“See the U.S.A., in your Chevrolet”

I’ve been having an e-mail exchange with good old Allison Cooper.
Allison Cooper is one of my vaunted Ne’er-do-Wells, and the exchange comes out of her reading my “Old Greenie” blog, wherein I say our Faithful Hunda was the best car we ever had.
Allison has a Honda herself, a Civic, and apparently thinks the world of it.
Allison became a reporter during my employ at the mighty Mezz, and is now a Managing Editor.
I suppose this means to a large extent she determines what’s in the newspaper.
Although I know how it is. Titles get bandied about to go with salary increases and/or promotions, although what usually happens is you take on more grunge work — the actual production of the newspaper.
I never actually paginated the newspaper, just processed reams of copy that ended up getting published.
I guess my title was “Typist,” although I rarely did typing.
I was more an Editorial Assistant.
What I did was computer tricks to generate reams of copy.
Columns and calendars and honor-rolls and weather information and stock information.
Stuff got parceled according to what you could do, and everyone shared the load.
To me it was a happy ship.
My writing was earlier, and didn’t involve pulling teeth from local politicos.
But that went away as I did ever more computer tricks, including the newspaper’s web-site.
A reporter would try to bend a story out of some tub-thumping politico with an agenda. (Seems Conservatives were worst at this.)
That was Allison, and she was good at it.
Allison belonged to a writers’ group at the newspaper, a defacto organization of would-be writers.
I wasn’t part of this, and wasn’t hurt by it.
One morning Allison came over to jaw with Marcy about their next meeting, and the banter began.
“I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” I said; “but when it comes to writing, I just pick up my shovel and start shoveling.”
“Sure; easy as pie for you, Grady,” Marcy said.
Yeah, I guess so; I’ve come to conclude.
My 12th-grade English teacher was the first to point it out.
“All it is is slingin’ words together,” I said to him.
“But you can do that better than most. You’re a natural,” he answered.
My first actual writing was in college, a biweekly humor column in the college newspaper during my senior year.
I fell into it. It was secondary; there was a higher-billed humor column.
But I was told what I was doing was better.
Years after graduating I was trying to freelance sportscar racing photography, and a small weekly newspaper in Rochester wanted to start sportscar racing coverage. An owner had a Porsche (“poor-sha”).
They wanted to know if I knew anyone that could do it, and I suggested myself.
And so developed three summers of biweekly sportscar coverage; although it wasn’t always racing. Often it was a feature, like rallying, autocross, or a car-show.
But it was a hairball. Too much navel-picking; i.e. fiddling for correct grammar and usage.
Doing so could kill good writing.
Later I went to driving bus — a real job, although stupid and meaningless — and after about 15 years I fell into doing a voluntary union newsletter.
I didn’t have time for navel-picking; I had to rely on my ability to write, which was fine — way better than my employers, who I drove crazy.
But then the stroke ended that; ending my career driving bus.
I recovered well enough to do an unpaid internship at the mighty Mezz, and that turned into a job; grunt-work at first.
They were about to lay me off when the newspaper computerized; but I got enough of a handle on computer tricks for the Executive Editor to continue my employ. —The guy fixing to lay me off was fired; although not because of me.
I was part-time at first, and my income was limited by Social Security Disability (SSDI). But the Executive Editor wanted me to do more work, so offered to make up my SSDI, if I could go full-time. This was in effect doubling my wage-rate.
Seemed doable, so I did it. I always appreciated that that Executive Editor had so much moxie.
I fell into doing the newspaper’s web-site, and developed computer-tricks to make doing it a little easier.

Herewith, my exchange with Allison:
-Allison: “I love my Honda too!!!
5 years old, 50,000 miles (that’s with transporting the teenagers everywhere all the time). 4 new tires, oil changes, that’s it.”
-Me: “STORY TIME
RE: ‘The Faithful Hunda.........’
-Original rim-protectors replaced almost immediately; Goodyear GT+4s at first, the tires the N.Y. state troopers used. Second set of GT+4s when first set wore out. Wife pulled out in front of a motorbike, and the motorbike hit the left-rear door. Knocked the car out of alignment (I guess). Drove it to West Virginia, and wore the front tires to the cord. Had Ontario Honda align it, and purchased tire-set #3; the tire Goodyear replaced the GT+4s with. —I always buy quality tires; in this case they made it a much better car.
-Bought the car at Ide Honda. Had them align it and they screwed it up royally. Aligned it myself — I still have the tools. Started doing Ontario Honda instead of Ide. When they aligned it, they didn’t screw it up.
-Three batteries; first tanked at about 60,000 miles. Battery #2 at 130,000 miles. Replaced all the batteries myself — all Honda parts. —CR-V still on original battery; six years old.
-Replaced distributor-cap and ignition wiring when it got rotten (maybe 90,000). —Supposedly that is no longer a problem. Everything is now guaranteed for 100,000 miles.
-Did all oil/filter changes myself. Honda now has free oil-changes every three months. Since the oil-filter on the CR-V is a guaranteed skinned hand, Ontario Honda gets the job.
But the main thing is ‘The Faithful Hunda’ was a CAR; the CR-V a truck.
Neither have ever been stuck. The CR-V is electronic All-Wheel-Drive, but the Faithful Hunda was VISCOUS COUPLING (“viss-cuss”). When I was shopping around, that Honda dealer on West Henrietta Road called it “vicious.” (I walked out; laughter alert.)
-Allison: “Love it. I won’t ever buy anything else.”
-Me: “Holtz Honda. (I remember a Pontiac.)”
-Allison: “When I took my Pontiac to Ontario Honda to trade it in on my Civic, the interior lights were blinking and the door-is-ajar bell was constantly ringing, and it overheated at stop lights longer than five seconds.
And I had to climb over the gearshift to exit from the passenger door.”
-Me: “Two things......
—A) You may have got that Civic before I retired; which was late December of 2005. I just don’t remember it.
—B) RE: The travails of owning a General Motors product:
-1993 Chevrolet Astrovan, bought to placate Dinah Shore: “See the U.S.A., in your Chevrolet. America is waiting for your call. MMMMMM-WAH!”
(Our family had all Chevys.)
140,000 miles, by which time it was utterly tanked.
Drove it to the mighty Mezz many times; almost t-boned a full-size Chevy van in Bloomfield, driven by an utterly stupefied Granny.
It rode like a pig; the shock-absorbers were original.
Most frustrating of all were two things:
-1) The air-conditioning always leaked off its charge, so that it no longer cooled. —In summer it was an oven.
-2) The glove-compartment door had to be jimmied with a crowbar. The lock no longer worked. Being so bent, it no longer held the door shut, and there was a switch activated by the open door that turned on an inside light. I had the door taped shut with duct-tape (a use advocated by the American Duct-Tape Council), but the stickum on the duct-tape had become so filthy, the door would flop open.
Here I am driving down 5&20 and that stupid door would flop open.
There are other travails:
-a) A front torsion-bar broke. The torsion-bars were what served at springs. I drove that sucker all the way to Honeoye Falls on the rubber bump-stop, where Molye replaced both torsion-bars.
-b) The “Check-engine” light kept coming on. Coming back from D.C. at 94,000 miles it kept glaring at me. Its coming on seemed to be a function of how hard I drove it. —Hoselton (where I bought it — have ya ever been inside the Chevy portion of Hoselton? The floor looks like it survived a magnitude-six earthquake) was unable to diagnose the problem.
It was Molye that scienced out the problem; a faulty oxygen-sensor in the exhaust. That was after it hardly ran at all; so poorly I sideswiped a mailbox and scratched the paint.
-c) The oil-pump was outside the engine, attached to the block. The gasket that seals it broke and it began leaking oil profusely.
Molye diagnosed it correctly; their parts-guy was one of the best I’ve ever met.
He had seen the problem before, apparently, and they replaced the gasket. —No more leak after that.
-d) Like all cars now it had a lockout that wouldn’t allow ya to put it in gear lesson ya had your foot on the brake. It was an el-cheapo solenoid activated by the same circuit that shut off your krooze if ya hit the brake.
The stupid solenoid hung up twice, and wouldn’t let me put it in gear. Ya could unhang it if ya pulled it with your toe just so.
The second time was at the Auto-Train depot in Lorton, VA where ya were turning over your car for some stranger to load.
I was afraid I’d hafta toe that stupid switch for the stranger to load the van.
I liked it, but the Toyota Sienna we now have is much better. (Which begs the question, why are the Japs so much better at making cars than General Motors?)”

A little explanation here:

This Dinah Shore song was my siren-song during the ‘50s.
It posits the pleasant dream-world available to Chevrolet-owners.
No matter that the cars pictured (a ‘53 Chevy) were turkeys.
I learned how to drive in a ‘53 Chevy, and the reason I bought the Chevrolet Astrovan was partly to fulfill the dream of Dinah Shore.
About 1950 or so my father bought a used ‘41 Chevy from some guy in our church. It looked to be in excellent shape, and the ‘41 Chevy is one of the most popular used cars of all time.
Shortly after we bought it we went to gigantic Rohrer (“ROAR-errr”) Chevrolet on Admiral Wilson Boulevard outside Camden, NJ, and went out back into the shop-area. I was about six years old.
I immediately noticed a large Texaco star on a wall in the shop.
It was one of them shining moments. My father had recently begun employ with Texaco, and we had just bought a Chevrolet.
All was right with the world.
Who woulda ever thought back then General Motors would eventually declare bankruptcy?
And pay no head to Dinah and her “nothing will beat her.....”
A Ford would put Chevrolet on-the-trailer. —The ‘53 Chevy (pictured in the ad) was indeed a turkey.
It took the Chevrolet Small-Block V8, in the 1955 model-year, to make that line truthful.
And Rohrer Chevrolet is gone.

• The “Ne’er-do-Wells” are an e-mail list of everyone I e-mail my stuff to.
• “The Faithful Hunda” is our 1989 Honda Civic All-Wheel-Drive station-wagon, by far the BEST car we’ve ever owned, now departed (replaced by our CR-V). (Called a “Hunda” because that was how a fellow bus-driver at Transit [Regional-Transit-Service in Rochester, where I once worked] pronounced it.) —The “CR-V” is our 2003 Honda CR-V SUV.
• The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over three years ago. Best job I ever had.
• RE: “Paginated.......” —Our newspaper pages were “paginated” in a computer using Quark software. —The page-editor would select stories to run, usually from Associated Press or locally written, or columns, etc. I had processed.
• “Marcy” is my number-one Ne’er-do-Well — she was the first I was e-mailing stuff to. Marcy and I worked in adjacent cubicles at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired.
• “Grady” was my nickname at the Messenger newspaper. See blurb.
• “Rallying” is low-level sportscar competition over public roads, trying to hit time-points exactly. —“Autocross” is one car at a time through a twisting course, usually in a parking-lot. The fastest car wins.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993; ending my 16&1/2 year career of driving transit bus. (From 1977 to 1993 I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY.)
• “5&20” is the main east-west road (a two-lane highway) through our area; State Route 5 and U.S. Route 20, both on the same road. 5&20 is just south of where we live.
• “Honeoye (‘HONE-eee-oy’) Falls” is the nearest town to where we live in western New York, a rural town about five miles away. “Molye” (“mahl-YAY”) and “Hoselton” (“hahz-ul-TIN”) Chevrolet (now Hoselton auto-mall; they also sell Toyota and Nissan); and “Ide” (“eyed”) Honda. “Ontario Honda” is the Honda dealer in nearby Canandaigua.
• The most popular used cars of all time are: -a) the 1941 Chevy; -b) the 1957 Chevy; and -c) the 1964 Chevy.
• “Camden” is across the river from Philadelphia, essentially an extension of Philadelphia into south Jersey.
• “On-the-trailer” is an old drag-racing term. (Drag-racing is standing-start to finish over a paved, flat two-lane quarter-mile drag-strip. —The first car to finish wins.) —The losing car gets put back “on-the-trailer” that brought it in.