......back before you could drive....... did you ever read a book called "The Red Car"?
As a 7th and 8th grader at St. Theresa's Catholic school in Phoenix, Arizona we were given a list of books appropriate for kids our age that we could order at greatly reduced prices. This attempt to get little knot heads like us to read was fairly successful, at least in my case. I would generally order a dozen books at a time and found great joy in reading them. One of those adolescent appropriate books stood out in particular however. It was about a 16-year-old kid growing up in a rural area of Colorado in the early 1950s who bought a wrecked MG-TC and set about rebuilding it in time to participate in a local SCCA Road Race. I read the book twice and it filled me with desire to own and drive a sports car someday. I was 13 years old and that volume jump started my lifelong automobile hobby.
Fast-forward to about three months ago. I was reading Peter Egan's monthly column in Road and Track magazine. The entire article was about a book he read long ago that started his lifelong love affair with British automobiles and motorcycles. He'd come across an old copy of this book and found great joy in rereading it. The name of the book was "The Red Car". His column brought back a flood of memories for me and I resolved to locate a copy of that old book. A month later, true to form, I had forgotten all about it.
Until last week when I was perusing some other automotive books on Amazon.com when what should pop up but a brand-new hardcover copy of John Stanford's 1954 classic, "The Red Car". Click.....and it was on the way. It arrived two days ago and I sat down last night and read it. As it has been 40 years since I last read it, I couldn't remember how it ended. Simple, yes. Juvenile, absolutely. But it was a lot more as well. For those of us who read it when we were very young, it's a time machine. A window back into an era when America was, in many respects, a much better place.
How much would you pay to be a young teenager again for four hours. Yesterday, my price for that experience was $15.95.
Chip
As a 7th and 8th grader at St. Theresa's Catholic school in Phoenix, Arizona we were given a list of books appropriate for kids our age that we could order at greatly reduced prices. This attempt to get little knot heads like us to read was fairly successful, at least in my case. I would generally order a dozen books at a time and found great joy in reading them. One of those adolescent appropriate books stood out in particular however. It was about a 16-year-old kid growing up in a rural area of Colorado in the early 1950s who bought a wrecked MG-TC and set about rebuilding it in time to participate in a local SCCA Road Race. I read the book twice and it filled me with desire to own and drive a sports car someday. I was 13 years old and that volume jump started my lifelong automobile hobby.
Fast-forward to about three months ago. I was reading Peter Egan's monthly column in Road and Track magazine. The entire article was about a book he read long ago that started his lifelong love affair with British automobiles and motorcycles. He'd come across an old copy of this book and found great joy in rereading it. The name of the book was "The Red Car". His column brought back a flood of memories for me and I resolved to locate a copy of that old book. A month later, true to form, I had forgotten all about it.
Until last week when I was perusing some other automotive books on Amazon.com when what should pop up but a brand-new hardcover copy of John Stanford's 1954 classic, "The Red Car". Click.....and it was on the way. It arrived two days ago and I sat down last night and read it. As it has been 40 years since I last read it, I couldn't remember how it ended. Simple, yes. Juvenile, absolutely. But it was a lot more as well. For those of us who read it when we were very young, it's a time machine. A window back into an era when America was, in many respects, a much better place.
How much would you pay to be a young teenager again for four hours. Yesterday, my price for that experience was $15.95.
Chip
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