In 1969, I was 16 and working at the Shell gas station on the corner of 28th and Sandy Blvd., Portland Oregon. The station, soon after my hiring, became a place where a select bunch of us guys from the neighborhood would hang out. Arnold, my boss, didn’t seem to mind. He was an old guy that kept the station for something to do. I don’t think he needed the money. His wallet sure looked to be in good shape. He loved to pull out his bulging pocket book and rifle through the bills looking for the smaller denominations to put in the till to replace the twenties, of course right in front of me and my buddies. We were impressed.
My boss also had a great little Chevy that he bought brand spanking new in 1962. It was a red 2 door Impala with a 325 horse 327 cubic inch motor. I don’t remember ever seeing a 325 horse 327 except maybe in a Corvette but not in an Impala. He used to wash it every Saturday and wax it regularly as well. It was in great shape when he traded it in for a “gasp,” 1969 Ford Galaxy station wagon. He was getting old, I guess, but then he partially redeemed himself when one day he showed up with an Olds Toronado with a big 455 cubic inch monster under the hood.
I loved working at that station. There was always something going on. My buddies would come and use the hoist and the lube bay to work on their cars while we all drank sodas from the pop machine and smoked cigarettes, like the cool guys we thought we were.
The muscle car craze was peaking and 1969 had some of the greatest cars ever coming out of Detroit. The guys and I didn’t have the money for one of those babies but we sure liked watching them come and go. Sandy Boulevard was a very popular street for drag races. The stop lights were spaced about a quarter mile or so giving a guy a chance to get his car up to a nice death-defying speed before slamming on the brakes and sliding, hopefully, to a stop at the next light.
There were tons of Chevelles and Roadrunners and quite a few GTOs and 442s and of course Mustangs ripping up and down the street. We were strictly a Chevy gang with not much use for Fords but in 1969 I have to admit that I did have a bit of a crush on those little Boss 302s. I never said anything to the guys at the time but boy they were a sweet little ride. Actually I really liked the Torino’s too and of course the Cobras but they didn’t count. The Cobras were an entirely different breed of car.
The Roadrunners seemed to own the streets as near as I could discern. There was always an L78 396 around or a 440 six pack or Hemi Cuda or big bad 427 Corvette but you didn’t see the owners of those prize possessions tearing up the streets like you did the more entry-level rigs like the Roadrunners and such. Most of us guys had old cars pieced together with whatever go fast modification type parts we could find cheap. Usually, our rides were loud and smoky. No match for a brand new 383/335 horsepower Roadrunner with tons of torque and low gears.
I remember watching many a race from the confines of the shell gas station. The cars would come screeching to a stop at the light, the roadrunners usually in front by three car lengths. As near as I could tell those Roadrunners seemed to have a really good pull in third gear which would usually do the trick.
We would have our races too. I would occasionally get the guys to line their clunkers against the side wall of the station’s large lot about 5 abreast. Then I would stand at the pumps, drop my hand and off they would go burning their tires and racing through the two islands. Good thing we weren’t a real busy station.
My buddy Rick had a hopped up 55 four-door Chevy that was jacked up a bit with a noisy little 283 and three on the floor. It was the fastest of our cars at the time and boy did he ever drive it hard. He loved to fly into the station, racing for the lube bay, slamming on his breaks at the last instant, stopping right over the hoist with his left front tire perfectly placed on the metal tire liner upper thing on the concrete floor. He was really good at it, except for the time when his breaks failed and he ran right into the workbench and sent all the radiator hoses and tires and everything that was on the wall flying. The boss happened to be there that day and he didn’t think it was all that funny, but we sure did.
We goofed around a lot but I actually got a little work done as well. I used to pride myself on my salesmanship. All the oil and windshield washer and accessories had little Shell stickers on them. The white ones were worth a dime and the yellow ones a nickel. Every time you sold one of the accessory items you would take the sticker off and place it on the chart next to your name and eventually you would get paid. I was way out in front of everyone else. Every now and then if the guys were watching I’d show them how it was done. Whenever someone in a brand new Cadillac or fancy Chrysler would come in I would grab a can of valve cleaner, tell the guys, “watch this,” and proceed to sell it to the customer. It was only thirty-five cents for a small can of “prevention and peace of mind.” If you put the valve cleaner in the gas tank it would help prevent sludge from forming on the valves but if you dumped it in the carburetor while it was running it would give them a “quick thorough cleaning.” At least that is what I would tell them and for only thirty-five cents it was like a “ton of prevention for way less than an ounce of cure.” So, of course, the customers in their big caddies were concerned for their cars welfare and would say, “Sure.” Then I would go about filling up their car, washing their windshield and checking their oil. Once under the hood, I would dump the contents of the can of valve cleaner into the carburetor while the engine was not running, clamp the air cleaner back together, close the hood, get my money from the customer, thank him or her very politely and then watch the fun. They would start up their beautiful huge luxury yacht and head for the street. Usually, about the time they pulled onto the boulevard, the valve cleaner would start to do its business. Then a gorgeously thick and super white dense cloud of smoke would come roaring out of the exhaust pipes leaving a very thick smoke screen behind. The guys would start rolling around the place laughing their butts off. Man, that was fun. Needless to say, we didn’t get a lot of repeat business.
1969 was also the year I bought my first car. This guy pulls into the station one night with a beautiful huge white 2 door 1957 Chrysler Imperial with giant wings and the fake spare tire thing-a-ma-jig on the trunk. He was looking to sell it and when I saw that huge Chrysler Fire Power Hemi under the hood I was more than a little intrigued. He got a couple of bucks worth of ethyl which in those days was good for about six gallons and told me he wanted three hundred bucks for it and then proceeded to smoke the tires up as he left the station. I wanted that car. The next time he came in we struck up a deal and that Imperial was mine.
Most kids back then had a thing for 55-57 Chevys. I was no exception. It’s just that I was a sucker for a Hemi. That Imperial was a real cruiser. It had power windows, power steering, power brakes, Push button automatic transmission, which got me into trouble a couple of times when I tried to speed shift, a 6 way power seat, a great radio with front and back speakers, comfy plush seats with lots of room, lots of chrome and the biggest V8 engine I had ever seen.
When I got the Imperial I had never driven on the streets before. In fact, I had only driven a car once in a parking area at the beach with no cars around. I didn’t have anyone at home to teach me so I just bought the Imperial and after a few brushes with telephone poles and a couple of parked cars, I was on my way.
My Imperial wasn’t real quick off the line. As near as I could tell from the manuals laying around the station it had 325 horsepower. That old boat was a tad bit heavy but once I got it going look out. I beat a 67 high performance 289 Fairlane with no problem. I was tooling along about forty when this guy in a nice little Fairlane started to get frisky so I hit the gas and he had no chance. That Hemi had some soup.
The Imperial came and went and we had several pass around cars amongst us, including a 51 four-door Lincoln that I wish we would have hung on to. It was huge with suicide doors, tons of chrome and a big flathead V8 that had some issues, and an automatic transmission. My buddy got it for a hundred bucks. It had vinyl covering the seats so we took it off and exposed the original perfectly preserved plush cloth interior. It was beautiful. The paint was a bit faded but we polished up that classic and cruised the gut getting lots of looks. That was quite a car. There was a 53 Chevy pickup that was parked at the station that I learned to drive a stick shift with and an old 59 Hillman with a four speed column shifter that my buddy left with me when he got his 58 thunderbird. Then somewhere in there, I bought my 59 Borgward 2 door station wagon for fifteen bucks. We painted it six different colors and drove it without a clutch. It was a death trap but a lot of fun.
Those were the days. I turned 17 and my mom signed for me and I joined the Marine Corps. When I got out 3 years later everything had changed. The so-called muscle cars coming out of Detroit were disgusting lightweight imitations. You couldn’t get a new car that came close to a 14-second quarter mile anymore. All my buddies had scattered. My boss Arnold had retired and the Shell gas station was now a used car lot. Eventually, I bought a 67 Chevelle SS 396 with a four speed and positraction that helped to take the sting out of the times.
I’m now a father of ten kids with six grandkids and I still yearn for those long lost days of muscle on the streets of Portland. Not to fear. I’m working on a plan that will get me an old beater to stick in my shed that I can turn into something loud, probably smoky, and will fry the tires off. Wish me luck.