I can still see that oily black pillar of smoke TOWERING above that ship!

This nation is DOOMED!

The other night (Wednesday, January 8th, 2014) I happened to be watching the national TV-news.
They were covering our recent cold-snap, how it caused numerous closures and flight-cancellations.
Then they interviewed New York City cab-drivers, who noted their carries had gone up quite a bit.
As an intro they showed New York City cabs cruising the streets.
They were Toyota Camrys. (Gasp!)
Where were the Crown-Vics, the Ford Crown-Victoria sedans?
I can still see that oily black pillar of smoke TOWERING above that ship! (The battleship Arizona afire after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.)
Toyotas as cabs? The Japs won.
After my stroke back in ’93, when I hadn’t been cleared to drive yet, I had to depend on cabs to get me to outpatient stroke rehab.
The cabbies were independents driving for Cardinal-Cab.
United Way was paying the cab-fare.
All the cabs were variations of General Motors’ full-size rear-drive sedan introduced in 1976, a downsized full-size GM V8 sedan.
I remember a gold Delmont-88, a Buick Estate-wagon, and quite a few Chevys. My first cab was an old Chevy police-cruiser stripped of its lights and siren. It rode like a truck.
Its driver was always playing some motor-mouth deejay I couldn’t stand.
The only non-GM cab I remember was an old Dodge Aspen police-car, that also rode like a truck.
Later in my rehab, a lady got into the cab-business by underpricing Cardinal. Her cab was a full-size rear-drive Mercury Monarch, essentially the Ford Crown-Vic rebadged.
She loved it. She called it her “sled.” It was a good snow-car.
She still had the gray Delmont-88 she started with, but her son drove that.
That Delmont-88 was replaced with a first-generation Ford Taurus. It used less gas than the full-size GM V8 sedans.
But she wasn’t about to give up her beloved sled.
So what are they drivin’ now?
Toyotas? (Gasp!)
Admitted ’93 is over 20 years ago, and I’ve tilted toward buying Japanese instead of Chevrolet.
It’s all about dependability. I had a Chevrolet, and it lobbed curveballs at me. It always started and ran, but needed occasional shop-work. My Jap cars were never in the shop.
But seeing those New York cabbies driving Toyotas is disconcerting.
This country is doomed. General Motors is doomed.
Next thing ya know I’ll be buying a Mitsubishi.
“Mitsubishi?” a friend asked. “Weren’t they the manufacturers of the Japanese Zero?”
While working at the Messenger newspaper I befriended the press-room superintendent; a car-guy like me.
He volunteered as a trackside safety-worker at Watkins Glen Race-Course, so he worked their annual NASCAR race.
I asked him what he thought of Toyota invading the NASCAR series.
It didn’t phase him a bit.
To him it was the drivers that mattered; to me it was the cars.
As first founded, NASCAR was a venue for racing American stock-cars: Fords and Chevrolets and Plymouths. —And Dodge and Pontiac and Oldsmobile.
It stayed that way a long time, even though the racecars became non-stock, and various competitors, like Hudson, disappeared.
Even though the cars weren’t stock any more, they still were Chevrolets and Fords and Plymouths.
The car might no longer be a stock Chevrolet, but the motor was Chevrolet.
The manufacturers want to win too.
If they did, they sold more cars, particularly to would-be speed-demons.
But then Toyota entered the fray.
I can still see that oily black pillar of smoke TOWERING above that ship!
What will seal it for me is when Ontario County Sheriff retires its Crown-Vic police-cruisers.
When I see an Ontario County dippity outside on my road shootin’ radar from his Camry, it will be all over.

• The “Messenger” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over seven years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• “Ontario County” is the county I live in.
• Actually the police-cruisers Ontario County is replacing their Crown-Vics with are Fords and Chevrolets.