All because of a once-in-a-lifetime car

A recent discussion with Sandpoint pals about favorite cars we once drove on pre-virus trips centered around one guy's Alpha Romeo, another's rootin' tootin' days in a snazzy early 50's Corvette, and the 1961 Willys truck of Sandpoint bike king Charles Mortensen — co-painted, one suspects, by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Aside from a Jeep Wagoneer, a Dodge Durango, several station wagons, a behemoth Ford Expedition, a bright silver Honda Accord, and a Chevy Suburban or two, my 1957 bride and I have owned a passel of pure fun cars. Stick shift, four-on-the-floor pure fun cars. All of them now gone with the wind.

There was a split-window 1957 SAAB requiring oil in the gas tank before filling with gas; a mid-60's VW bus with roll back top and a zillion windows; two Volvos (one of them a zippy P-1800 — a poor man's Porsche); a Fiat spider convertible; and for 20 years a 1986 BMW 535i — bought new as a retirement gift to ourselves.

But the best of the bunch, if nostalgia counts, was a 1954 British Triumph TR-2 "ragtop" two-seater — a major contributor to carefree California college years, to igniting a 63-year-long ongoing romance, and to launching a corporate career in NYC. Also, in the TR's most benevolent gesture, it paid for our first kid 62 years ago.

As a native southern Californian it is in my genes to worship cars. People living there who haven't fled to North Idaho spend fortunes keeping their cars spic and span. It's said that in California Big Mac flippers drive Jaguars and Mercedes. And road rage, a popular L.A. freeways pastime, can be addictive if experienced in a polished Tesla or Caddie Escalade.

I returned to the West Coast and college in late 1953 after three years of Air Force journalism in Albany, Georgia. SoCal was leagues ahead of Albany socially and when I arrived on campus I felt a nerd-like inadequacy. I didn't play guitar, poker, bridge or football. I tried reading "Ulysses" by James Joyce but couldn't understand it so was shunned by campus intellectuals. Still, because my parents had a big house, great for parties, I was invited to join a fraternity whose members were mostly muscular lifeguards. The early ’50s campus parking lot was awash in British and German sports cars. Student-owned, most were also "previously owned" — but imported sports cars nonetheless. And I drove up in a convertible Nash rambler.

In south Georgia, equipped with intoxicating California license plates, that car projected to Albany's sheltered young ladies an image of a West Coast bon vivant. But in hip Southern Cal? Not so much. Inspired by the lifeguards with hot cars and girlfriends, I traded in the Nash for a nearly new British Triumph TR-2. A white convertible with burnt orange upholstery, stick shift, and an exhaust that belched like a Harley hog. It rode so low one could strike a match on the pavement from the driver's seat.

Quick as a wink I was propelled into that rarified college society of football heroes, cheerleaders and homecoming royalty. In fact, and this is not fake news, that little roadster helped get me elected president of the fraternity and the heart of Betty, the homecoming queen, with whom I "went steady." When a caravan of early ’50s Jaguars, Austin Healeys, MG's and Triumphs rumbled east on Route 66 to a college convention at Northwestern University in Illinois, I was there. Voila!

In June, 1956, the car and I zoomed, top down, up Pacific Coast Highway to Berkeley. The TR had been painted deep blue, which, as luck would have it, was the favorite color of a Cal coed I immediately fell for. When I phoned for a date she had no clue who I was, even though we had met that morning. When I said I was the guy with the blue Triumph roadster, though, she agreed to accompany me to San Francisco to see "The King And I".

We spent that year and much of the next roaring up and down the coast from southern to northern California and back, attending just enough classes at our respective campuses to graduate. It was decidedly more exotic to camp out under the redwoods or zip over to Tahoe or to Sports Car Club Of America races at Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, Torrey Pines, Carmel and other sunny Shangri-las than to listen to lectures and take tests.

The coed landed a job teaching school at fabled Lake Arrowhead in SoCal's now burned up San Bernardino mountains. Consequently, the little roadster made repeated trips from Long Beach to the mountains, a prelude to the longest ride of all, just the roadster and me on Routes 66 and 90 to New York City and a neophyte corporate job downtown. When Jackie, the ex-coed, flew into Idlewild (it didn't become JFK until 1963) later that summer, I fetched her in the TR. Like all authentic Brit sports cars, it lacked baggage space. A friend living downstairs in the same Greenwich Village brownstone followed me to the airport in his tiny bathtub Porsche and stuffed two suitcases under the Porsche "bonnet" where other cars had motors.

Joining NYC's corporate world in 1957 as a single, earning $450 a month and paying $115 a month for a third floor walkup, I had elected not to buy company-offered medical insurance for 15 additional dollars a month. Then, forsooth, a bride! When a son was born a year later we owed the doctor $250 and an equal amount to the NYC hospital. So we sold our only asset, the TR-2, for $1,400. Essentially a swap.

We heard later the new owner drove the car without engine oil and blew it up. They say all good dogs go to a special heaven. When the little roadster died I hope its British soul went to a special heaven for beloved cars. It easily earned such an honor — and then some.

TIM H. HENNEY

Sandpoint