For the sake of those who have never experienced or would like to remember their own car youth I will try to remember my own. It was a while ago and there are some real fuzzy periods, due to the time period and attitude of our country.
It was june1972 and I had just graduated from a private military academy and my mother had moved us from Long Island New York to Miami Beach to be near her parents. We had a condo right on the ocean and Miami Beach as a whole was a sleepy little town. There were private houses still on the beach where now there are nothing but high-rises. The South Beach of current fame was a collection of run down motels. Life was at a slower pace than I was used to. There were a few Kids my age that used to congregate in the poolroom in the building where we lived. One of them was Larry who also had a constant companion Bob. Larry owned a powder blue VW bug that we would take all over. We were musicians and traveled in many circles up and down the South Florida coast.
He was the only one I knew that had even a remote interest in cars. He had fixed up the engine and done some interior work but nothing radical.
A small aside that may help to give you the picture of how undeveloped and slow paced the area still was.
There was a small jetty at the base of the seawall, which formed the pool deck. You could actually snorkel and collect stone crabs by hand along this jetty. There were all sorts of larger fish to be seen and caught surfcasting. You could swim in the ocean there off of the small beach that still existed between the wall and the water. One day Larry and I were on the pool deck just hanging out. It was during the summer so it was ninety degrees and one hundred percent humidity. This helps to account for the slow pace of life there. All of a sudden we heard a series of small explosions, which turned out to be rifle shots from the roof of the condo. We didn’t think terrorists, or assassination plots we just thought crazy person. But you see there were also sharks that would come right up to shore where you were swimming. One of the occupants of the building had gotten tired of this had decided to take action. I don’t know how good a shot Ozzy was but he scared the hell out of all of us. To put this into perspective the building was twenty stories tall. So the shots, as far as we were concerned could have gone anywhere. I have no doubt that though he saw a shark and that was what he was shooting at. The police were never called but the building manager went to the roof and just told him to quit. You see this was still a small community of people, mostly old and retired, and Hot Rods and that scene were nowhere to be found.
There are also another couple of characters that have to be introduced to the picture, one was the head valet at the building, Thomas was his name but we all called him TK. His helper Will was another character that is of note. The closest I got to performance driving was Will and TK taking the assorted cars in and out of the underground parking garage at terrifying speeds. You know the car parkers in the movies, Will especially was worse. But to his credit I don’t know of any wrecks he caused. The burn out pit at your local strip had nothing on this place. I guess I should also address the fuzzy aspect of this time and I will try not to dwell on it. The only thing more plentiful than grass in Miami at that time was the water in the ocean and the water in the air. My first experience at the building with getting ‘well adjusted’ was being invited by Will and Tk into the main return air plenum for the building’s air conditioning. In this case it was a room about six feet across and ten feet long and the ductwork, which made up the ceiling, went straight up to the roof. It was right behind the valet booth and the intake grill was about four feet wide and six feet tall. They had taken off the screws and used it as a doorway. They had a few chairs in there and would go in and spark one up. Actually that’s not quite correct. Because of the flow of air you had to light up outside of the ‘room’ and take it in. The benefit of this location was they could watch for the customers and no one could smell what they were doing. You could see out the grill, but because of no lighting inside, they could not see you. We would go to many parties with the both of them and it was after one of these that Larry took me to meet one of his friends.Who was also a valet at the building.
His name was Jimmy. He had big glasses and always had a cheshire cat grin, and he had a 1970 yellow Plymouth Duster with the black stripe package. It had a 340 in it that had been built to the hilt, and according to Jimmy it had belonged to an aircraft mechanic that had been drafted and sent to Vietnam. Even in my ignorance I could tell this was not your ordinary car and it was probobly the reason for his grin. Jimmy spent every Saturday morning adjusting the rocker arms to make sure the solid tappets were just right. The thing Idled with such a violent lope that the antenna would rock back and forth like a conductor leading an orchestra. Once we met, we all hung out together and went for many rides in his Duster. The Duster was his daily driver, now this was not a problem in town because at that time we could buy Amaco 101 at many locations for about forty cents a gallon. But it had a 4.10 posi in the rear so he could not take it on long highway jaunts. We tried this, and every fifteen minutes or so he would have to pull over and let it cool off. For road trips we used Larry’s bug but for in town there was nothing like that duster.
One day with Jimmy driving and me in the car, we were going south on Biscayne Blvd., for what reason I can not remember, we had just stopped at a light. Next to us in a large brown boat, a Buick maybe, an old man shouted out to us “Hey it sounds like that thing needs a tune up”. You see he had to shout because Jimmy had a pair of blown cherry bombs for his mufflers. It was LOUD. Jimmy turned to him and shouted back “Hey old man, you want to race?” The old man gunned his boat and smiled. Jimmy told me to hold on tight and enjoy. Once the turned green he punched it and pulled a wheelie half way to the next light. We looked back and the old man was still sitting at the light dazed in amazement. It was at that point that I was hooked!
