So I’m sitting at my desk at 125 N. Johnson St. in Bluffton and I’m looking at a photo of a muscle car — a bright red 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, to be exact — and I’m reminded of the only time I ever really drove a vehicle anywhere near as cool as that one.
It was the summer after my graduation from high school and I needed a set of wheels to get to my YMCA job during the summer and to make the two-hour drive to college starting in the fall.
My dad found someone selling an Oldsmobile 442 and we went to look at it and give it a test drive. The term “442” was shorthand for 4-barrel carburetor, a 4-speed manual transmission, and a dual exhaust. The carburetor was OK, as was the dual exhaust, but the 4-speed manual transmission was way too complex for an 18-year-old who, at that time in his life, had never driven a stick — a skill I have since mastered. (Oh, I love to drive a stick.) We got onto one of our city’s main thoroughfares and couldn’t get it out of first gear. As I remember, I stopped the car at a stoplight and my dad and I switched places out of a sense of self-preservation. We took the car back to its owner and I remember my dad saying that it was a really nice machine but it was going to take me a while to learn how to drive a manual transmission.
I eventually got another Olds. It was a Delmont 88, much tamer than the 442. Given the fact that I was going to be a freshman at a Christian college, it was probably all for the better. You know, image and all of that.
Calendars are all about remembering things. The one I’m looking at, acquired from a business in town (“Please, take one. Take as many as you want”), not only reminds me of my failed attempted to shift gears in traffic, but reminds me of a lot of other things, too.
The primary reason I have a calendar on the side of my cubicle is to remind me when I have “desk” duties. There are three of us who put out the paper, by which I mean we design Page 1 and the interior pages, write the headlines, and get ’er done by 1 a.m. (thereabouts) so it can be printed in a timely fashion. I did today’s edition and I’ll do tomorrow’s edition. Since there are three people who put the paper together — me, Jessica Bricker, and Glen Werling — each of us takes two editions per week. I’ll do it again until Wednesday evening, Jan. 12.
This calendar doesn’t have a lot of extraneous information on it, but it did tell me that Jan. 2 was a holiday in Scotland. I don’t know why, but it is. Jan 1 was New Year’s Day and Jan. 17 will be when Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed. Oh yeah, on Jan. 9, the moon will be in its first quarter.
The overall purpose for a calendar is much the same as the photo of the 1970 Chevelle SS — it reminds me of stuff. I have an eye appointment on Tuesday. I have a foot appointment on Feb. 11. I probably will have an appointment concerning a body part or two between those things coming up soon. (It is true — after a certain age you do two things: You go to doctors’ appointments and you talk about doctor’s appointments.)
Since everybody in the world now has a smart phone, including me, I guess that theoretically I don’t need this calendar that will show me a succession of muscle cars. (Coming up next month, by the way, is a Chevy Bel Air with an engine too big for its hood. That’s the only way a Bel Air could be a muscle car, I guess.)
I’ve got a listing of my oldest grandchildren’s basketball games and I’m trying to decide if the Cubs will be worth watching in 2022. They certainly weren’t worth watching in 2021. If things look better this year, I’ll try to schedule a trip to Wrigley or maybe to Cincinnati to see them down there. I’ll try to fit them in between doctor’s appointments.
I’ll keep track on my muscle car calendar. I wonder: Will a 442 will be on display in a few months?
daves@news-banner.com
