Frieze - The Frieze and The Freeze

With projects that take longer than I originally planned I usually get to a point where I feel as though they're never going to get finished. I'm there right now with this work bench expansion/Yankee Stadium Frieze project. The good news is that the new 'bench looks fantastic.

The plan here is to expand the original work bench, add an additional work bench the same size as the expanded "old" bench and add shelving under the entire structure. I plan to paint the whole thing (undecided on the color scheme) and finally, to finish it off, add a Yankee Stadium inspired Frieze at the top of the whole thing.

 

Time goes by so fast. After spending an entire weekend expanding the existing the bench and framing out the new one and the shelving, I thought I had maybe one more weekend of work on it to get it finshed. Yeah. Well, the next weekend I had to go to Memphis on business so I lost that weekend. Last Saturday I lost the day because it was freezing cold outside and only slightly warmer inside the garage. Forget that. The Frieze has to wait til the Freeze passes.

This past Sunday I had maybe 2 hours to work on it when it was a little warmer. I got the shelving under the new side of the bench reenforced. That was it.

 



This week has been a sweet old tease. It's been 55 to 60 degrees all week so far. Just in time for the weekend we're expecting a good old fashioned blast of mid January Fury 'd Mother Nature. Great. If I'm going to get anything done out here this weekend it'll have to be done with me looking more like the Michelin man than a hack weekend carpenter.

 

 

I'm getting there, though. The original structure above as become the beast below.
 

 

Time marches on. So does the cold. It's been a pretty intense winter so far.

Cadillac Ranch

Well there she sits buddy just a-gleaming in the sun 

Eldorado fins, whitewalls and skirts

 

Rides just like a little bit of heaven here on earth

  

Cadillac, Cadillac
Long and dark shiny and black  

Open up your engines let `em roar
Tearing up the highway like a big old dinosaur

 When I die throw my body in the back
And drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac

You're my last love you're my last chance
Don't let `em take me to the Cadillac Ranch

Ford Ranch Wagon - The Company Car



When the mechanic at Stu's Gulf gave the diagnosis that the Rambler had a cracked block, he gave my father two options. He'd either replace the engine at considerable cost or he'd take the car off his hands for $150. Sitting next to my father in the greasy office of that long gone service station at the corner of Merrick Road and Silver Lake Lane back in Baldwin, I could hardly contain my excitement when my father said he'd take the money.

Despite a push button transmission, I was never impressed with the gray on red, 1961 Rambler "Classic" that was the Connolly family ride when I was very young. When you grow up on a block loaded with automotive talent from Cadillac, Buick, Chevrolet, Lincoln, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Ford and Plymouth "The Rambler" seemed woefully if not painfully inadequate.

What's more, back then my father was an executive for Burlington Industries. At least once a month if not more it seemed, he'd fly to North Carolina for several days and return home in a "company car". It was a rental from Hertz but since "the company" was paying for it that's what we called those cars. For the most part he came home in something that was much more interesting to me than the Rambler. From time to time though he would bring home some clunker like a station wagon or little foreign job. One of those "little foreign jobs" was a 1973 era Mercury Capri btw. I hated it at first because my father, who was a big man, hated it. What did I know. This is a story for another time.

 

With the Rambler finally gone I was giddy with anticipation as to what we'd get. How exciting it would be go car shopping! Would we get that amazing Impala Sports Coupe he had brought home not so long ago? Perhaps that gigantic and magical Fury convertible he brought home in the middle of winter! Oh, sweet joy, the sky was the limit!

 

Our Ranch Wagon looked EXACTLY like this except ours had blue rims not black and did not have whitewalls.

 

So, when a blue '68 Ford Ranch Wagon showed up one day I simply shrugged my shoulders that it was one of the clunkers he'd get every now and then from Hertz. You can only imagine the crushing disappointment I felt when I found out it was in fact our new family truckster.

 

I found this quickie shot of a '68 Ranch Wagon from an epsiode of Kojak. Who loves ya, baby. Note roof rack, chrome rub strip, black rims and whitewalls. This is probably a Ranch Wagon 500. We had the bone stripper Ranch Wagon.  

Turned out my father was such a fan of Hertz' rentals that he bought one they had for sale. It was the company car that came to visit and stayed for a long, long time.

Forty plus years later I'm still reeling from it.

Frieze Update! - Work Bench Expansion

 

The Frieze project rolls on. Albeit slowly. This past weekend, with the considerable help of my delightful younger son, I made significant progress towards starting on it.

To review, my plan is to construct a Yankee Stadium inspired Frieze (pronounced "freeze") at the top of my work bench. A ridiculously frivolous project. Exactly why I want to do it.

First things first. Updating our master bathroom not to mention finishing a stoop and shelf in the garage has taken most of the winter so far. And then there's the way over due expansion of the work bench itself. All this I deemed had to be done before I dove into something frivolous.

 

 

The expansion of the work was three fold. First, I wanted to expand the original bench. Secondly, I wanted to add to the existing structure by adding another section that was as large as that original and finally, add a parallel shelf under both sections for much needed storage.

 

I think I enjoy planning and engineering these projects more than actually doing them.

 

So, this...

 

 

 

Has become this.

I'm pretty happy with it. There's re enforcing to be done, electrical and paint. Then perhaps I can start on the Frieze. My plan is to have it done by Opening Day. Play Ball!

 

1986 Buick Park Avenue - To Know Me Is To Love Me

I'm not an advocate of taking pictures while driving but this one was too good to pass up. Trust me when I tell you that I just picked up my trusty Blackberry and snapped away hoping that something usable would come of it. Eureka!

 

It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to each his own and love is blind. So true. Case in point. A 1986, creme colored, Buick Park Avenue. I didn't even like these cars at first but I fell in love with them because they were just so darn good.
 

 

I remember lamenting GM's switch to front wheel on their full size cars like it was yesterday. I was actually saddened by it. Really. I like my cars big, rear wheel driven and powered by a mighty, carbureted, V-8 engine like the brute above. Or so I thought.

 

 

These cars though, with the exception of Cadillac's awful version with a V-8, where small (relatively), front wheel driven and were powered by a V-6. Ugh. Drive one and your perception changes immediately. Snappy engines, great handling from rack and pinion steering, superb brakes. Suddently, the big, rear drive, V-8 cars became, "old school". The styling kinda grew on me too although the sedans were never "handsome" in my opinion. I preferred the much rarer 2 door versions.

 

  

My Dad had this very similar Buick LeSabre that sadly, met the rear end of a Jeep Wrangler outside the Queens mid town tunnel. The trim and equipment level might be a tad plusher on the Park Avenue and the wheel base a bit longer but underneath where it counts the cars are identical.

 

  

You don't see many 27 year old cars running around these days as daily drivers. Especially here in North East Ohio where many of them no doubt have succumbed to rust. This lovely Park has a little rusht but nothing that doesn't make it even more interesting.

Slow, down will ya? I need another picture!

 

2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo - Of Cars and Dogs

 

One Sunday long ago our delightful family dog, a Scottish Terrier I called Fred and my mother called Lassie, wandered into the dining room while we were having Sunday dinner. He sat down near my father, his tail wagging and with that that heart warming beam in his eye that I adored.

 

 

He then threw up all over our black and white linoleum tile floor. "Ah geez chrise...," my father bellowed, "now what??".

 

I bought my 2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, going on three years ago, as a way to try and stem the bleeding of green that comes with a owning, operating and maintaining an automobile. It was, at the time, a fairly pricey proposition with the hopes that I would "save money". Ten Grand was a lot of   money for an 8 year old used car; albeit one with only 14,000 miles on it. An older car with low miles for well less than half of what a decent new car would cost? Sign me up.

Speed bump. No bank would loan me what the dealership wanted for a car that old. If they were going to finance any part of it they wanted a large down payment first and the loan they would give me had  an APR that was ridiculously high. Hrmph. So, the wife and I made a withdrawal from the Good Bank of Connolly and paid ourselves back with diligent, aggressive monthly payments. Now, if a tree fell on the old girl or I wrecked it, I'd get perhaps half of what I paid for the car since "The Book" on the car was significantly less on it than I paid for it. Risky. But what the heck. I went for it.

 

 

So far, so good. "The Dale", as silly as I think the decals on the car are, has been a model of rock solid reliability. Well, for the most part.

 

Fred was a great dog, so much fun. I used to play football with him in our small yard back on Long Island where he was both the ball and the opposing team. Don't ask. He was also ferociously loyal to myself and my family and he was tough as nails too. So, when "little things" like his letting go at Sunday dinner happened we got him right to the vet to get him checked out. When the vet came back with only, "how old is he?", we realized that it was "the beginning of the end". Indeed, Fred was getting older. That was that. I think it was less than a year later that he passed away.

 

 

There are inherent risks with driving a car that is pushing 12 years in age (it was built in July of 2001) as a daily driver. Regardless of how gently it's been driven throughout its life or how low the mileage is. Cars today are spectacularly complicated beasts and when they start acting up, it's a sign that it's "the beginning of the end".

 

For example, on the way to the office last week the radio stopped playing and a pleasant, female computer voice popped on the speakers in the car asking me if I wanted to make a phone call. Heh? The car has a primitive cell phone system that was the all the rage back in 2001. Problem is, I didn't press any button prompting the car to ask me if I wanted to make a call. It proceeded to ask me the same question every thirty seconds until I got to the office. No, turning the radio off didn't solve the problem.

 

That said, a couple of weeks ago "The Dale" was as dead as a door nail in the parking lot of a JC Penny near where we live leaving my son and I stranded. Much like Fred letting go, there was not a hint of a sign of a problem what so ever beforehand. I called the wife to come give me a jump from our trusty, aging as well, 2006 Tahoe. No sooner did she pull up beside me that I was able to turn "The Dale" over.

This is on top of the myriad "idiot lights" that won't go off every now and then on the dash board. Some blinking sentinel is always telling me that a seat belt is unbuckled or tire is about to explode from a lack of pressure. It's the car that cries wolf. Constantly.

"Ah geez chrise...," I bellow, "now what??". 

 

I took "The Dale" to our mechanic had them take a look at it. The only thing they said to me was, "how old is the car?"

1971 Cadillac Coupe deVille - The Man

I went kicking and screaming into my parent's inexplicable Cadillac foray of the late 1970's. They had already replaced the long in the tooth '68 Ford Ranch Wagon (think Ford Country Squire with no soul) the summer prior with my favorite car ever, a 1970 Buick Electra 225. I loved that car even though it was a four door. Brown too. That'70 Electra, still to this day, remains the favorite car of my family growing up. Sigh. Well,  Mother wanted her Cadillac and Dad was all too willing to oblige her.

For several years after we got "The Cadillac", a blue on black '72 Sedan deVille not a more stylish Coupe deVille like I would've much preferred (pictured here is a 1971), we had both cars so I was always able to size up both as they sat front to back crushing the blacktop in front of our house. back on Long Island. I thought the Buick, despite its vinyl clad interior, the more luxurious of the two. I thought the Cadillac sinister, foreboding. Its black leather seats austere, uncomfortable. The Cadillac was a sloppy, shuddering mess of a car too. Perhaps it had been in an accident and was screwed back together poorly. I don't know but something was amiss with that car. I mean, the windshield was loose and bounced around inside the frame! The Buick was much, much more solid of a car. To make matters even worse the vaunted "472" in the Cadillac never had the pop in the bat that the Buick had with its uber legendary "455". That burned my father worse than the loosey, gooseyness of the Cadillac.

Despite my fondness for the Buick and my near loathing of that Cadillac, I find myself searching more for Cadillacs of that vintage than Buicks. What's up with that? Perhaps it's me being somehow sucked into the Cadillac mystique. I can't figure myself out sometimes and it's probably best I spend as little time as possible doing so. 

I found this delightful survivor in Wellington, Ohio a couple of years ago on Craigslist and took her for a spin holding out the vague hope that the wife would approve the purchase order. If she even suggested I get it I would have been cutting a check right there on the spot. It was a fairly bizarre drive down memory lane nonetheless as I waited for the high sign. 

Much to my surprise, this car drove much better than I recall my father's '72 did. For a car this size and as old as it was it felt remarkably well put together. The windshield didn't shake, the 472 felt snappy and it sounded maaaahvelous as well although I'd hardly call this car powerful or fast. In fact, I've driven plenty of much smaller engined Chevrolets of this vintage that felt much more spritely. The variable assist power steering was terrific and helped make this extremely large car somewhat easy to handle. The brakes were good, the ride was delightful. It was comfortable. But it was big. Oh. So big.

That I think is an understatement. This car is terrifyingly large. Gee whiz. I remember driving Dad's and never telling him or anyone just how scared I was driving it. Back then, bigger was better and if you could handle a big car then you were The Man. I wasn't nervous driving this thing that Sunday afternoon but I do remember that feeling of dread that young me had behind the wheel of my father's blue bomb. My biggest concern this sunny Sunday afternoon in the country was running over something and not noticing it. That and running out of gas.

  

By the way, that high sign I was so hoping for from the wife never came. The car was far from perfect too so that probably had something to do with it. That and the fact she hated this car. I didn't push the subject. 

Toyota Corolla FX - The One That Got Away

On the morning of December 29, 1987, I wrecked my beloved Cordoba on icy Sunrise Highway on New York's Long Island. I hold myself perhaps more accountable than I should for the accident. After all, it was I and I alone who purchased used tires for the rear of the car not too long before the crash. I may also have been going a tad too fast for the treacherous conditions that day. The Town of Babylon truck driver gets the rest of the blame.

The only consolation I had at the time was that it was time for me to retire the Ole Montalban Cruiser anyway.

After the accident, I rented a 1987 Toyota Corolla FX to get around in until I got myself another car. The FX was a pleasant looking, generic little wedge on wheels. Nothing to look at, really. But she was a sweetheart with a heart of gold and a desire to do nothing but make me happy. Sharp handling, superb braking. A smooth revving, powerful, fuel efficient engine. Airy, spacious cockpit. Great seats. Lots of storage. Hatchback! In short, quite possibly, a perfect car. Especially for a youngster like myself who had a monstrously long commute.

So, needing a car and despite the fact that I loved the little Toyota what did I buy?

A 1982 Buick Riviera, of course!

The Riviera was an underpowered, ill handling lump of pretentiousness that cost me thousands in expensive repairs. She sure was a looker, though. Especially that leather lined interior. I used to joke that it resembled the inside of a dog's mouth. Let's not overlook the acres of plastic fake wood. Hmmm, classy. Well, at least I know I thought so at the time. Truth is, I still think she's gorgeous but then I quickly sober up and remember everything she put me through.

I had the Riv only two years and in that short period of time I spent more on the car and the repairs on it than a brand new FX would've run me. In a way I'm still detoxing from the constant shock of repair bills for that rolling wreck. Transmission. Brakes. Electronics. Suspension. Cooling system. Air conditioning. Yes. It was that bad. This car was so bad that I swore off buying used cars for almost twenty years.

In fairness, though, I bought the Riviera because I believed it to be "more car" than the simple, appliance like Toyota. Also, I needed to buy a cash car. My insurance was already sky high being that I was only 23 at the time. My insurance carrier dropped me when I wrecked the Cordoba and the only insurance I could get after that was astronomically expensive. To save money I needed something I could insure without collision insurance. Risky, but I really had no choice. Finally, being someone at the time who placed a certain amount of cache on flashy vehicles and the choice, for me, was simple. Wrong, ultimately, but simple.

Would I make the same decision today as I did back then? No. Of course not. I often wonder what it would have been like had I went with the trusty FX instead of the lousy Riviera. Part of me thinks I'd still have that cute little red head with the heart of gold.