I’ve spent the past few weeks since the last post of this saga thinking about how to best describe what happened next – without seeming overly melodramatic that is…
We had plans to pick up “the Jag” (as it was already being called) sometime next week. I of course, had ants in my pants about it – made that much worse by the fact that I didn’t know what it looked like! So I spent the whole day Friday, and the weekend, and all day the following Monday and Tuesday just “thinking about it” – and here’s what I came up with…
I was a happy kid and I had a pretty good life in middle class America, but that didn’t mean I was “satisfied”… I was getting pretty deep into high school at this point – 9th grade was almost over, and the forecast for the next three years did NOT look good socially…
For one thing, I was a nerd – I guess there’s no real way around that fact. Now, I’ve been around long enough to have figured out over the past 4 decades that I am NOT the smartest person alive – but at that age, I thought I might be. They were really big on these standardized tests back then – I felt like I spent half of my time in school filling in little circles with a #2 pencil… Well, I routinely ACED these tests – alot of times I would get a perfect score – especially on the math sections. And when you’re a kid you all tell each other what you got, and while this made me a celebrity in 2nd grade, it made me a pretty hard-core nerd by 9th…
Actually, I think I mentioned this before, but I was going to a private school on a scholarship based on a test just like this. So now I was a nerd in a small high school – there were 65 kids in my class – 40 guys and 25 girls. Plus, I was a little overweight, had glasses, and was in Boy Scouts – it was pretty much a perfect storm of “un-cool-ness”… And finally, I spent all day with the super smart kids – who all took classes with Juniors and Seniors – so I could see the “cool” life, but not be a part of it.
On top of that, my father had been bombarding me with tales of his sordid high school adventures for about the past couple of years – I think he just couldn’t wait and started spilling the beans about girls and cars and cutting school, etc. when I was about 12. And I worshipped my father back then, so it just made his adventures seem like what I really wanted to be doing with MY high school years, but I had NO IDEA how to get there.
Then all of the sudden I wound up laying in bed (I had pretty serious insomnia back then – I would lay in bed awake for hours every night with my mind just RACING…) with this stack of photocopies about antique Jaguars, and the faint promise of some type of independence with a sports car…
One of these articles was kind of a “road test” of an E-Type as a used car, The author had a tired E-Type and kind of chronicled his adventures in it, what breaks, etc. But I distinctly remember the last sentence of this article – it was something like, “So go out and get yourself an E-Type Jag and stock up on at least a decade of cheap thrills – and incidentally, mine isn’t for sale at any price.”
Hmmmm – it seems like everybody all of the sudden thought that this car that I had never really even heard of 48 hours earlier was the answer to all of life’s problems… Hmmmm – maybe it can be the answer to mine… Maybe this car is “the way out…” THAT is what I had on my mind by Tuesday afternoon when we went to pick it up…
Finally, the time came, and my father and I jumped into his 1986 Chevrolet El Camino and headed down to “Open Touring” in Wilmington, DE. We pulled into the parking lot out front, and walked through a gate into a fenced in “yard” filled with British Sports cars, and Bab said, “There it is, dude!” unable to contain his excitement – “What do you think!?!” as he slapped me on the back.
It was THE WORST looking “car” I had ever seen. I was actually in shock a bit when I saw it – I really couldn’t imagine how it could possibly be worse. Then something weird happened – there was some type of confusion about who was calling the tow truck, etc., and Bab went inside the shop with Kevin to call them or something, and I was left alone with it. That’s when it happened (I think I’m actually getting a little choked up writing this…)
Some kind of switch just flipped – because I remember standing there thinking it was just a total piece of shit, and then all of the sudden I was kind of in a daze – walking around it in a circle, just kind of dragging my hand along the body. And I kind of started to think, “OK – if this is it, then this is it – this will do.” And then I just “KNEW” – alot of things, actually – it REALLY WAS like I could see the future…
I was 14, and I knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about cars, but all of the sudden I did know – with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY – that I would rebuild and drive this car – there was NO QUESTION in my mind whatsoever. And I also seemed to know that this car would change my life – drastically – although I wasn’t really sure how yet. Then I kind of stepped back from it a few yards and looked at that E-Type shape, and it was like I was a different person than I was 5 minutes ago.
And I smiled and all of the sudden with absolute conviction thought to myself, “This is the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life. THIS CAR IS MY FUTURE. And it’s going to be great…”
So we loaded it onto a rollback and took it home and rolled it into my parents basement by taking the two large panes out of the sliding glass door (our house was built on a hill…)
Two days later, my mother took me to the eye doctor and bought me contacts to replace my glasses – another BIG step away from nerd-dom. Now, I have 20/420 vision, so I had never actually seen my own face without glasses because I can’t see that far when standing in front of a mirror without them… And so I looked and saw my own face without glasses for the first time – and the nerdy fat kid I knew as “Charlie” was gone.
In his place was a new guy – “Chuck” – and he had a whole new agenda…
"My future" - at 14, I was never more sure of anything in my life.
