybe some aspects were boring but we had real cars.

Just another in the series of Carlson cars past. Like this. And this.

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 Let me just start with this.  My father bought one – a 58 four door (the small one using the Ford rather than the bigger based on the Mercury.  It was the car I drove to the Prom my junior year (limos were unheard of in those days).  I remember waxing it in the driveway.  I thought it had a rather sprightly look.  It certainly didn’t seem uglier than any other cars of the time.  What was surprising is I can’t remember why my father bought it.  It was the first Ford product he ever owned (as far as I know).  He was always a GM man and we typically had Chevy’s and Buicks.  Likewise, I can’t remember why we got rid of it so fast.  I want to say that we had trouble with the push-button transmission but I can’t be positive.  I do remember that for my senior year, I was driving our new car.  I loved that car even though it was like driving a tank and my mother couldn’t drive it when the power steering went out.   It lasted until my second year of college when flames shot out from under the hood as my parents accelerated after a stop sign.  This was apparently enough Ford foolishness for my father and he replace our burned out Lincoln with this.

More Edsel nostalgia at Carlust.

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I like them.

First of all, they are useful because they provide needed information.  Like what exit to take to find the In and Out when you are traveling.  Much better than trying to guess which exit will provide what you need or the unhelpful information that our crack government techies put on their high priced electronic signs.

Second, they are  better designed than anything else you are likely to see from the road.

Third,  they provide interest on long stretches of boring interstate farmland or desert or urban wasteland.

Now there may be times when a billboard is overkill.  I’m ok with no billboards at the grand canyon, half dome and big sur but take away the billboards from LA and what have you got?  Most of LA is pretty dreary- and I say this as a thirty year resident of LA now suffering withdrawal after moving to Sacramento.  What is the Sunset Strip without billboards?  Would you like what you see from LaCienega if the billboards were gone?  Of course not.  They are damn ugly. And its not just LA.  Who would ever go to Times Square if it were only buildings?

So I say get off your elitist high horse and admit that billboards add something to the aesthetics of urban life and they don’t do much damage in the country.

The City Council in LA (bumbling egocentric dolts all of them- and I feel qualified to make that pronouncement having worked for their collective asses for 26 years) periodically crusade against billboards but thankfully they appreciate the money they contribute to political life more than their stunted esthetic judgement and LA remains the vibrant place it has always been.

Super Bill Board

Now there is a new development – the super billboard that covers an entire building.  Given how ugly the typical building in LA is this is surely an improvement you would think.

Not according to City Councilman Weiss who says it is a safety hazard.

There is even a whole organization of dogooder busybodies devoted to stopping billboard blight.  Surely there is a place in hell full of boring, ugly buildings where they will find eternal rest and boredom.

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NINJA HAULER: 2005 Nissan Xterra – $12900 (Ronan / Lake County )

This ad from Craigs list goes on to describe the benefits provided by this extraordinary car…..

It has room for you and the four hotties you picked up on the way to the gym to blast your pecs and hammer your glutes . There’s a tow hitch to pull your 50 caliber anti-Taliban, self cooling machine gun . I also just put in a new windshield to replace the one that got shot out by The Man .

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