The Summer of '71

The Summer of 1971. I remember it well. I would love to say it was the summer where I got my first car. The summer where I lost my virginity. A summer where there was world peace and all was right in the world.

But I can't.

I did not get a car, I did not have sex with a hot babe (or even a homely one). The police action in Vietnam was raging and 50,000 American soldiers were killed and countless injured and mutilated. Vietnam was not recognized as a war until many years later due to the efforts of veterans who were being short changed by the government with reduced benefits and medical care. I did graduate from Sheepshead Bay High School on time and Iwas accepted to a local college.

The muscle car ruled the streets. You had the Dodge Chargers, Pontiac GTOs, Ford Mustangs, Chevy SSs, Plymouth Road Runners and Challengers. There were 440 horsepower Magnums, 500 horsepower hemis, Fuel Injected 351s. Gas was cheap, engines were blueprinted and rebuilt. Flooring the gas was akin to being in the cockpit of a rocket and feeling the G forces pushing you back into the seat. Every teen or young adult who had a muscle car poured every cent of their earnings into the cars rather than their personal hygiene.

I didn't have a car, I didn't make enough at the Colonial Mansion catering hall as a waiter to afford one. My dad had a car. A 4500 pound Dodge Polara with a 270 horsepower engine. Not very powerful by the standards of the muscle car, especially since the car weighed as much as it did.

My dad loved his car especially since it had a FM radio and air conditioning. I remember the fights he and my mother had over the car's options. My mom couldn't understand why you need to pay extra for an FM radio when AM was standard. And why pay an extra $800 for air conditioning when you can roll down the non automatic windows (that would have been an extra $200). My dad spent $5,400 that year for his car. A reasonable sum for a decent and boxy family sedan.

The only problem I had with the car aside from not having 500 horsepower was that the deep throated hum of the muscle car muffler was missing. This car was virtually silent. I decided to fix that for him.

I had went to Adelman's on Coney Island Avenue and Avenue L and purchased a Thrush® racing muffler. Adelman's (which is long gone) advertised that they would install mufflers free with the purchase. After I paid for the muffler they informed me that their policy excludes racing mufflers. No problem, the Whale and the Gopher, claimed they were adept at the intricacies of automobiles and said it would be no sweat do it ourselves. The Gopher opened a garage several years later but went out of business because he did not have the first idea as how to repair a car.

Let us regress a bit...

We called ourselves the Sons of Bitchs, a name that was not very endearing to our parents or anyone else. We even had tee shirts. We were like the little rascals but bigger and heavier and not as smart. Instead of Spanky, Buckwheat and Alfalfa we had the Whale, The Goat, The Bird, The Pig, The Gopher, The Pigeon and I was the Platypus.

Mike was the Whale as he was big, powerful and white like Moby Dick. Larry was the Bird because he was rail thin with a big appetite. Mark was the Goat because he sported a goatee, actually a Van Dyke but we didn't know the difference then. George was the Pig, I was the Platypus because as per the Whale I was dumpy and weird looking which for the record I totally disagree with. I was portly, not dumpy. Ron was the Gopher because...he looked like a gopher.

Well we take my dad's car and the muffler to my backyard and proceed to dismember it. Try as hard as we might, we could not get the muffler off of the exhaust pipe. We pushed and shoved, smacked and banged it with wrenches and mallets but it would not come off. Finally Mike gets his lower half of his body under the car and with legs that can push up a thousand pounds or more and pushed until the muffler actually came off.

To my chagrin, we could not get the muffler back on and went back to Adelman's to complain. At first they refused to install the muffler as per policy but we made enough commotion that he sent us to his brother-in-law's shop on Cropsey Avenue where the Muffler was installed for an additional twenty dollars.

We get in the car and sure enough it now sounded like a real, honest to God, dragster. Even though it didn't have significant horsepower, it sounded like a Tiger ready to pounce on an unsuspecting Eland grazing on the plains of Ethiopia. We cruised down Nostrand Avenue. We cruised up Kings Highway and down Kings Highway watching people look at us in awe as three pimply kids in a loud, throaty Dodge Polara drove down the street and blasting the FM radio (my father conceded with my mother by not paying extra for a cassette player). We were cool with a capital C.

I went to pick up my father from work later that evening and needless to say he was not very happy with the alteration of the car. Did I mention that I never asked his permission to do this? I believe that after the shock wore off my dad kind of liked having a car that sounded like a mean and lean racing machine especially since my mother would have never let him pay extra for a car that could do 0 to 60 in 5.5 seconds.

About a week later we were going on a family vacation to Lancaster county to see the Amish people and eat at the Plain and Fancy Family Style restaurant and buy tons of jams and preserves from Kitchen Kettle Village to bring home and enjoy for the next year or two. On the way up there we were subject to the sound of the muffler for 3 hours and feeling our skulls vibrate. I was starting to think that getting this muffler may have been a mistake. With 10 miles to go we started to smell exhaust fumes in the car and the muffler falls off. Aside from getting the muffler off the pipe Mike's great strength cracked all of the other pipes were they were welded together.

We ended up going to a service station where my dad had to purchase a new muffler, a cross over pipe, a hump pipe, a tail pipe and other things I didn't even know existed. Thank heaven they didn't have catalytic converters back then. I am sure in today's dollars this would have cost him at least $1000 to repair. My dad was no longer happy. This is a fine way to start a vacation that he looked forward to for months. His employer, the cheap Colonial Mansion, only gave him two weeks a year for vacation and their idea of a week was only five days.

My dad forgave me. I never altered this or any other vehicle he owned again, except for a cassette player and a steering wheel cover. I did, however, rip the bottom out of his subsequent vehicle by playing Rat Patrol on a street that was being repaved. I never confessed that one to him.