The whole thing started on a cold Winter night alot like tonight – actually, maybe it goes back even farther than that…<\/p>\n
My parents were born and raised in New Castle County, Delaware.\u00a0 My father graduated from Newark High School in 1967, my mother from nearby William Penn High School in 1968 – which is the same year that my father went into the Navy for 4 years – 2 of which he spent in the Tonkin Gulf aboard the USS Tripoli – a helicopter carrier…<\/p>\n
That’s important, because while he was at sea in about 1969\/1970, he was contemplating the duty-free purchase of an E-Type roadster.\u00a0 He claims he had the papers all filled out – it was going to be British Racing Green.\u00a0 But instead of putting down the deposit on it, he bought my mother a diamond ring in Hong Kong instead.\u00a0 Which of course, was good news for me – I was born in the Balboa Naval hospital in 1971.<\/p>\n
Fast forward 15 years to sometime in the Winter of 1985-86…\u00a0 I was 14 years old, and a freshman in a private high school – where I had a scholarship because I was a genius as a kid – although a very bad student – I blew the standardized tests out of the water, and never did my homework…<\/p>\n
Anyway, we were a pretty all-american family, and I guess aside from being a little chubby dude with glasses and kind of nerdy, I was an all-american kid.\u00a0 I was heavily involved in Boy Scouts, hunted deer and small game with my dad, etc.\u00a0 I had minibikes and go-carts that we cobbled together out of dead lawnmower engines – and I seemed to be pretty good fixing mechanical things – or at least at taking them apart!\u00a0 No sports – I wasn’t very “fit” at the time – or coordinated.\u00a0 I had gone through a steady stream of girlfriends in 7th and 8th grade, but the move to private school had somehow stopped that dead in its tracks…<\/p>\n
My parents were your basic middle class parents too – my father worked at the DuPont experimental station as a lab technician, and my mother was a secretary – when they still existed.\u00a0 My father was always building things, though – renovating our house, fixing his own cars, restoring wooden boats, building me go-carts and such, and was always looking for ways to get ahead.\u00a0 One of those was building decks and furniture for people on the side – he was and still is a fabulous woodworker.<\/p>\n
So it was a night just like this that Winter, when I found myself being dragged along to a customers house after dinner to help him carry in some bookcases he had made for a woman who lived about 10-15 miles away.\u00a0 As we were riding home, a “meaningless” conversation popped up that might have just been him searching for something to talk about with me – who knows…\u00a0 As it turned out though, an off-the-cuff remark he made ended up pretty much mapping out the rest of my life…<\/p>\n
“You know” he started, “you’re going to be 16 and driving soon – have you given any thought to what kind of car you’d like to have?”<\/p>\n
It took me about 10 milliseconds to answer – “I want a Jeep.”\u00a0 Now, you have to realize that at this time, I was HEAVY into Boy Scouts – and working my way toward Eagle Scout pretty steadily.\u00a0 I went camping once a month, had just gotten back from the national jamboree that Summer, was really into hunting, and I just wanted to be out in the woods ALL THE TIME!\u00a0 And so a Jeep CJ just seemed natural to me – and I had started wanting one about a year ago I guess, although I felt like I was a lifetime away from driving at the time, and hadn’t REALLY given it much thought…\u00a0 My father had a Jeep when I was younger, and we would often drive it out on the beach to surf fish.<\/p>\n
“Jeeps are a pain in the ass…\u00a0 They’re hot in the Summer, cold in the Winter, they don’t even really have real doors – man, you don’t want a Jeep, you just think you do…”<\/p>\n
My initial thoughts here were, “You’re an idiot – Jeeps are awesome.” – but my response was silence…\u00a0 Then he continued…<\/p>\n
“When I was your age, the car to have was a Jaguar XKE.\u00a0 That’s what I’d be looking for if I were you – something like a Jag with a small-block Chevy in it with Corvette valve covers…”<\/p>\n
Now, I wasn’t into cars AT ALL – so I didn’t have the SLIGHTEST CLUE what a “Jaguar XKE” was – I had never heard that phrase in my life…\u00a0 I didn’t know what a “small block Chevy” was, and I sure as hell didn’t know what “valve covers” were…<\/p>\n
All I knew at the time was that driving was a LIFETIME away, and when it did finally happen, I was getting a Jeep…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The whole thing started on a cold Winter night alot like tonight – actually, maybe it goes back even farther than that… My parents were born and raised in New Castle County, Delaware.\u00a0 My father graduated from Newark High School … Continue reading