Those were the days

On Saturday afternoon I spent some time at Netherwood Station, wandering past a parking lot full of classic cars on display. Gleaming chrome, spoked wheels, white wall tires -- now those were the features that could give a car real substance back when I was a kid.

I recalled long, slow summers in the 60's when, as a young tomboy, all the boys I knew were thoroughly obsessed with the latest cars. It was a time of transition from my childhood world of "playmates." We were on the brink of the unknown, negotiating the many changes that came with our teenage years.

It seemed that the only place my friends Richie and Arthur and DannyBoy and I seemed to interact was in a limbo land of Detroit dreams. Like it or not, the boys reset the terms of our friendship and to keep up I became an authority on the details -- how to recognize the year and make of a car by the size and shape of it's tail fin.

I learned to appreciate the sleek lines of 'modern' chassis design...was it a Body by Fisher or not? Was that a T-Bird or a GTO?

It was vitally important to know what a GTO looked like...

... and be able to sing all the words to its marketing-inspired anthem ("three deuces and a 4-speed, and a 389...")

Of course our families were never cool -- they would never ever have any of the tricked out models that captured our imaginations -- just some average Chevy BelAir or a Ford Fairlane.

I now admit I never knew who Shelby was or what a Cobra looked like. Frankly, I didn't really care. But last Saturday there were definitely "boys" who did care and -- while considerably older -- were still hanging around shiny cars, still staring wistfully at a perfect Candy Apple Red finish.

A Hummer? Please. Real street machines were those that rolled off an American assembly line to be lovingly rebuilt into a muscle car.

I wonder if anyone under an umbrella at Netherwood on a hot Saturday afternoon has ever seen the mythic 'hemi under glass'?

--Barbara Todd Kerr