A Maine Car Guy is Born

If you’re reading this you can thank my wife and my brother-in-law Charlie for making it happen. For years they’ve been telling me, “You should have a ( fill in the blank ) “show”, “column” “blog” about cars.” A few years back my wife claimed that for my next birthday she was getting me a couple of rolls of those ubiquitous bright colored triangle flags which flutter across the “front line” at used car lots across America. It would have looked perfectly appropriate given the half dozen vehicles, which at any particular moment call our driveway “home”.
I can’t help it. It’s just the way I was raised. Some of my earliest and fondest memories of my childhood in the 1950’s are of cars. My dad was a “car guy” and my older sisters had obviously followed in his tire tracks. Here’s a partial list of vehicles parked in our driveway when I was 7 years old in 1958. A green ’57 Ford Country Squire station wagon complete with acres of plastic wood, a silver 1957 Thunderbird (with the porthole removable hard top), a Jaguar XK 120 Roadster, a British Racing Green 1953 TD MG and a 1940-something Singer roadster.
I fell in love with cars that summer and I’ve never fallen back out.
I remember when my sister Sue was a teenager her first car was a massive burgundy red Buick convertible. I’m not certain of the year, ’54? ’55? But, man that was a car! The grill, a gaping chromium maw, looked as if it could easily swallow a VW or two on the way back from the drive-in. Huge chrome “venti-ports” adorned the front quarter panels and the seats were overstuffed leather lounge chairs. Here’s what I remember most vividly about that Buick. My sister let me sit in the driver’s seat and pretend to drive. As I settled in behind the wheel I noticed that the entire interior was slathered in big chrome badges indicating the great features available to the lucky motorist (That’s me!). The family pizza sized steering wheel itself screamed POWER STEERING in big shiny block letters, a brace of chrome Chiclets on the armrest proudly announced POWER WINDOWS and nestled on the red carpeted floor a few inches beyond the reach of my scrawny little kid legs lay a brick of shiny metal with soft rubber inlays promising a young speed demon the immense security of POWER BRAKES. Who wouldn’t be hooked?
The years flew by and the carousel of great cars continued to turn. By the time I entered adolescence I was reading every car magazine I could get my hands on. I wasn’t picky as long as the topic was cars. I read “Uncle Tom McCahill’s colorful reviews in Popular mechanics, learned about Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s latest creation in Car Craft and Hot Rod and breathlessly followed a young Richard Petty and his faithful blue #43 Plymouth as he battled Fred Lorenzen’s 427 Ford around Darlington and Daytona Speedways.
So I’m the right guy for a car guy blog, I figure. If you check in regularly I’ll give you my two cents worth on the great and not so great cars of the past, present and future. If you’re wondering about the car in the photo accompanying this blog, that’s the first car I ever owned. Pop bought it for me when I graduated from Boothbay Region High School in 1969. It’s a 1956 Chevy Bel Air “Sport Sedan” which was what they called the 4 door without the B-pillar that year. Equipped with a stock 265 small block and two speed power glide transmission it was no drag strip demon but, WOW, what a fantastic first car. If you want to know the true story behind how it came to be painted like an American flag (and what happened after that) it’s on my 1999 CD, Aint Life Grand available on my website, timsample.com. Meanwhile, thanks a whole lot for stopping by. Leave a comment and check in when you can. This is gonna be fun!

Keep the sticky side down,

Tim Sample