The way we were when we were car crazy...

Heffernan's 40 Ford

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/10-5-24

One of my grandsons recently passed his driver’s license test upon turning age 16. He’s very happy to be able to legally drive a car, just as his older brothers and cousins were before him.

But this milestone seems more routine these days compared to when I got my driver’s license many long years ago, at mid-20th century. Being able to drive was a huge deal in the lives of teenage boys of my generation.

 Back then we were able to get a permit and take the driver’s test at age 15, and most of us promptly did so. The reason is we were what was referred to as “car crazy.” I don’t think many of today’s teens, including my progeny, are car crazy, even though they are pleased to have passed this D.L. milestone and sometimes speak of Lamborghinis.

 

Passing the driver’s test for me and some of my friends was considered the overarching achievement of our lives then and forevermore, amen. It was everything we wanted to achieve in life. Crazy? Of course. Car crazy.

 

In those days, the tests were headquartered at the National Guard Armory on London Road where Bob Dylan saw Buddy Holly perform a few years later. You can’t mention the Armory without including that. Never mind that world renowned composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff once performed there too. 

 

A Minnesota highway patrolman known as Officer Blinn (maybe not his exact name, but close) gave the tests, with dreaded parallel parking roped off on Jefferson Street alongside the north face of the Armory.

 

A close friend, a few months older than I, passed the test before me with an almost perfect score — 98 of a possible, flawless, 100. Whew, that was daunting for me when my turn came around a few months later. And I didn’t achieve it but I did OK with an 87. Seventy was passing.

 

Why do I recall all this so vividly lo these many decades later? Because it was so important to most boys of my generation. It opened the door to possibly getting a car of one’s own, and “customizing” it into something akin to a “hot rod.”

 

Customizing involved altering the outside of the car by removing such things as hood ornaments and trunk handles, filling the remaining holes with lead and repainting. Lowering the rear end was also de rigueur.

 

Possibly the most important alteration (other than huge fuzzy dice dangling from the inside rear-view mirror), was installing dual exhausts with “Smitty” steel-packed mufflers that rumbled loudly through chromium echo cans on the tail pipes when the engine was revved. These were called “twin pipes.” (Later, after I got car of my own, I was pulled over and ticketed by a Duluth cop for having those loud mufflers on my twin pipes.)

 

Mechanically minded kids “souped up” their engines so they could beat the drag race competition at downtown traffic signals.

 

But back to the state driver’s test at the Duluth Armory, where, about a week after I passed the test, I almost lost my license.

 

I was allowed to take the family car — no twin pipes — to school on the day of a city-wide high school music festival at the Armory, which I attended with other Denfeld kids. On a lunchtime break from the festival, a friend lined up a trio of girls from another high school to join us for a noontime joyride in my family’s car. Fun.

 

With the girls in the back seat and my friend riding shotgun, I “peeled” out of my parking place on London Road and began roaring through the neighborhood, “scratching” in second gear when I shifted. Scratching meant making the tires squeal by popping the clutch and “goosing” the engine when shifting a manual transmission from low to second gear. Peeling out was also known as “burning rubber.”

 

Just about every 15-year-old driver tried it, and my dad’s car always responded well, even if he wouldn’t have. Ford V-8.

 

Anyway, after tearing around the Armory neighborhood for several minutes we arrived back outside the festival where I screeched to a stop, a uniformed law officer waving me down. Yikes, it was Officer Blinn who had passed me in the road test barely a week before.

 

He strode over to my side window and sternly said something like, “Any more driving like that and I’ll take that license away from you.”

 

I was chagrined, the passengers in the car cowed, and I never drove that way again until the next time I got the family car a few days later. There was something about peeling out and scratching in second that couldn’t be resisted…when you were 15.

 

But don’t tell my grandchildren.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Veep nod eludes math-phobe, onion hater...

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth NewsTribune/ September 14, 2024

As many loyal readers might have surmised, I got passed over for vice president again this election. Maybe it’s just as well, what with my spotty record as, well, as a human being, I guess.

 

For the past month I’ve been fascinated by the detailed opposition research into the life of our governor, Tim Walz, since he was named as the Democratic candidate for vice president in the upcoming election. I shudder to think what they’d find out about me were I running.

 

Of course I’ve been passed over before, in too many elections to count — not enough fingers. That’s one reason I couldn’t be selected for such a high office: I still count on my fingers. It’s a habit I got into as they tried to drive arithmetic into my brain in elementary school and I never broke the habit. Math has never been my strong suit.

 

But when I see all that they’re dredging up about Governor Walz, I breathe a heavy sigh of relief that I wasn’t chosen. They’d have dug up my old report cards and seen that I always got bad marks in math and tended to be a daydreamer, staring out the classroom window. What a disgrace.

 

There’s other stuff that they’d find out about me too. As a youngster I never liked onions. How could an onion hater ever be elected to high office, or even low office? America’s onion lovers, clearly a large majority, would never vote for me. I’m not sure where Walz is on the onion issue, but I’m betting we’ll hear before the election.

 

I graduated from high school and college but didn’t get the best grades, I admit. The opposition would find out about that. But to my credit, I once got a “B” in college Speech 101 (to B or not to B? That was the question). This would have been in my favor in politics where you have to give a lot of speeches. Actually, variations on the same speech over and over.

 

Years later I was asked to give a commencement speech at my alma mater, and I responded to the invitation by asking if they’d seen my transcripts (grade records). But I did it anyway. I titled my speech “The Skin of Our Teeth,” a sly reference to all the grads who’d made it through like me.

 

Like our governor, I joined the National Guard after completing my education but not out of patriotic fervor. Males of my generation were subject to be drafted into the United States Army at age 18, or when you completed your education. It was called your military obligation. So, I joined the guards after college to avoid spending two years on active duty, just six months.

 

I was not a good soldier. Ouch! Let me put it this way: I was not a bad soldier either. I just did what they told us to do, shined my boots and stayed out of the way. Political opponents looking into my military record would surely find out about the time I was cheating with one knee on the ground doing multiple punishment pushups and got kicked in the hind end by a drill sergeant whose name was Sergeant Poisson. This was in basic training, also known as “boot camp.” I’ll say.

 

As an aside, I might as well point out that our other drill sergeants’ names were Savage and Drear. Savage, Poisson and Drear — this does not bode well for your first months fulfilling your military obligation. But I made it through and served in the National Guard for six years, achieving the rank of Specialist 4, a low rank about the same as corporal, the same rank as Napoleon (“Little Corporal”) Bonaparte in France. My crowning achievement was that I was a fast, accurate typist. The Army loves typists with shiny boots. Napoleon’s crowning achievement was that he became emperor.

 

Onward. After I left active duty while still serving on the home front, I found myself back home and jobless. My father suggested that I try journalism because I wrote what he thought were good letters home from the Army. The top editor of this newspaper at the time decided to give me a try, and I hung around for 42 years.

 

As a result, I have known enough politicians to realize that a background in journalism would not recommend one for high office like vice president. True politicians generally dislike journalists and are wary of them. True journalists are suspicious of politicians and are wary of them. This does not mix well.

 

I met a lot of politicians extant during my active journalism career including two vice presidents, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. I also covered a local appearance by another candidate for vice president, William Miller.

 

William Miller? Who, in heaven’s name….? I think it’s safe to say that I am the only person still alive who remembers him. He was Republican presidential pick Barry Goldwater’s running mate in 1964 and was taken seriously while campaigning in Duluth, dashing around the UMD campus with a full entourage of aides and press. Find out for yourself who Barry Goldwater was.

 

The way things turned out; I don’t think either one of them liked onions.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.