Fourth Car - 1967 Datsun (Nissan now) 1600 Roadster

Car Number 4
1967 Datsun (Nissan now) 1600 Roadster - my only real 2 seater roadster convertible, I loved it. I think it also cost $800 just like the Karmann Ghia. I had three $800 cars in those early years, The VW Baja Bug was also $800, that's coming up in a bit, but I digress. Anyway the Datsun had no front bumper and a terrible coat of cheap spray paint. I spent hours looking for it wherever I had parked it on the streets of NYC. I had fallen in love again a couple times, got married again, and needed a way to escape the city which had begun to wear on my small town soul. My new wife, Jeanne, and I drove it the length of the Blue Ridge Parkway and to Atlantic City to see the 500 Club where she got her start as a singer - same place Frank Sinatra got started, same mafia bosses.   After the summer stock season at the Tappan Zee Playhouse, which is now a burned out hulk in Nyack, NY, I sold it to my friend George Phillips and bought. . .

Third Car - 1967 Opel Kadett Rallye

Car Number 3
1967 Opel Kadett Rallye - first car I ever bought new - what a POS, I bought it in Abingdon, VA after the tranny fell out of the Bel Air mom had given me (all my early cars were crap) then drove it to my next job at Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo where it made it through the lake effect winter, then through the summer of '69 on tour stage managing "Mame" in summer stock tent theaters with Elaine Stritch. I was a callow 22 year old and in those days, she was a roaring alcoholic psychopath about to make her big B'way comeback in "Company" if she could keep it together long enough - she sure fooled me, she's still going strong today. We were at the Cape Cod Melody Tent where I sat in the bar next door after the show one night and watched men walk on the moon, at the Cohassett Music Circus where we missed Woodstock, and the Beverly Music Theater and on Sept. 5 1969, after riding down the parachuting big top and folding it away for the winter, Regan Reddy and  I drove the Opal to NYC where it soon got sick and I eventually sold it to have no car in the Big Apple for awhile, after I had dropped a small fortune on tow away impound charges.

Second Car - 1962 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia

Car Number 2
1962 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia - first car of my own. I got married for the first time at the end of my sophomore year at UNC Chapel Hill, we dropped out of school, bought the car in Durham for $800 and drove it to our summer jobs at "The Lost Colony" on the Outer Banks in Manteo, NC where I was the master electrician (at 19, reading my stage lighting text book as fast as I could) and my new wife, Judy was a dancer. At the end of the summer we drove to Baltimore, MD where we got jobs at the Children's Theater of Baltimore, me as technical director, Judy as wardrobe mistress. The really big thing is that is where Cybele was born. Her bassinet fit perfectly in the back seat of the car so we could go to drive-in movies with her snug in the back. Can't do that anymore.  By spring, I got fired and we left all the new Danish modern furniture we'd bought on credit and skipped out on the least of our apartment by the beltway that had a sign on it that said "IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU'D BE HOME NOW." The Karmann Ghia just barely made it to Charlotte and mom gave us her Chevy Bel Air out of her bottomless maternal love. Where would we be without our moms?

In high School
Sometimes I think outside of a few large urban areas, our whole American culture has a very personal connection to cars. I sure do. I was reminded recently of my mom driving me on my first dates with my first girl friend, who will probably read this. It's embarrassing to have to be driven around by your mom on an actual date. But it's better than not having the date. That was 1957 Buick Special convertible, white with red leather upholstery that my dad left us with when he was sent to Vietnam in 1961 to help start that war. But this about cars. 

FIRST CAR - 1963 Chevy Bel Air (also my third car, kinda)

Autobiography - my life in cars: 
FIRST CAR: 1963 Chevy Bel Air - actually my mom's car. I got my driver's license in it, parked with my high school love and semi-wrecked it twice. I had it in Rutherfordton, NC, then later in Abingdon, VA. where the transmission fell out in the driveway in 1967. It was a perfect example of planned obsolescence.