Gas-1964

I remember those times with gas wars down to .17 per gallon. I graduated high school in '65. Man, those were the times of the real muscle cars. My first car in college was a '57 Chevy, 4-door sedan and my second was the '64 Chevy. Gotta love 'em.
In High School, you could go on a date, have something to eat, pay for a movie, and put some gas in Dad's car and have some change from a $5 dollar bill.
Those were the days.........but....we considered it "them trying times" back then. :)
Thanks for the trip down memory lane Dave.
Lou
 
That takes me back also Lou. Cokes were $.05 out of a vending machine and you could feed dollar bills into a gas pump and purchase high test for $.19 a gallon. Dad had a 7.5 Scott Atwater that we would take down to the landing and put on any boat that was tied up and not half sunk. We'd fish for bream and crappie till we ran out of bait or just got too hot and tired. Go home and clean the fish which Mom would then fry (with no complaints). For desert we'd have ice cold watermelon. We probably didn't realize how wonderful that all was. The fall when I was 15 was also about the time I killed my first "duck" awing. A lovely Hooded Merganser which I cleaned, Mom fried and my younger brother and I tried to eat. That was the most foul thing I had ever tried to eat until I got several years older. If I had had more than a single barrell gun at the time There is no telling how many I would have shot and tried to eat. Halcyon days for sure. Dad is now 91 years old and we still reminisce about those fishing trips. Dad wasn't a duck hunter but he did take us squirrel, rabbit and deer hunting but those are tales for another time.
Thanks for spurring those memories,
Harry
 
I remember the cokes at that price, along with Cherry Cokes and Chocolate Cokes...Sodas & the like. I worked in a Soda Fountain in the local Pharmacy my Soph. thru Senior year of High School. Way too much fun and that's where the girls could be found too. Way cool!

My Dad never duck hunting but he definitely got me into hunting and fishing and it's been........down hill ever since. :0 Now I manufac. duck boats, decoys and all that other cool stuff. www.lockstockbarrell.com Not many guys get to do what they love and love what they do. I'm in the middle of the best times of my life right now & it keeps getting gooder. :) I've gotten both my boys (Brian-37 & Patrick-24) into hunting and fly fishing (& fishing in general). Brian has had his 200 ton Captain's license for years and began first mating for Captain's (fishing) since he was 13 years old. We've always said that I taught him to fish and he's teaching me HOW to fish. :)
Patrick works full time for me and hunts and fly fishes too. There's nothing quite as cool as hunting and fishing with your kids.
Lou
 
It's funny, but if you called a guy a Soda Jerk now, you'd probably get punched. Being a Soda Jerk back then was about the coolest job a guy could find. It was easy work, paid half-way decent wages and the Soda Fountaine were real "Chick" magnets! A littel extra scoop of ice cream or extra hot fudge on a sundae and look out....it could turn into good chance of a date with her!

Only trouble was.......it often worked too good and 3 girl friends could show up at the Fountain at the same time.......YIKES!

As for the cars: my all time two favorites was a white pearl-escent '57 Impala 2 door. raised in the back, dumped in the front, chopped and shaved with a BIG engine and rat-tat-tat pipes.

The other was the same done to a Canary Yellow '32 Ford Duece 2 door Roadster with a big Blown engine and 12" Slicks in the back.

A high school buddy Ron Davis bought a cherry '56 Ford P/U with the Custom cab and we tricked it out until there was few machines that could beat it. Friday nights would find us cruising Hawthone Blvd. from the "Wich Stand" south to the A&W on 132nd Street & Hawthorne Blvd. which was about a 12 mile cruise through the cities of Inglwood and Hawthorne.

There were two extremely HOT gals (Tina & Erlina) that could be found there almost every Friday and Saturday nite. Tina has an extremely FAST Pink '57 T-Bird. They could beat all but the best in a sigle-to-signal drag. Tina & Erlina's standard deal was......"if you beat us we'll go out with you"or something similar to that.

My buddy figured we could beat them if we put some slicks on the '56 Ford P/U. To make a long story longer, we raced them one night and beat them and we spent a lovely eveing walking around teh La Brea Tar Pits (google it up!) if yoiu want to know what they are.

Now you have to keep in mind that the Beach Boys lived right down the street from the A&W and they were really getting big about this same time. One night Dennis Wilson (drummer) was hanging out with Ron Davis and I. We were cruising looking for a race and here's comes the famous Pink '57 T-Bird. They see us and tell us to pull over, we do and Erlina jumps out of the T-Bird and runs back to give my buddy Ron her phone number (she & Ron must have got along pretty well at the Tar Pits) I did not fair so well as all I got was a wave from Tina.

Now Dennis knew about the two gals and after Ron and I told him about our race with them Dennis said "Wow that was Cool". A few months later The Beach Boys acme out with their latest album and I guess our story had stuck with Dennis becaus one of the cuts on that album was the song....................

.............FUN, FUN, FUN, (Until your daddy takes your T-Bird Away)


And now you know the REST of the STORY as they say.

Dennis and I were good friends right up until his tragic death. Somewhere around here I have some old 8MM movies of he and I catching Bonita from hi sboat in Kings Harbor (Redondo Beach, CA.) Dennis was the only one out of the Beach Boys who enjoyed, hunting & fishing. I remember teh morning he called me from his mansion in Benedict Canyon when he had caught his first raccoon in a trap I showed him how to set, he was like a school kid over it.

I still like to crank the volume up when when their Hot Rod songs come on. All those songs like "Little Duece Coup" and "409" came from right off of the A&W on Hawthorne Blvd. Just a couple of blocks away from their beloved "Hawthorne High School".

Yes, those were some FUN, FUN, FUN times back then.

Dave
 
I was just commenting to my wife after watching a movie where some kids were hot rodding a car, that around here you do not see kids working on cars anymore.

In high school I ran a 57 two door hardtop chevy, blaze orange. My uncle and some friends won a division in Bakersfield, CA in 1969, and when they decided to make another engine, the hot little 327 small block went into the 57. Only problem was, a bright orange street car kept my mother well informed of my whereabouts, as everyone recognized the car.
 
so sikorski assuming you got you license at the age of sixteen, you would be 26 correct? i didnt think you were that young. your pictures just dont do you justice ;)

this thread really gives me an idea how OLD you guys are hehe. my gramps has a stock restored 57 bel air four dour for sale for 12k i think if anyone is interested in getting back to their boyhood.


eddie
 
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I remember filling up from empty on less than 5 bucks..and it was premium. First car was a 66 Malibu convertable with a 283 4 speed that I put the rod through the pan..bought a 65 Biscayne and pulled the 327 out of it and put in the Malibu..put that rod through the oil pan too..by this time I had 450 bucks in it so saved my money and bought a 69 Malibu with a 350 4 speed..the oil pickup vibrated loose and the dealer stood behind it. I knew the mechanic and he got me a 350 350hp block, a corvette 327/350hp cam and other little goodies. Man that thing would hook them up and still got 17-20mpg depending on how I tickled the pedal. My right hand man now has a 66 Nova with a 327 in it that feels like a takeoff in the space shuttle.
 
Remember how gas "shot up" to almost 50 cents a gallon in 1974 and we had to wait in line to get 5 gallons?
 
Being a Soda Jerk was the coolest job......next to being a life guard (those guys really got the chicks but only during the summer). Jerks got the chicks year around. :)
I still have 2 commercial malt mixers by Hamilton-Beach. One is the single head model and the other is a very cool, 3-head model. To this day, when relatives come over, they want home made malts. Way too cool.

Wow Dave, friends with a Beach Boy...way cool. I loved their stuff. I think we grew up in the best music era ever. We had the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, Wooly Bully, Chris Montez (sp)/etc...it was the dancin', beach, hot rod, surfin' era. I was on tv about every other week during my senior year on the Dick McKay Show. It was Grand Rapids version of Dick Clark. My buddy, Dave, was in charge of getting dancers from our school and I knew girls at a couple of the neighboring girls schools so.....I had an "in" for most of those dance gigs.

We used to surf on Lake Michigan during storms. That was the only way we could get enough surf to actually ....surf. Lake Michigan & Grand Haven & North Shore Beaches was "our West Coast".

Our Class Reunions are tons of fun though we can't quite dance as long as before with the Pony, Mash Potato, Twist (that always got me),....etc...etc. Too much fun.
Lou
 
Dave, Lou and all...
Funny timing, but I was just telling my young son how six guys could fit into one car pretty easily in the early 1960's, and go to the library or attend a lecture. But I bet you can remember running low on gasoline while cruising and "passing the hat" for each guy to chip in 25 cents...to buy 6 or 7 gallons of gas. And the attendant pumped it for you!

And I really disliked to see the big bench front seat replaced with two buckets and a metal console.

It's psychologically tough to recall the cars I have had, and I kick myself for selling/ trading them. If only I had more money then and a really big heated warehouse, I never would have let them go!

Great trip. Thanks!
 
Wow you and Dave had some fine rides ! Best I could muster back in the day was a 61 biscayne with a 292 in line 6. That short did have a wide back seat and a great radio.
Later on dude,
Harry
 
Rich,
Yup, I've sold more guns and cars than I want to remember and I kick myself now for each sale but...at the time, I needed the money.

When my wife, Anne, & I were in college (unmarried at the time) I had a '57 chevy and she had a '64 Impala. I then put my '57 aside (rubbed a hole in trans line and was going through 7 quarts of fluid every 15 miles) and bought a '64 Chevy also. Wow. I had bought the '57 for $300 and sold it for 2 complete sets of SCUBA gear in '69...which was a great deal at the time. Once we graduated, my wife's Dad took away here '64 and traded it in and got her a '68 Chevy Camaro, Rally Sport with 327 CID for a graduation present. We put 165,000 miles on that puppy. When it died (though I had rebuilt the motor at 137,000) I sold the motor, front end clip and the complete interior. The rest of the car, we cut up with a torch and put it out for trash pickup.....doh. When I took the duct tape off the windshield and back windows...they both fell out of the car. They were known for that rusting problem.
In my senior year of HS, one of my buddies bought a '65 Mustang Fastback GT, 289 cubes, 271 hp, 4 on the floor, posi rear end.............and it was RED. What a screamer. Way too much fun.
Another buddy had the '64 or '65 GTO.......mean machine.
Those were fun times.
Lou

Dave, Lou and all...
Funny timing, but I was just telling my young son how six guys could fit into one car pretty easily in the early 1960's, and go to the library or attend a lecture. But I bet you can remember running low on gasoline while cruising and "passing the hat" for each guy to chip in 25 cents...to buy 6 or 7 gallons of gas. And the attendant pumped it for you!

And I really disliked to see the big bench front seat replaced with two buckets and a metal console.

It's psychologically tough to recall the cars I have had, and I kick myself for selling/ trading them. If only I had more money then and a really big heated warehouse, I never would have let them go!

Great trip. Thanks!
 
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