Offered an Engineering Honors Seat by tallpindo
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Description
My first encounter with real engineers to be was at curb in front of South Quadrangle in Ann Arbor. There in the late summer of 1961 were a 1961 maroon Corvette roadster, a Buick Skylark production show car from 1953, and a fiberglass Devin bodied shortened something old and live axled with Dayton chrome wire spoke wheels with genuine Rudge knockoffs. My car was left behind as I was an in-state Freshman and forbidden to have a car even in storage. The Corvette was the first I had seen with the new tail predicting what was coming. It belonged to Jerry Stevenson whose father owned a dealership in Chicago. The Skylark had loose spokes that squeaked and the lower body was very rusty. It was blue. The owner was friendly enough though I never struck up a continuing relation with any of the three. The Devin owner had a sledge hammer which he got out frequently to strike tightening blows on the knockoffs. He showed me the engine was a very tired flathead V-8 and the frame was from a consistent stock car not some exotic tube or monococque tub. The second year I bought a storage sticker (S) to keep my car in the storage lot until I made a trip home at the end of the semester. My travelling the first semester was confined to hitchhiking in a snow storm across the state to visit Carl Perry’s girl friend at nursing school in Grand Rapids. A veteran leaving the hospital after some tests gave us a ride in his Buick sedan to Lansing and we shivered on the corner there as night came on. Then another Buick, this time a late model convertible stopped and we got in the back with a load of lumber he was taking to his cottage up North. The top was down. About halfway across the state he turned North and we got out near a grove of trees on a divided road. This time it wasn’t too long with flakes falling until another car stopped and we were off to get held up for an hour by freight engine making up a train and blocking the road as we entered Grand Rapids. Nothing else to do but wait. Then we were downtown and looking for a place to loiter until the nursing school opened on Saturday morning. We tried lying down on a ventilator grate in the sidewalk that blew warm air. That was too pokey. There was a cheap hotel on the corner and soon we were in the brass cage elevator headed up. Next morning came soon enough. I stood on the porch at the nurse’s residence while his friend came to the door acted surprised and he went in. I don’t remember how we got back to Ann Arbor. Carl flunked out that first semester but I remembered the knee drawing board and T-square and the double triangle method of making cross hatches and diagonals with 30 and 45 degree triangles. In the late 80’s when the drafting supplies stores went out of business I picked up those and still have them. Yes, his mother had a Buick sedan as a family car. Both of my maternal uncles who had bought Buicks passed away at a young age. The one who worked Plant at the Cement Plant bought his latest in 1956 and passed away at 40 years of age. The other husband of an aunt bought a 1953 and passed away at 50. The neighbor who lived across the street with his wife and two children owned Buicks I noticed in the early fifties. I remember one with a wide tan hood that tilted to either side and could also rarely open from the front like a more conventional alligator hood. It had three racetrack shaped portholes on either side of the hood and big cylindrical bodies that ended in a double ring forward half in the grille that the bumper went below. It had vertical teeth that was characteristic of the make even further back in time. My sister and I didn’t play much with those children. Cliff Golding, the neighbor might have expressed that his holdings were more about luck than choice. In that way he aligned with my uncle that belonged to a hunting club and maintained the one armed bandits that were open and did not keep money as it was illegal to possess machines for that purpose in those days. Luck was how you spotted a deer. It was very different than the patience that went with fishing or the perception that saw a flock far off and prepared for ducks to alight on Squaw bay.
Comments (1)
Richardphotos
those 53 Buick Skylarks in pristine condition sells for lots of money in the auctions. there are so few left.
great capture