DESERT OLDS PART ONE VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA

Writing and Photography copyright Double Dragon One Owner Collector Car Ltd. Rocket Circle image copyright Oldsmobile, GM.

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THE CAR

Nantucket Blue 1967 Cutlass Town Sedan built Dec 20, 1966 (a Tuesday) in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. 330-2bbl 250 HP, 2 speed auto 2.78:1 axle. See the history of the Cutlass and its MPG in the GAS LOGS subsection of the TRAVEL STORIES drop down menu.

Below is the cover of vol 11 number 5 in the Oldsmobile Rocket Circle magazine series. With its Technicolor Star Trek cover and Rocket logo it almost seems a spoof of the 1960s along the lines of AUSTIN POWERS, but it's the real thing. We are urged to "Discover America..." Magnus King took that advice to heart in his 1967 Cutlass as you will see in the story below!

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THE TRIP

In the 1990s Vancouver, BC still had a small town feel to it. I was twenty and feeling a bit restless. Martin and I were spinning our wheels trawling through nights of parties. We took a couple of girls to a huge rock on the English Bay beach we appropriately named ‘The Rock'. As we were finishing off Martin’s booze he became atypically animated.

Martin said, “We have to go to New Orleans.”

I said, “Ok.”

Then I asked, “Where is it?”

Martin’s synopsis employed movie shorthand, “It’s off the Gulf of Mexico. Streetcar Named Desire, Tightrope, Angel Heart, Hard Times. Think Tennessee Williams.”

I saw the blurry images these films evoked… the sensual rolling waves of air, primitive passions, heat and decay of the south… exotic… experienced like a dream or fever hallucination… or a movie.

My half drunk hazy conception stamped itself into my mind conditioning all future responses and expectations of New Orleans and the trip leading there.

“We're going to force ourselves on this trip... its destined to become a spontaneous exercise in suspension of disbelief, unrolling like a drunken tightrope walk... we shall be always and completely be in the moment and riding the wave. The Momentum set in motion today will keep us in the wind for months like gamblers rolling lucky numbers over and over.”

The girls looked confused by all this drunken raving, but Martin reeled it back in. He said,

“We need a big car to do this.”

My low paying job had gutted my finances so badly that I didn’t have a car. The rust bucket, non- running, incomplete ‘project cars’ being foisted upon me in the $500 car range were enraging. Worse than condition, was content. My eyes were affronted by a parade of hideous atrocities. The majority of $500 cars were characterless econoboxes with shrill sewing machine engines. The days of finding cheap classic era cars in want ads had morphed into a slew of cars from the disposable years.

Then our good luck began. A cutie I was going out with named Sybil called me up breathlessly,

“Hi, it’s me!  I just called an ad for a 1967 Cutlass. The seller is a truck driver in New Westminster. He bought the car a month ago to move his stuff in from Osoyoos. The car’s parking spot is expired and he’s going to sell it to the first person who shows up with five hundred! I’m coming to get you right now!”

We raced over. Sybil made quite an impression when we screeched up in her red Mustang. Sybil was cute, young, scantily clad and vivacious. She enthused about the Cutlass and talked a mile a minute. I got a great deal partly because the trucker was a nice guy, partly because of the aforementioned parking situation and mainly because of Sybil. I paid $100.00 for a rough looking, but mechanically perfect Cutlass with 132,000 miles.

The Cutlass was solid with sand scarred paint and a sun- faded interior. Sitting behind the wheel I told Sybil, 
“Think about it. This car just made it in from years out in the desert and now I’m taking it back to the desert. Imagine all the locations that have flashed through the windshield, all the people, places and emotions embedded in the fibers of this car. “

Sybil cut in, “Let’s celebrate! I’m buying! Follow my car to the oyster place.”

I called Martin from the restaurant in Stanley Park. We agreed to give notice on our apartments. Our part time jobs were so slack that leaving for an indeterminate amount of time wasn't going to cause a ripple.

Martin said, “You’ve got the car and I’ve got some money, but not enough. We need to start recruiting gas paying traveling companions.”

Sybil couldn’t go. A new girlfriend, Jocelyn was running a business and couldn't get away. Another girlfriend of mine, Augusta who had enthusiastically planned to go on the trip with us vaporized; number out of service. All that was left of her was a voodoo talisman she had bought on a business trip, coincidentally in New Orleans. Martin wound the charm around the dials of the Cutlass radio for luck.

Several other people who wanted to go ‘for sure’ didn’t. Meanwhile, Martin’s roommate skipped out on a massive debt. Martin and I dealt with the onslaught of failed plans and financial ruin crashing down around us by riding the wave like true Masters of Floating Destiny. Martin decided to delay departure long enough to get a full paycheque, and to watch Easy Rider which was my favorite film as a kid. Incredibly, Martin the movie buff had never seen it.

Martin and I took a couple of girls with us to a $2 matinee at one of the old theatres on Granville Street. Remember this was back in the 1990s when Vancouver was still a cheap place to live. Those theatres have since been replaced with big box generic stores. My excitement about the trip had caused me to learn some geography in the last few weeks. I was pleased to note that the Easy Riders took the same route to New Orleans that Martin and I were planning on.

I also discovered that a lot of the cultural references in the film were too far away in time to mean anything to our young dates. Even way back when I was a kid watching it on the late show it had seemed like a relic from a lost era. The USA onscreen that was already faded to a bare flicker of embers when I first saw the film was now stone cold, long gone. The film print running in that old theatre was ancient. It had a bluish faded tinge to it enhancing that time portal feel to the experience.

I packed my books into a friends’ attic. After insuring the car, changing the fluids, belts and hoses I was broke. Martin's last paycheque of $666.39 was all the money we had between us. We didn’t know anything about Route 66 or Hwy 666 at this point, so the coincidence was lost on us.

Martin hadn’t saved anything because of the roommate rip-off. The rest of his salary had been drained supporting Leguire, a friend who was camped out in his living room. Leguire was usually known as “Leggy” in acknowledgement of his main purpose as Martin’s “go-for”. Leggy and all of his stuff had to go back to his folks’ house in Sacramento. Martin asked Leggy if he had made any plans to get home.

Leggy never actually answers direct questions, so we will never know if he had attempted to make any arrangements or not. Leggy mumbled his standard opener,

“Well, there were some complications…” Then he faded out.

By default, Leggy was now our temporary third trip member. Leggy is a quiet, genial guy who used the trip as an opportunity to get some sleep. Leggy didn’t exactly fit into Martin’s concept of recruiting gas paying travelling companions. Leggy's expenses came out of Martin's wallet. 

We had no money but I believed in our ability to do anything just like everyone does when they are twenty years old. Our lack of preparation for this trip helped us discover things by chance, making us totally fluid in where we went and what we did. We didn’t lower ourselves to actually planning anything. Our sole prep work involved watching road movies and looking at maps.

One night we descended upon Karen’s place. She was one of my girlfriends who had a VCR and TV.  We rewatched the original “Vanishing Point”.  I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid watching the late, late, late, late, late show. As the end credits rolled I raved,

“The first thing we have to do when we hit California is drive the Cutlass randomly through the desert sand at top speed like Kowalski. Just point the car and go!”

Martin countered,

“You’ll wreck the car and strand us without any convenient hippies or prospectors to save us.”

Karen snorted, “You guys won’t even make it over the border!”

I lectured her,

“The focus of my eyes transforms my pupils into black hole gravity tunnels drawing everything to me I need, compressing and reshaping reality to suit my will. We are on a roll, in the groove and can do no wrong. Adventure and serendipity will arrive on a daily basis because I will it.”

Karen replied in mock zombie tones, “Ok. Your-will- shall- be- done.”

The next night was our send off party. Martin was upstairs making out with a girl. I slipped out for fresh air and got in the Cutlass.  It was very late and dark. The Cutlass was spacious. I reclined on the cold, creaky vinyl and looked out at the trees through the long and rectangular windshield. It hovered over a dash that gleamed in the streetlight, stretched across four feet in one long rectangle of chrome. The dimensions of the car itself were long and low, squared off.

The Cutlass is a visual symbol of the wide open future rooted in the Universal Mind of 1960s optimists. We can go anywhere; do anything in this car, just like people in the sixties believed. The future is an endless horizon. The future is going to be bigger, wider and better. Everything is possible, change the world, yourself; anything. All of the sixties expansive energy transmitted itself to me via the designs, size and the bold primary colors used to execute the car design. The 1960s motifs in cars and architecture are long and lean; form before function. The wasted space and superfluous use of metal and styling reflects the perception of abundance rooted in the 1960s culture.

The Cutlass is replete with interior space, and images of outer space itself. Even the engine is a ‘Rocket engine’ conjuring up impressions of the JFK dream of man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Cars named Galaxie, Meteor, Comet, Starfire, Jetstar flew around in the sixties. The sixties cars have devices with pseudo science age names like the Duo Phonic Stereo encapsulating the boldness of the time, striking out on new frontiers.

The letdown following the 1960s has kept the present shrinking and backward looking. Nostalgia saturated the seventies and hasn't let up since. The Cutlass is a jolt of lightning, reminding us of a daring statement from an optimistic time. Motion in this car is an antidote to the present stagnation where things just get worse and worse. People nowadays peer into a hazy tunnel that seems to be inevitably, grimly receding to a pinpoint. The promise of a widening future designed into the Cutlass negates the revised version of the future we have to live in these days.

A good road-trip needs a car like this. New cars are quieter, faster and more economical with computer controls, standard A/C and overdrive- perfect for business travel in a hurry. But for laid back running, nothing beats the big old car, which connects you to the past, and reminds you that you are having an experience every moment of the trip, not just marking time en route to a destination. The fact that it cost 100 bucks didn't hurt either.

First stop was Seattle, WA, where Martin had a friend Theo we could crash with. We had no idea that we were about to meet an incredible bunch of eccentrics there.

> Chapter 2