Well cold weather is here again and for some reason I have some of the same memories go through my head every winter. Most of them from long ago, and generally deal with the extreme cold days in my life.
Like the (-26 degree) Superbowl Sunday when I lived in Columbus in the mid 80's. I left my two-tone Buick Skyhawk running all night on the curb so I could go in and do the show at 4 am! I started it about 5PM Sunday afternoon when it was only (-10), I locked it up and left it running, watched the game and went to sleep. Also pumping gas at the Phillips 66 Station in Jefferson City one morning with my Red Buick Skyhawk T-Type at about 430 AM in an ice storm about 5 below and 50 mph winds late 80's.
There are plenty more, but the one that always stays with me is the winter of 1981-82 when I was working at WOBL in Oberlin, Ohio before I moved away for 20 years. I had a beautiful 1974 Chevelle Malibu Classic (above) that I loved and I didn't drive it in the winter. I had a "winter beater" as we called them. Mine was a 1974 Mustang II that my older brother had driven, wrecked, and left for me in the driveway. It was a piece of work. All of my friends had one then, Joe Red had an old AMC Gremlin, Beef had the Ford "Maverust", and Kurt Zing had an old Ford Galaxy that looked like the Andy Griffith show patrol car.
My beater at one time had been brown, now it was rusted. It had been sideswiped front to back on the passenger side. It burned oil and had a 4 on the floor shifter. Only the driver door opened until my friend Bill took a small sledge hammer to the passenger door and it then worked. It got terrible gas mileage but it did run well. BUT it had NO REVERSE GEAR. When you put it in reverse it would just grind. I have no pictures of this amazing car, as there was no reason to take any at the time!
So that winter I drove a car, every day with no reverse gear. I always had to park it where I could go out nose first. At home, at work, at the store, the bowling alley, friends houses, everywhere. At the radio station, I was doing mornings there, so I'd go in at 4AM, and make a big turn in the parking lot and face it out before anyone got there. Somehow I did it. I made it till spring and the nice weather with that car, until I could bust out the Malibu again.
When I left for Columbus in 1983, I left the Mustang at my moms house in Berea, and someone stopped by one day and bought it for about $100. I'm guessing for parts? It was the only time I parked it front ways in my moms driveway, and the buyer said there was no reverse, which I admitted. My mom asked how I drove it all those months, so I told her, she was mortified! LOL. The buyer just laughed....
I sold my beautiful Malibu and moved to Columbus where I bought my first Skyhawk, which I did drive in the winter, as my "winter beater" days were over.
What was I thinking? I wasn't - I was 20.
