A VISIT TO MY RETROACTIVE EXISTENCE

In the 1960s people took acid to make the world weird. Now
the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.”

We all live in our own absurd worlds, me more than most people. For instance I often wonder, if Ann Frank had survived would she have spent the rest of her life trying to write a second best-selling book? We’re always wondering what could be and what has been while spending very little time enjoying the here and now.

Personally, I live in varied capsules of my life’s seminal moments. Some of those pivotal episodes are reserved for the various cars I have owned. I long to visit those cars just once again and somehow, magically, do those impractical things I wish I had done with them. I promise that if I could I would be dedicated to preserving them instead of using them as trade-ins or junking those rusting four-wheeled beasts.

Today I realize they meant more to me than simply getting as close to “Blue Book value” as possible. These machines represented formative years in my retroactive existence. Every time I attend a car show I look for one of these surrogates of my past. The closest I have come to seeing all these personal mementos is a series of car shows that take place in La Jolla on Girard Avenue.

They are sponsored by a group of avid car buffs who collectively go by the moniker of “Nuts4Cars.” I accidentally attended a few their events last year as I sauntered down Girard on a few early Sunday mornings. There they were, parked in neat rows on both sides of the street. Best of all there was no charge for my wanderlust back to those halcyon days from my past or for getting up close and personal and talking with the lucky owners. All I had to do was simply walk up and down the street while enjoying the hospitality of the quaint merchants as they offered books, delicious pastries, hats and the like.

Before my eyes were tempting mechanical morsels an array of old Fords and Mercurys, an Edsel or two … and even some older rumble-seat roadsters. My first thought was: “Why the hell did I sell my ’47 Ford convertible? I should have kept it and just repaired the car. Boy was I a fool!”

Then I thought of the T-Buckets (Model “T” Roadsters) that my friends hot-rodded. More flashbacks came: What about that ’32 Packard Roadster that sat on the side of a home on Valinda in West Covina? The old coot that owned it wanted $150 for the thing and the engine still ran but the battery was dead. If I had only spent my money on fixing and painting the thing it would be worth a half a million dollars today.

This prompted me to go to Warwicks and get the latest copy of Hemmings. As I perused the pages I could hardly believe how many cars were still around and for sale. But now they are serious investments. The dollars they are fetching can only mean there is demand. There are also lots of parts suppliers. Who would have thunk?

This proves that there are more than just a few “Nuts For Cars” floating around America, and there are certainly more than their fair share in San Diego. After going to several of these La Jolla shows, one fact became apparent: It seems that what the collector car people want today is the car they had pangs for when they first started driving.

But the world of cars in America seems to be different than when I was growing up. We knew our cars. We knew the nuances in chrome trim from one year to the other. We knew what engines came with what cars and how many horses they delivered, And, we researched how fast they could go from zero to sixty in a quarter mile. We knew all this trivial stuff because, for us, it was an important part of life … hell, it was the meaning of life! While teenagers in France were studying Impressionism and Sartre, and young communists in China were planning how to take over the world, we were trying to convince our parents to co-sign for a loan on a used bucket of bolts. We knew what was important in life and it had two-barrel carbs and “four on the floor.”

This year is very different for Nuts4Cars. They have a website (nuts4cars.org) which shows a schedule of nine events, and exhibitors can sign up right on the site. They are also dedicating the brunt of the money that car owners pay to enter their vehicles to the San Diego Police Officers Widows and Orphans Fund. They are now more mature and robust. But, still, I can’t help but continue to wonder why are we so fascinated by cars? Why, in a world of digital toys and iPads and interconnectivity do these contraptions hold such sway over us? Americans have a love affair with the automobile, probably more than any other culture. Frankly, I can’t figure it out and that’s because I can’t figure me out. I am a "Nut For Cars," and I am damned proud of it!