It was my own personal barn find, even if it wasn’t in a barn and my friend found it.
I was a sophomore in college and had finally saved up enough money via sales positions in various mall department stores to purchase my ticket to freedom and independence: my first car. It was 1981 and my father and I were not getting along whatsoever. Arguments and fistfights were common and it seemed as though the only hold he had on me was the fact that he controlled my mobility. I desperately wanted to move out of what I perceived to be intolerable living conditions, what with free rent, free food, free utilities, and one crabby old man, but I needed my own car to do it. Once such a vehicle was obtained, I could then tell the old man to piss off and dramatically pull out of the driveway once and for all and no one could stop me. That’s exactly what happened a year later, but that’s another story to be told.
The phone rang in my dorm room at around seven-thirty in the evening. It was my friend who was calling to tell me he’d been looking through the campus newspaper and saw an ad for a car in which I would be interested at a price at which I’d be even more interested, but he wouldn’t tell me much more, only assuring me that I could trust him. I hadn’t started to drink…err…study yet for the evening and took him up on his offer to meet me at the dorm gate in twenty minutes. Forty-five minutes later, his “Grabber Orange” Maverick chugged around the corner and I was off to automotive lands uncharted.
We pulled up outside a relatively modest bungalow in East Grand Forks, out of which a guy bolted, met us at the curb, and introduced himself as “Doug.” He seemed decent enough, yet there was an urgency to his manner about which I should have been suspicious. I noticed his very pregnant wife looking on through the wrought iron covered screen door. She gave me a wan smile, and then disappeared into the grey of the house interior.
“Doug” led my friend and me around the side of the bungalow, trudging through overgrown lawn, mosquitoes, and a rather pungent, moldy smell, the origin of which I couldn’t quite place. Doug was speaking incessantly, noting various aspects of the car, all except for what it was and how much it cost.
“Its original owner was a colonel in the Air Force who was stationed in California but took delivery of it in London .” “British!” I shrewdly deduced, wildly imagining the color and shape of the Jaguar, Healey, or, dare I think it, Aston waiting to be unveiled in the alley-access garage just footsteps ahead of me.
Honest Doug continued. “For whatever reason, the colonel had it undercoated upon delivery and so the undercarriage is remarkably free from rust, but its second owner was a college student in South Dakota who kind of let things go on it because he couldn’t afford the upkeep and maintenance and so it needs a little work. The engine’s got a bit of a knock in it; I think it’s a rod going, but it could be something else. I’m not much of a gearhead” stated Honest Doug. “I think one of the wheels are bent on it because I’m getting uneven wear on the tire and there’s a pretty bad vibration when you’re over fifty on the highway. The gauges are all screwy; it looks like you’re redlining when you’re in fourth at thirty miles an hour. You never know how much gas you’ve got in it unless you’ve just filled it, ‘Normal’ temp means ‘Hot’ and just a bit above ‘Cold’ means ‘Normal,’ and you’re always running at maximum oil pressure, at least according to the gauge. I think one of the mufflers is going out because it’s pretty loud and the windshield leaks pretty bad when it rains and the water runs right down the sides of the dash to where it drips into the center of your lap.”
Doug smiled and added, “I love it. I drive it every day that I can. The only reason I’m getting rid of it is that the wife and I are expecting our first and we’ve really no way to keep it. We need something more practical and, honestly, she really doesn’t get why I’ve got this car in the first place.”
The garage door creaked open, and there it was, a mysterious figure under a dusty canvas tarp upon which an enormous cat had been sleeping and now lazily yawned at the three of us. Doug shooed the cat off the tarp, and rather dramatically yanked the tarp off the car, a 1968 MGB Roadster. It was white; well, kind of antique white from the sun, and showed its age. The tires were weather-checked, the wires were greasy, the front was covered with bugs and dings, and the rockers had been spray painted black to visually camouflage the rust bubbles. All the chrome was there though, the doors, trunk, and hood all opened and closed with no binding yet with reasonably tight tolerances. The interior was complete, but both leather seats had hardened from “when the college kid owned it and left it out in the rain all the time.” Miraculously, given this circumstance, the floorboards were sound, with only a superficial layer of orange dust. A cheap “Kraco” stereo was in the radio cutout; Doug said he’d throw that in on the deal but that he also had the “MG” dummy plate if I didn’t want a radio. He also showed me the brand-new “AMCO” top he had bought, and referred to a crumpled, hard mass of felt and canvas in the trunk as “the top-strut bag and the tonneau.”
Then there was the steering wheel, a glorious, thin, corrugated rim of mahogany that had been aged by the sun into a glossy sepia tone. At its center was the “MG” logo, red and silver and black and bold and brash yet beautiful and delicate at the same time, spiked at three, six, and nine o’clock by three brushed aluminum spokes. In the fading evening light, and the incandescent bulb of Doug’s garage, the wheel looked ethereal, a splash of life and color against the black and grey field of the B’s interior.
Doug climbed in and started it on its first pull. The rod knock was definitely there, around 2500 rpm, but it didn’t sound that bad. Looked like a bit of blue smoke was tinting the alley dust, but it actually smelled kind of good. Doug switched the lights on and the yellow sealed beams splayed their dim illumination over the amber of the running lights. I could see the symmetrical red reflections on the back of the garage wall and noticed the intensity of all the lights varied directly with the revving of the motor. It was loud. It was oily. It was love. I wrote out the check. When you’re nineteen, emotion trumps sense every time.
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