Looks like that dumb Chevy Chase movie car
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"-Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”
My favorite clothing item as a teenager - maybe ever - was my 1994 Make-A-Wish Car Show souvenir t-shirt. It looked perfect under a flannel button-up worn, of course, with faded Levi’s and Doc Martens.
But it was fine on its own, too. White, the front bearing the ubiquitous multi-logo-and-wordy-moniker of a sponsored event. Car shows, fundraisers, 5ks, all these shirts are hideous, but only less so because they signify your presence. Here I was, world. I was at a thing, I participated. For a brief moment in time, before the ashes of my remains were scattered across the lone and level sands of the universe, I tread this road. I lived and did a thing or two. And here is proof. All who behold my prosopon will know that at a specific point in time, in a specific place, with others - I was.
This is why concert T-shirts - legit ones that were bought at the concert, not online - are treasured. A group of inhibited individuals and I all enjoyed the same sound waves in a hot building one night xx years ago. You did not. I did.
Look on my torso, ye Mighty, and despair!
What was the event? What did the 1994 Make-A-Wish Car Show in Amarillo, Texas, USA mean to me?
Couldn’t tell you.
But I think it was the first one I knew I was at.
Among my favorite songs is Bright Eyes’ “First Day of My Life”. These lines get me every single time.
This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway.Yours was the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you.
Awareness is the thing that becomes true regardless of the experience itself.
I met Lindsey in 1998. I did not come to my senses until (late) 1999. But when I did, it all became the truth. The experience of that year-and-a-half before dating her is all a preamble now. As I look back half a lifetime ago, I can say now that hers was the first face that I saw.
And now, fair reader, your writer will attempt to make the segue from the love of his life/mother of his children to a car show.
I went to lots of car shows before 1994. But that was the one I became a car guy.
I’m not going to feign my mechanical proficiency, I’m just handy enough to dis-assemble an engine, not put it back together.
But the 60’s, man. Those cars, in the 90s, were everything to me.
I would be cutting donuts in the school parking lot 6 months later in a 1965 Ford Mustang GT, at my absolute peak of self-confidence and self-worth. And self-delusion, sure, but that’s what cars are about after all.
Last Friday night, I helped my dad drive two of his classic cars into one of the showrooms of the Amarillo Civic Center. The 2024 Make-A-Wish Car Show would open its doors for the 39th time the next morning. And in it would be a 1957 Ranchero and a remake of a Shelby Cobra from the blessed 60’s.
The Cobra, a muscular open-top torpedo, had given trouble starting and running smoothly on the drive to the venue. Not enough trouble to prevent some acceleration, according to his co-pilot, my daughter Lily. After parking it in its designated location, we popped the hood to troubleshoot. The little battery would need to come out, either it or the alternator were the culprit.
“It showed to be charging back up to 10 or 12 volts” dad said.
“Nope. Needs to be 13 to 14.5,” volunteered a neighboring exhibitor who had wandered over, un-beckoned, at the sign of trouble. He had a Ranchero and a girlfriend, but no fine conversational skills. After a few more details about what it takes to be an adequate alternator, dad and I tired of the free advice. We set to removing the battery while Lily polished off the Cobra with a towel. Feeling bad for the cold shoulder, I struck up a conversation with the nosy neighbor and he wound up being a pleasant enough guy, we had some common engine interests too.
Car Show guys are men. And, let’s be honest, old men.
These are my people.
What would possess a person to interfere with a conversation and forcefully, confidently and without prompting, tell the conversants they are ignorant and wrong and lucky to have such a person in their presence?
Oh, I don’t know, maybe the same thing that would possess a person to say hello to every hiker he passes on a trail, or offer one-liners to every cashier he interacts with on a daily basis. Being an old. Being a man.
Look on my inability to sense awkwardness, ye mighty, and despair!
The downside of a collection of old men in the same building? It’s the expertise.
Why do old men love old cars? Because they are, among other things, knowable.
But often, the idea that a thing can be known to a degree exponentially higher than others know is reductive and tiresome.
That’s not the engine it came with from the factory.
Those are after-market mirrors, I’da kept the originals.
Alternator needs to charge to 13.5 or it’s bad.
Look on my expertise, ye mighty, and despair!
And yet, in the same building lives something generative, alive and good.
At their best, classic cars represent a shared knowledge. When we look at a car, we see a common history. We are transported to the roads we tore down on the way to and from school. We are listening to the radio at the drive-in, surveying the other cars driving up and down Main street.
Here we are. Here I am. This vehicle is a representation of my self. I chose it. I drive it. I work on it. I rebuilt it or repainted it or earned enough money one Summer to put a bigger engine in it. I see your car and acknowledge your place in the world - you are a Camaro guy. But reciprocity demands that you acknowledge that I too have a place - I am a Mustang guy.
It is a thing we grasp at, but also a thing we can touch.
It is physical, controllable, breakable, fixable, improvable.
It is self-expression in visual, touchable, movable, audible and smellable form.
It’s nostalgia.
A memory of a time that is personal but shared by people who have never met.
Movies, music, gas pumps, junkyards.
All the same. All unique to me.
It’s color.
Not filters.
Vibrant and alive.
Just like we were.
And the stories. Why did so many of the stories my grandfathers told involve pickups or cars I would never see?
Because they were perfect. Not in the sense of condition or dependability. In the sense of complete and appropriate. Of course the car that broke down all the time broke down at the funniest possible times. Of course he sold the fastest pickup he ever owned, it was too fast to keep.
Of course my old Mustang ran out of gas all the time - it was driven by the most aloof kid in Briscoe County.
Among the vehicles I was most enamored with was a gloriously customized station wagon whose owner, Chris, introduced himself and asked if I could send him a few of the pictures I was taking. Happy to.
While I was crouched down at the tail light studying angles, an old man walked by and said to me “heh, looks like that dumb Chevy Chase movie car!”.
I mentally scrolled for Chevy Chase movie cars. There’s a 68(ish) powder blue Lincoln Continental in Christmas Vacation. Doesn’t sound right.
Oh wait, there’s the Family Truckster from Family Vacation. The hideous green and brown-paneled station wagon switched after baiting the not-old-yet Clark Griswold.
“The Truckster?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeh, heh heh,” he said as he trucked off.
Look upon my inability to distinguish between things I don’t like, ye mighty, and despair!
Of course we are often wrong. We forget the shortcomings. Mostly our own. We are heroes of our own stories. And why not? After all, our enemies are all gone.
We are old men. Not dead men, yet.
Ozymandias
by Percy Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”