Ray Swindle wrote:
In 1965 my neighbor's oldest son owned a 1954 Corvette. He was in his senior year at the University of Houston and planning to go into the US Navy to be a pilot. He was selling the Corvette to buy a brand new 64 1/2 Mustang. He wanted $800 for the '54. I begged my step father to loan me the money so I could drive it when I got my license. This was when I decided my step father didn't like me, he said "no". I did get several fun rides in the '54 and the '64 1/2. He was a really nice guy. That was the closest I ever got to buying a Corvette.
I ended up buying a '55 Chevy 4 door in 1966. With the exception of the power train it was a junker. Hole in the passenger floor board, hole in the rear passenger door that was patched with a 12" x 12" piece of tin held in place by plastic resin. Horn didn't work so I found an Ohh-Gahh horn from a buddy for about $5 I installed to pass the state inspection. Sold it to a friend in high school who told me a few years ago how good the mechanics were because he kept it for a long time until he got his transport business going after high school. Now, I'm driving a 2001 Tundra with over 200k miles that doesn't have a phone charging port. I guess I am driven to own the old stuff....Show more →
Ray, just get a cigarette lighter USB adapter to charge your phone and run that Tundra into the ground, which will likely take a few more years
gerov wrote:
Ray, just get a cigarette lighter USB adapter to charge your phone and run that Tundra into the ground, which will likely take a few more years
👍
I have worn out about 3 of them. I now keep a back-up power supply in my camera bag for the phone and computer.
I told my wife when I bought the Tundra I would keep it until it had 400k miles or 20 years, whichever came first. I have decided to go for the 400k.
Thanks Ray! I had nothing to do with the wardrobe, that was all Candace. My job was light and composition on the run, along with keeping them moving in the right direction until the light was gone.
1955 4 door Chevy! My first automobile! Bought in 1966 in the dark from a preacher friend of my Dad's for $100. Turned out in the daylight it was from Michigan and a rust bucket but it had 6 in a row and 3 on a tree and 4 tires that held air so I was a happy 15 year old. On day two I slammed the driver's door and the rust broke through and the front fender popped loose. As luck would have it we were poor and lived out on the dump road. In those days when a car outlived its time it got left at the dump. Some one up above was smiling when I borrowed my Dad's wrenches and found another 55 abandoned giving me two new fenders and a hood. Didn't need the hood but took it home just in case. Later on my neighbor was happy to haul it home because his had departed at speed when his latch failed. Good memories Ray! And by the way my 15 year old Jeep Wrangler will turn over 390000 miles tomorrow as I run up north to watch my grandson play soccer.
As I look back at my life I realize those were some pretty good times. Man, I feel cheated now, I paid $260 for mine in 1967. I guess 2 more cylinders and an automatic was the difference. I also did a lot of sharing with some junkers. A neighbor down the street was my source as he had a '55 up on blocks in front of his house. Plus, Houston, being on the coast, was full of junkyards. I was told my dad left the church on his wedding day with my mother and his first stop...a junkyard to get some new tires. Guess it's in the genes.
I remember a guy in high school that had a '32 Little Deuce Coup. He was having some mechanical problem with it and couldn't get it to start, he got so frustrated with it that he said he'd sell it to me for two hundred bucks. I was headed to my piggy bank but he regained his sense of reason by the time I returned. My Dad would have been really excited about my new car sitting in the driveway, I was about 14 at the time.
In the 1940's when my dad was in high school he wanted a car. His father told him he didn't need a car because they already had a family car. My dad found a car for sale a couple of blocks away and took his father to look at it. His dad said it looked like a good car with a good price, but they already had a car. A couple of weeks later, my dad talked to the seller, got a lower price and bought it and drove it home. His dad walked home from work and saw the car in the driveway and asked about it. My dad said he bought it. All my grandfather said was "We already have a car". My dad drove home from high school the next day and the family car was gone. Inside the house he found his father and mother then asked, "Where's your car?". His dad said he sold it because they were only going to have one car. He had to drive his mother to the store, his dad to work on rainy days...
Pleased as I am with the R5II, I just looked at a study showing its dynamic range at 11.45 stops, roughly 3 stops shy of the X2DII-100C. That explains why the R5II couldn't reproduce the highlights on the water in the air to air shots.
Ray Swindle wrote:
As I look back at my life I realize those were some pretty good times. Man, I feel cheated now, I paid $260 for mine in 1967. I guess 2 more cylinders and an automatic was the difference. I also did a lot of sharing with some junkers. A neighbor down the street was my source as he had a '55 up on blocks in front of his house. Plus, Houston, being on the coast, was full of junkyards. I was told my dad left the church on his wedding day with my mother and his first stop...a junkyard to get some new tires. Guess it's in the genes....Show more →
Don’t kick yourself too hard Ray. The 265 with the Powerslide was the hot setup. Funny you mention your folks on their wedding day. My neighbor that inherited the spare hood needed it to go on his honeymoon (probably a motel for the night in the next town.) I imagine owning old junkers is what prepared us to spend our careers as mechanics. And I can feel your pain not getting the ‘54 Vette too. I drooled over a ‘57 Plymouth and a 59 Edsel back then. Dad nixed both because they had V8’s and I already had a lead foot. Later I dropped a supposedly rebuilt 409 in my 58 Impala only to listen to the rods knock so back to a small block it went. Yes they were good times. We always had buddies around to help us with our projects and gas for us was like $.35/gallon. I still couldn’t put enough nickels together to fill the tank.
I didn't appreciate the '58 Chevy until I saw Terry driving Debbie around in 'American Graffiti', then I realized how cool it was. (I almost owned a '58 wagon when I was in the USAF. The morning I was suppose to buy it the owner decided to work on the carb and burned the engine bay.) I bought a '59 with a 283 in Cameo Coral (a pinkish coral shade) when I sold the '55. That car was the cleanest '59 until I sold it before going into the USAF. I should've kept it and driven it out to San Bernardino where I was stationed so I could cruise E Street in downtown San Berdoo on Friday night!
Ray Swindle wrote:
I didn't appreciate the '58 Chevy until I saw Terry driving Debbie around in 'American Graffiti', then I realized how cool it was. (I almost owned a '58 wagon when I was in the USAF. The morning I was suppose to buy it the owner decided to work on the carb and burned the engine bay.) I bought a '59 with a 283 in Cameo Coral (a pinkish coral shade) when I sold the '55. That car was the cleanest '59 until I sold it before going into the USAF. I should've kept it and driven it out to San Bernardino where I was stationed so I could cruise E Street in downtown San Berdoo on Friday night!...Show more →
Truthfully the 58 Impala beautiful as it was was a big old boat more like a Cadillac than a Chevy. I bought a donor 60 Impala ragtop for the engine and ended up running it my senior year of high school. After graduation and starting construction I bought a 67 Firebird 400 4spd 4:11's and that turned out to be a genuine ticket machine. Pure stock at Deer Park it ran 14:11/99.55 on Michelins in the quarter. Good memories and not so good. Linkage fell off the the transmission on a first date and she wasn't impressed with the grease monkey next to her after that. No sense of humor.
JWilsonphoto wrote:
I shot the family portraits last evening with the X2DII/35-100, and the R5II/85/1.2. Both of those cameras and lens combinations are just stellar. I don't completely trust the Blad yet, thus the back up, but they both performed beautifully. The X2DII provides you with a much better idea of what you are actually capturing with the huge high def screen, but the R5II does a good job too.
These are some beautiful Texans, Jim!
Went to Arlington yesterday for shoot the winter solstice sunrise. I wish there were some snow on the cemetery ground....
Dan, that last one of the barn at the Shrine of St. Anthony from last week is for you....
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my A2A friends.
ILCE-1M2E 50-400mm F4.5-6.3 A067 lens50mmf/9.01/25s100 ISO-1.5 EV
ILCE-1M2E 50-400mm F4.5-6.3 A067 lens67mmf/9.01/10s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-1M2E 50-400mm F4.5-6.3 A067 lens151mmf/10.01/25s100 ISO-1.5 EV
ILCE-1M2FE PZ 16-35mm F4 G lens34mmf/10.01/15s100 ISO0.0 EV
ILCE-7RM5Voigtlander NOKTON 21mm F1.4 Aspherical lens21mmf/9.01/400s100 ISO-1.5 EV
