"St.John, Kenneth" wrote: > > Driving to work today in the sun I was thinking about my Spitfire and MGs > and why we are attracted to one car or another and why. > > I bought my '74 1500 about 14 months ago at, of all places, a Ford > dealership!
> I'm curious as to how others got bit! Hmmm. This involves ancient history (or what passes for such with the younger folks). I appeared, courtesy of the US Army, at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, in February, 1968, and was assigned there to a separate infantry brigade headed for Viet Nam around September, 1968. Schofield Barracks, to those privileged not to have been drafted during the Viet Nam war, was a training post for prospective Viet Nam attendees, and is situated high up in the mountains on Oahu, a good twenty-five miles away from Honolulu. At the time, there was one bus going downtown, leaving at 10 a.m., returning around noon, and another, leaving around 6 p.m. and returning about 10 p.m. To those sensible people, such as myself, who thought that communion with ordinary people (women included) was an essential part of a well-rounded life outside the military, that isolation was somewhat limiting. But, with training underway, there was no point in seeking some other, better, means of transportation. By July, 1968, it was apparent that the infantry brigade was being disbanded (a couple of decades later, I realized we were part of Westmoreland's 266,000-man contingency force, which Johnson had nixed), and I was, in late July, dumped in Hawaii in a garrison unit. About the same time, I met a woman (soon to be girlfriend, later wife, later ex-wife), and had to do something about this transportation problem. So, since I was recently twenty-one, and responsible for myself, I went down to Honolulu one weekend and explored used car lots, and found, unbeknownst to me the significance of the car, a `63 Spitfire4. Perhaps it was significant to me because of those ads in Playboy while I was in college (roll-up windows (!)), or, maybe, it just seemed to be a low-cost sports car in a sports car town, a convertible in a place with some sun, and it promised some fun, or, perhaps, I'd succumbed to a British car because of those years I'd lived in England, post-WWII, and it won out, because of familiarity and sympathy. I still don't know, exactly, but, in the absence of some careful, prudent, dedicatedly intellectual determination of my tastes in cars, it might have been because I liked the looks of the car--sleek, low, decidedly British and sporty. Perhaps the name, evoking the Battle of Britain, was enough for me, an Air Force brat with time in England, having lived near a base from which that battle was once fought. The name, Spitfire, might have been enough to push me over into the pit of penury. <smile> To go fast enough in a Spit, it was almost like flying one. <smile> And, with some financial wanglings, I put enough of my private's savings into the down payment to gain a loan on the down payment and a loan on the remaining principal, and drove away in a Spitfire, and didn't think about the amount left to me out of my salary after those loans. I just did it, and didn't look back. That Spitfire's gone, but other Triumphs linger on. <smile>: http://www.zianet.com/mporter/triumphs.html Cheers, all. -- Michael D. Porter Roswell, NM (yes, _that_ Roswell) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] The gulf between content and substance continues to widen.... /// [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list /// Send admin requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] /// or try http://www.team.net/cgi-bin/majorcool /// Archives at http://www.team.net/archive /// Send list postings to [EMAIL PROTECTED] /// Edit your replies! If they include this trailer, they will NOT be sent.
