Taking a crisp ride back in time, back to cool
DUANESBURG — I finally got to ride in the little itty-bitty Mazda RX7 convertible sports car! It was really cool, so cool in fact, you might even be tempted to call it downright cold.
The temperature at 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, June 3, was just beginning its climb to a high of 85 degrees from an early morning low of 48 degrees. I was warned ahead of time that an additional jacket might be needed. It was, and I had it on.
I must say, however, it was a lot of fun. It instantly took me back in time to great memories that came flooding back even before I pulled the door closed and started to look around. I saw things like a real shift lever, and a clutch pedal, tachometer, and a bunch of dials and gauges that actually work and tell you stuff, which have long since been replaced by lights that are no fun to look at.
This car even had dual exhaust pipes, with mufflers that were reminiscent of the old Hollywood mufflers. Remember those? I mean, this OF was starting to feel cool and we were not even moving yet!
I felt like I had to raise my collar on my shirt, put my shades on, reach for my cigarettes, no, wait, wait — I quit smoking over 50 years ago in an effort to prolong my life; I can't put my shirt collar up because I have a jacket on in an effort to stay warm; and my really cool sideburns have now morphed into a white mariner’s beard and I wear a baseball cap with the letters OMOTM written across the front, which nobody knows what they stand for except us.
So we got going, rather than slouching down in the corner of my seat trying to look cool, I sat there, sitting on my hands, in a failing effort to keep them warm while my friend, the OF, took off, shifting way too many times as he drove through the twists and turns of the Helderberg Mountains.
But that is what you do when you have a great little sports car that looks like a sports car, sounds like a sports car, drives like a sports car, and makes you feel like the former Brazilian race car champion driver, Emerson Fittipaldi. It was a lot of fun, and the temperature warmed up enough so on the ride home I only had to sit on one hand.
A sixth eatery
We warmed up with a cup of coffee at the Chuck Wagon Diner, where you will never guess what the conversation was all about!
You guessed it. The Windowbox Café, located down in the flatlands of Slingerlands in the Stonewell Shopping Center at the intersection of routes 85 and 85A, is being added to the exclusive list of diners and cafés that OMOTM frequent for their breakfast on Tuesday morning.
This will make six diners where we talk too loud; laugh even louder; talk about cars, our health, lack of hearing; and find the tables and chairs where we will sit every time and order the same great breakfast every time without the benefit of menus, which, after the first time, our new best-friend waitress, won’t bother asking if we want one.
We will probably even be polite and say, “Thank you” the first time or two we go there before reverting to our regular form of being the grumpy OMOTM. Some of us will even leave tips!
We are looking forward to the Windowbox Café, even if it is in the flatlands but, since we have no rules, we can go anyplace we want to; we can’t vote on it because we don’t vote on anything.
Roadside hats
Under the heading of “More than you really wanted to know,” one OF, when asked about the hat he was wearing, responded with a rather lengthy explanation. He spoke about what amounts to a new hobby that he is embarking on, that of picking up hats he finds by the side of the road.
He told us of the amazing quantity and quality of hats, both old and new, that are just out there, lying along the road, just waiting to be picked up. He says they are all over the place.
He took off his hat, which he had picked up the day before, and showed us how new it was, and the obvious high quality of it. He explained it had never been run over by a truck or car. He showed us how clean it was; it had never been rained on or spent any time in a mud puddle.
He went on about how there are some Yankees baseball hats out there that are just too beat up to be bothered with and he just leaves them there. This comment bothered another OF who just happened to be wearing an old, beat-up Yankees hat. Another OF was heard to say that it was probably thrown there by a Mets fan.
At this point, the OF who first asked the question said, “That's all well and good, but all I asked was: What’s the hat about? Is it a sports team? A manufacturer? What does it stand for?”
To which our rather windy OF finally said, after proudly looking at his new-found hat again, “ I have no idea.”
Most of the rest of us with our OMOTM hats on, we know what those letters stand for, no one else does; that’s OK with us, we know. Those knowledgeable men enjoying breakfast on Tuesday morning were Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Miner Stevens, George Washburn, Michael Kruzinski, Frank A. Fuss, Wm Lichliter, Pete Whitbeck, Jake Herzog, Glenn Patterson, Joe Rack, Chuck Batcher, Russ Pokorny, Frank Dees, Robert Schanz, Al Schager, Pastor Jay Francis, Roland Tozer, Lou Schenck, Warren Willsey, Elwood Vanderbilt, Alan Defazio, Dave Hodgetts, Bob Donnelly, Paul Guiton, Gerry Cross, John Jaz, Dick Dexter, and me.