Chapter 1 – The setup
I am old. When cops look (through your eyes) like teenagers, I think you’ve crossed some sort of line. Men my age (and younger) face their "mid-life crisis" in various ways. I wanted a mid-life crisis, but my wife wouldn’t let me have one. Sigh.
So I don’t call the acquisition of my 1998 Black/Light Oak Automatic Targa convincing evidence of a mid-life crisis (pshaw!) and I can prove it. See, I also have a 1990 Red/Red/White Roadster (now that possibly was a mid-life crisis). My wife won’t let me sell it. Her reasoning: every two-person family needs at least two Corvettes; the red one is "hers" So, "we" have two Corvettes. Sounds right to me..
 Well, actually, three. Bought a '64 Roadster June 2, 1998...
No, now four. Had a 1953-2003 Commemorative Edition Corvette built in September, 2002...
Sigh, now three. Sold the red 1990 convertible and the Silver 1964 Convertible and bought our Silver 2006 Coupe in February 2006.
Sigh, now two. Had to sell the 1953-2003 Commemorative Edition convertible in 2011.
Finally, now one (my last Corvette I'm thinking). Sold the black 1998 coupe in 2013.
Anyhow, the subject of this monograph is my Corvette experience of more than fifty years ago.
Chapter 2 – The buildup
It was 1961. I was a wet-behind-the-ears graduate from Georgia Tech, driving my first Corvette, a beautiful 1960 Silver/White cove, removable hardtop, 3-speed manual (it was bought used but I DID have indulgent parents).
I was lucky enough to get hired by IBM in Atlanta the day after graduation and was transferred (overnight – what a surprise) to the IBM office in Greenville, South Carolina. I don’t want to insult Greenvillians (is that a word?) but the culture shock of moving from Atlanta (yay!) to Greenville (boo!) must have seriously affected my young mind.
There I was, single, in a small town with a cool car, no debt and a new job paying the princely sum of (get this) $6,000 per year. That was so much money in 1961 that I had to bail out my checking account every week or so to keep it from overflowing. Truly. I HAD to do something to dispose of some of that money….
So I went to Mike Persia Chevrolet in Greenville and traded my perfectly good ’60 ‘vette in on a brand new ’61 Honduras Maroon/Black, removable hardtop, 4-speed. Yep; I traded in the car just to get another gear in the shifter. Ah, the folly of youth… But this car was much faster than the ’60 – either that, or I learned how to shift faster.
OK. So it got to be October, 1961 and was time for Homecoming Weekend at Georgia Tech. Hey, I’m a big shot COLLEGE GRADUATE WITH A BRAND NEW CORVETTE (and a girlfriend at Emory University in Atlanta) so I headed to Atlanta to snow the underclassmen – and the girl. A fine time was had by all. A very fine time...
It's now midnight, Sunday. Tech beat the Duke Blue Devils 21-0 and it’s time to go home. I have to be at work at 8:30a in the morning and (at that time) it took 3+ hours to drive back to Greenville. It was a beautiful clear night. I mean "clear". Very clear. Very.
This was just barely before the interstate highway system was built. The road then from Atlanta to Greenville was US 29, two-lane blacktop. I was heading north and the moon was full. The night was cold, crisp and the visibility was unlimited. I was happy. I was going fast. Very fast. Very, very fast. It was glorious. Just glorious.
The moonlight was bright but not quite so bright as the red/blue flasher I noticed in my rearview: Two Georgia State troopers. They were exceedingly polite and quite impressed with my car. I thought for a while that we’d just have a nice 1:15am chat on the side of the road and that I’d be allowed to go on my way. Well, I was young and naïve. But they thought it better that I follow them into Carnesville, GA (just a few miles back down the road toward Atlanta) and meet the local sheriff. No problem. I had no trouble following them; they weren’t going all that fast.
We reached Carnesville in due course and they accompanied me to the front door of a small house on the town square and rang the doorbell. It was five minutes before the door was opened by a giant in a nightshirt. Imagine a really tall Charlie Daniels look-alike in a full-length nightshirt – with his badge pinned to his chest. Apparently being awakened in the middle of the night by the State Patrol was routine for the Sheriff. He directed us to the basement entrance and said he’d meet us there. We walked down and around to the back of the house and the Sheriff met us at an outside door. We (the Sheriff and I) bid goodnight to the two troopers and they drove away. And left me there. With the man-mountain.
He turned out to be a cordial man. We sat down in his basement office which was pretty much like the one in the old Andy Griffith Show.
There were two empty jail cells (doors open) on the far wall. We had a nice chat.
| Sheriff: |
"Well, son, the troopers clocked you at 95 in a 50 zone. Does that sound about right?" |
| Chaz: |
"If that’s what they said, sir, I guess it’s true." |
| Sheriff: |
"The fine for 45mph over the limit is $90. Just pay the fine and you’re free to go." |
| Chaz: |
"Sheriff, I’d be happy to pay that fine but I’ve been in Atlanta all weekend and all the cash I have is $15. But I’d be happy to write you a check." |
| Sheriff: |
"Son, this is a small town but I’m not a fool. It’s cash on the barrel-head or you can spend the night here in my jail." |
| Chaz: |
"But if I stay here I won’t have the money in the morning, either. Isn’t there another way?" |
| Sheriff: |
"Well, you could call your boss and have him bring the money down." |
| Chaz: |
"I just reported for work in Greenville a few weeks ago. I don’t think my career would survive waking up an IBM branch manager in the middle of the night to drive the money for a speeding ticket fine down to Carnesville." |
| Sheriff: |
"I can understand that. Tell you what: why don’t you leave your spare tire here so I can be sure you’ll come back with the fine?" |
| Chaz: |
"Sheriff, I really appreciate that. But the way my luck’s running I’d get ten miles out of town, have a flat and spend the night on the side of the road. But I’ll tell you what I CAN do. In my car I have a Gibson flattop guitar worth more than $300. Suppose I leave it here and come back next week to pay the fine?" |
| Sheriff: |
"Go get it, son." |
I was back in a flash with my guitar.
| Sheriff: |
"You play that?" |
I rejected my first three wise-ass answers.
| Chaz: |
"I play a little." |
| Sheriff: |
"Play me somethin’" |
| Chaz: |
"It’s almost 2 o’clock in the morning!" |
| Sheriff: |
"Play me somethin’." |
So I sat down on the bunk in one of the cells and played a few folk songs (remember this was 1961…) So help me, he went upstairs, woke his wife and two small sons and I sat there and played Kingston Trio songs for a half-hour. Little boys about four and six. All four of them just sittin’ and listenin’ while I was pickin’ and a-grinnin’.
Eventually they let me stop. We put the guitar into its case, put the case on the bunk in the cell and locked it up (clang!). I got into my car and drove (carefully observing the speed limit) back to Greenville and fell into bed.
Chapter 3 – The Payoff
Fast-forward forty-eight hours to Tuesday afternoon. After work, I went to the bank and got $90 in cash and headed on down to Carnesville just as it began to get dark. Remember now, I was on my way to pay a speeding ticket. Would ANYONE speed under those circumstances? No, and neither would I. I was driving south on US 29 at a sedate 55 miles per hour.
As I approached the Georgia State line I noticed a sign that said "Interstate Highway 85 Open". Wow! I can get to Carnesville and back much faster! I got onto the new interstate. It was beautiful, four lanes as far as the eye could see with a nice median. But I set it carefully on the double-nickel and it was a great road. I noticed that there wasn’t any signage yet and there weren’t any lines painted but it was a full moon (remember) and visibility was great.
Great, that is, until I topped a little rise (going 55 mph) and found that I-85 ended and there was a 90 degree cutback to the left back to US29. Seems that they hadn’t yet gotten around to building the bridge over Lake Hartwell yet. Signs? None.
I spun the wheel and braked and downshifted furiously and succeeded in getting the ‘Vette turned a few degrees to the left – and then we went down a 20 foot embankment into Lake Hartwell. I remember thinking that Corvettes, being plastic, might float. Sigh.
The only thing keeping me from converting the 'Vette into a fiberglass inboard runabout was a stump in the water about a foot below the surface. We struck it and stopped immediately. I mean "immediately"! My glasses flew off and broke the windshield but I was securely belted in and wasn’t injured (the luck of the stupid, I guess). The car was sitting in about two feet of water and the water was, therefore, about halfway up the side.
I opened the door a little; water came in so I closed it again.
I was sitting there dazed and pissed off and then I noticed a revolving red and blue light up on the road behind me. No, it was a different policeman; this time, a South Carolina State trooper. He got out of his car, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted,
"RUN OFF THE ROAD?"
I rejected the first half-dozen wise-ass remarks (I was getting good at suppressing wise-ass remarks) and yelled back, "Yes, sir!"
He walked a rope down and tied it (I learned later) to some fragile part of my rear suspension. I used to say "...to my independent rear suspension..." but it's been pointed out to me that independent rear suspension didn't happen until the '63 Corvette..
Note: Hauling a Corvette around by a rope tied to a sensitive rear suspension component is not a good idea. Not at all.
He used his prowler to pull us (me and the Corvette) back up onto the road. A cursory inspection showed cracks in both front fenders and a smashed area below the grill. But the car started (hallelujah!). The trooper told me that I was the third one that day. Later (much later) I tried to get some relief from the DOT, the contractors, the state of South Carolina and the State of Georgia for opening a road with no signage and no barrier to a lake entry by car – but to no avail.
I thanked the trooper and limped on down to Carnesville. I visited the sheriff, showed him the damage (a lot of "tsk, tsk-ing"), paid the fine, recovered my guitar and started back to Greenville.
The suspension felt funny but I was able to make it all the way back to Greenville.
Here’s a little-known fact. Mike Persia Chevrolet (in those days) had a service department that was open 24 hours a day. I drove the car down a ramp and into the service bay and turned it over to a service writer.
I didn’t get the car back for nine weeks!
That’s how long it took in those days to obtain all the plastic forward of the windshield from St. Louis (where Corvettes were built in those days). The transmission was never quite right after that – and here’s the sad part – I decided to get married while the car was in the shop.
And my new bride, who drove a Sunbeam Alpine,
.. reasoned that we didn’t need two sports cars and that I, of course, would be the one to give up his. I should have known the marriage wouldn’t work. So at the age of 22 I was married and Corvette-less.
When the marriage ended two years later, I was the one blessed to receive the Sunbeam Alpine in the settlement. I drove that car directly to the nearest Chevy dealer in Atlanta (I’d been transferred back) and traded it in on a brand new Yellow/Black/Black ’65 4-speed roadster:
And later, the ’65 went for an exact-same color ’67. Which we (new wife, now) kept for 14 years. When I sold it (for more than I’d paid for it) I actually cried as the guy drove it away:
It only took twelve more years before I got our ’90 Red roadster:
.. and eight more years until the ’98 Black Targa:
.. and now only six months until the '64 Roadster:
Quite a saga. And, before I die, I plan to have a ’60, a '61 a ’65 and a ’67 again along with these three. Seems right.
ChazCone
C5Registry #W0526
25May98
Afterword:
This story has been on my Corvette website since written. In 2002, I received an email from a fellow who asked if he could publish this story in a book of Corvette stories he was writing. In return for $250 and two copies of the book when published, we struck a deal. Here's the book:
..and you can buy it at Amazon.com and other places on the web. My story begins on page 101.
Back to Chaz' Corvette page
|
