Cars - The 1960's

As we went into the Air Force in 1967, we bought a 1964 Chrysler Newport 4-door sedan. It was beige. It was big. The trunk was big enough to fit a large wood playpen (folded) and most of our other luggage. We made up a level area in the back seat so Heidi could roll or crawl around without any restrictions. No car seat. No seat belts. It was a different world. But we survived.

The car was shaped like an airplane fuselage. No wings, but it could fly. Once, while driving alone, I decided to see how fast it could go. On a lonely straight highway, I opened it up and got it up to 110 mph. I then realized that I had no steering. The front end had lifted so high, that the tires were no longer in contact with the ground. Fortunately I was still going straight. I quickly slowed, and never tried that again.

There were a couple of serious blind spots to the rear, and once as I was backing up in a parking lot, I hit a concrete post that I could not see. It buckled a rear fender.

Soon after that we found a 1966 Chrysler station wagon. It made a great family car. We used that car from 1968 until 1973. It was somewhat sensitive to the cold. During the icy Omaha, Nebraska winters we had to keep a large light bulb burning atop the engine at night. Even then, there were a couple of times when I had to take the spark plugs out and clean them, and prime the engine externally to get it running. We used a lot of engine starting fluid, sprayed into the carburetor, to get it going.

One time we got some bad gas. Our Elders Quorum President, Earl Kay Cook, owned some gas stations. One was near our home, so we bought all our gas there. His stations were all self serve, which was a new concept at the time. He sold his gas at the lowest price in town. His competitor across the street broke open his tanks one time and put a water hose in them. We were unaware of the problem and happened to get some of the water in a tank of gas I bought. The timing was particularly bad, as we headed out the next day on a trip to visit Georgia's Aunt Pat and Uncle David Cobia in Fargo, North Dakota. It was Thanksgiving Day. As we neared Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the engine started bucking and coughing. We were soon limited to traveling at around 25 to 30 mph, and the engine completely stopped if we tried to go any faster. The water had gotten into the carburetor and gummed it up. We turned around and barely made it back home. I think it took about 5 hours to get home.

When we got out of the Air Force, I used the '66 Chrysler as a business car while working for J.A.Hippen Company. It was running better than ever, but Dad decided I needed a newer car, and traded it in for a '68 Chrysler station wagon. What a joke! That car never did run right. It got horrible gas mileage. It coughed and sputtered all the time. Dad kept having me take it to one of his church friend's repair shop. They never could find the problem.

Finally Dad bought himself a big Lincoln and passed down his 1972 Oldsmobile 98.

A few years later, when we were moving to California, Georgia's dad gave us their old '64 Ford Galaxy, so Georgia would have a car to drive. I had a company car for my work, but we had sold all our cars while I was out of work before I went to work for Fisher Scientific.

Some of Heidi's friends referred to that car as a "tuna boat". The trend was to much smaller cars, and the old '60s gas guzzlers were in disfavor.

Cars, the 50's

I thought I would comment on the various cars I've been acquainted with since I've been driving.

My first driving experience was in Driver's Ed at Olympus High School. I think it was a 1960 Pontiac. I had a hard time at first with the right side. My depth perception must have been bad, because I kept turning away from the cars on the right, and across the center line. The instructor had to grab the steering wheel to straighten me out, several times. I eventually got it right.

Practicing at home, I used Mom's '52 Buick. Dad insisted that we always back into the parking space in the carport. In practicing that maneuver, I managed to wipe out the front of the storage sheds that I had built the year before. So I got more practice at repairing the carpentry work.

I passed my driving test for my first license in that Buick. I used that car in my first job at the Holladay Neighbor newspaper. I had failed the driving test the first two times I took it. Those times I was driving Dad's '54 Chrysler Imperial. He had the idle set quite high. So when I tried to make a 'soft' stop at the stop signs, it would take off and not make a complete stop. (In Driver's Ed we were taught to ease up on the brake as we came to a stop, so as not to jerk the car. In Dad's car, it would just take off instead of easing to a stop.)

Within a week after I got my license, I helped Mom drive the Buick from Salt Lake to Camarillo, California, to see Oma and Opa at their new house. I was thrilled to actually drive on freeways. I had seen them in drivers training movies, but we didn't have any in Utah.

That Chrysler Imperial was a true luxury car. It had a big "Hemi" engine, all leather seats, power windows and seat. It had a two-speed automatic transmission. It had enough room in the front seat, that I was able to carry eight teen-age kids in it, all the way from Salt Lake to Bear Lake and back and no one felt crowded.

Speaking of the Bear Lake trip; as we were returning to Salt Lake, we went through Evanston, Wyoming. As we came out of the winding canyon between Coalville and Kimball Junction, the engine died. The gas gauge said we had 1/4 of a tank left. But when I turned the ignition off, and then back on, the gauge read below empty. It had been stuck. Within a couple of minutes after we stopped, a Utah Highway Patrol car pulled up behind us. He was nice enough to give me a ride to Kimball Junction to get some gas. He then had to continue on, so he couldn't give me a ride back.

I didn't have a can, and I asked one of the attendants if I could borrow one. He picked up a can they used as a loaner and discovered it was already more than half full of fuel. He told me just to take it, and then I could buy gas when I returned. I asked an elderly couple who looked like they were headed toward where we'd broken down, and they were happy to give me a ride.

I poured the contents of the can into the gas tank and tried to start it. I was pumping the accelerator to get the fuel into the engine, and when it finally started, there was a big cloud of smoke that billowed from the back of the car. And, as soon as I stopped pumping the accelerator, the engine quit. I found that I had to continually pump it to keep the engine running. Even then, it would only go about 30 miles per hour, and there was a lot of smoke. Whenever we would go up a hill, it would shift into low gear, and a big cloud of smoke would come out the back. We almost asphyxiated several people whose cars pulled up behind us.

When we finally got to the gas station, another attendant looked at the can and said we'd been given diesel fuel. To make up for it he filled our tank with gas at no charge. I don't think any other gasoline engine would have run on diesel fuel; only the hemi. We were also being looked after by angels as a result of all the prayers that were offered for us on our journey.

When Dad had purchased that car, he got it at a great price, because there was something wrong with the engine and it wouldn't go over 50 miles per hour. No one had been able to figure out why. He was checking the carburetor function, with me operating the gas pedal, when he discovered that only 2 barrels of the 4 barrel carburetor were working. The jets for the back two barrels had never been drilled out. He ordered a new carburetor from the J.C.Whitney catalog. After installing it, the car would then go over 100 mph easily. That hemi engine was amazing. I once had it up to 90 mph going up hill on 33rd South in first gear. Dad said he had it up to 140 mph on an open road in Nevada, where there were no speed limits. Thinking back, though, the tires were not rated for such speeds. We were fortunate they didn't come apart on us.

The next family cars were a '59 Chrysler Saratoga, and a '59 Chrysler New Yorker station wagon. Both of those cars had big engines. The New Yorker had a 413 cubic inch engine that could accelerate very fast. I once had a friend, Dave Powers, pull up beside me at a light in his dad's brand new Ford Thunderbird. He challenged me to a race. When the light turned green, he was amazed that the station wagon just walked away from the T-Bird; it left him in the dust.

One time Dad asked me to take the Saratoga out for a drive. He had just replaced the generator (this was before alternators) and wanted the battery to get a good charge. I drove with Georgia to Heber City and back. A couple of times I floored the accelerator to see how fast it could go and got up near 120 mph, and the car rode very smoothly at that speed. Georgia even encouraged me to do it. We were both much younger then.

Then I bought my first car, my '57 Chevy, for $500 dollars. Dad's friend Don Cramer was a car dealer. He found an elderly lady who had this car for sale. We went to pick it up at her house. The sides were all dented and scraped. Her garage was very difficult to get into and out of, and she had run into the sides of the garage door opening, and a tree beside the driveway several times. Don got one of his body shop friends to fix it up.  It was blue and white, with the white on the top. It was a Chevrolet 150, with a standard transmission and a good old reliable straight-six engine. That engine had been used in Chevrolet's since back in the 1930's.

The '57 Chevy lasted until I went into the Air Force. I had one crash in it. I was on my way to class at the U, when the traffic backed up suddenly on 5th South. I managed to stop, but a new '65 Mustang following me couldn't. The Mustang forced me into the '58 Chevy which had stopped in front of me. A guy named Clark, whom I had worked with as a caddy at Willow Creek Country Club, was driving the '58 Chevy. The Mustang was totaled. I had a small dent where it hit me in the rear, and the grill was all scrunched from where I hit the car in front. The metal on those '50's cars was much thicker than what was used later, and they held up much better in a crash.

I traded the Chevy in on a 1964 Chrysler, and got $100 for the trade. Four years later, when I got out of the Air Force, and bought our first house on Lenora Circle, a neighborhood teenager had my old Chevy. The '57 Chevy's had become a classic, and they were in high demand. The price for one had gone up to near $2,000 at that time. They're now worth over $5,000.

Offutt Air Force Base

My memories of my 41 months as an aircraft maintenance officer at Offutt AFB, Nebraska.

I first arrived at Offutt in December 1967, and soon found that on-base housing for junior officers was not available. So we had to find something off base. We found a house, then went on leave until January.

I signed back in on January 4, 1968.

I was first assigned to flightline maintenance. Working on the flightline in January was brutal. The weather was very windy, with temperatures frequently in the sub-zero range. I was issued a set of cold weather gear, which made life almost bearable.

Our squadron commander was Lt. Col. Skusa. My immediate supervisor was 1st Lt. Dennison. I met both of them and felt somewhat comfortable working with them. Lt. Dennison had two hobbies which he encouraged me to enjoy, also. One was pheasant hunting. I didn't have a shotgun, so I declined that one. He also liked to make furniture at the woodworking hobby shop on base. He showed me a baby crib he had made for his baby son. It was very well made. I decided on making a kitchen table. It was quite large and sturdy, a double pedestal with a round top, covered in a wood grain Formica. Turning the legs on a lathe took a long time. Our daughter, Holly, is still using that table.

One of my first duties was to meet the Base Commander. As I was waiting outside his office, I was accosted by a captain who was the commander of the Air Police Squadron for the base. He told me I was not fit to meet the commander, since I had not had a haircut recently. He told me the base standard for hair was much shorter than I had, and that I'd better get it cut immediately. He did tell me where to go. I also soon found out that I would be expected to get it cut weekly to maintain that standard. I resolved to get a hair clipper for Georgia to use on me. We were inspected every week by the Chief of Maintenance, Col. Moser. He pronounced my first home haircut unsatisfactory, and said it looked like I got a haircut with a chopping ax. It took a few more efforts for Georgia to get them to meet the colonel's standard.

After a few months, some newer maintenance officers came in and I was transferred to the Field Maintenance Squadron. Then I was in charge of several of the maintenance shops. It was interesting to become acquainted with the general aircraft, electric, sheet metal, machine, propeller, engine, pneudraulics, and avionics (electronics), and auxiliary equipment shops. We also had a woodworking shop, the only one in the air force outside the Pentagon. Some of our aircraft were rather fancy inside, and had nice wood paneling which this shop maintained. We had 14 generals on the base, who felt they needed fancy trappings in their airplanes. Most of the time this shop just made fancy picture frames for officers' offices at SAC headquarters.

When I moved to the Field Maintenance Squadron I was given a some extra duties. I was made Squadron Information Officer, a member of the accident investigation team, head of the crash recovery team, and captain of the golf team. I was the only officer who played golf, so that's why I got that assignment.

As Squadron Information Officer, I was asked to submit an article every month to the base newspaper. I enjoyed that every month. The first article I wrote was about the history of one of our aircraft, the C-97. The editor of the paper was impressed and sent out a photographer to take pictures to accompany the article. The base commander, Col. Crouchly, was also impressed. He had a weekly column in the base paper, which he didn't write. He had several young officers on the base submit monthly articles for his column, and he chose one each week which ran under his by-line. Most of the articles I submitted were published. My squadron commander and the chief of maintenance also had me send the articles through them for approval. One article I wrote was aimed at the tendency of senior officers to bully their subordinates. There was too much use of intimidation instead of leadership. The article never made it to the base commander. My fellow junior officers usually got to the base newspaper earlier than I did, and they had learned to recognize my style. When I got to work one morning, they were laughing at what they saw as irony in the article. It was published under the by-line of the chief of maintenance. He was guilty of using intimidation more than almost anyone we knew. It appeared that he had learned his leadership style from others, and he didn't like it any better than we did.

As a member of the accident investigation team, I was sent out any time a USAF plane crashed in our base area. We covered a large area. The crashes I helped investigate were a B-58, which crashed near Lincoln, Nebraska, the T-39 from our own unit which crashed near McCook, NE, (I shared that story earlier in "Black Lightning".) and a a C-133, which also crashed near McCook.  


The B-58 was a supersonic bomber with delta wings and four engines. It had a crew of two. There was a pilot and a copilot. The copilot also acted as navigator and bombardier. The plane had limited range, so it usually had a detachable belly pod which provided additional fuel for extended range. Other material could be carried in the belly pod, such as bombs or cargo, also. The idea was that the plane would fly to the target, drop the belly pod and bombs, and then outrun any fighters sent up to intercept it. 


This particular B-58 was on a training flight over North Dakota. They were headed south when the front mounting bracket on the belly pod either released or broke. The windshear caused the back of the pod to be jammed up into the rear fuselage of the aircraft, where it severed the controls to the wings and tail. The plane was flying straight and level, but could not turn, nor go up or down. They flew south until the engines ran out of fuel. Then the pilot and copilot ejected. The aircraft continued on for a few miles and then fluttered down like a falling leaf into a farm wheat field. Then it caught on fire. The nearest military facility was the Air National Guard station at the Lincoln, Nebraska airport. They sent out fire trucks, but the people on the trucks were afraid to put out the fire because they thought they needed to get authority from the Air Force to fight the fire. They finally did cover the wreck with flame suppressing foam. 


The accident investigation was simple. The pilots knew what had happened, and the fire destroyed anything that would have explained what happened to the pod mount. After the investigation I headed the team to pick up the wreckage. We loaded everything on flatbed trucks and took it to the wrecking yard at the Nebraska Air National Guard facility at the Lincoln airport. 


A couple of weeks later I got a phone call from the Pentagon. The officer introduced himself as the manager of the inventory of the type of engines used on the B-58. He wanted to know where we had disposed of them. When I told him they were at the Lincoln, Nebraska airport, he told me that because they were still classified material, they needed to be taken to a secure wrecking yard, which meant that they had to come to Offutt. He also said they needed to be buried for security reasons. We then picked up the four engines and took them to the Offutt wrecking yard. I discussed with the manager of that facility the fact that they needed to be buried. He knew about that, but told me that it was going to be difficult, because the water table was only about two feet below the surface. The wrecking yard was on the lowest part of the base, and was only about 200 yards from the Missouri River.


The C-133 was a very large cargo aircraft with four gas turbine engines driving four large propellers. This particular C-133 had five Army helicopters in its cargo bay. The helicopters were of the type you would have seen in the TV show or movie, M*A*S*H. The accident investigation discovered that the propeller on the left wing, closest to the fuselage, had come off, and slashed the side of the body. The whole aircraft was pressurized, and the sudden decompression blew the entire front end off. The cockpit was separated from the rest of the plane, and crashed about thirty yards from the rest. The crew all perished. The aircraft was too large for our capability to pick it up. It was going to require a railroad car to hold all the wreckage. So it was contracted out.


Another aircraft we worked on recovering was an Army National Guard helicopter that crashed on an island in the Platte River, not far from its confluence with the Missouri River. The pilot was on a training flight and decided to check out some fishing spots in the Platte. He landed on the island, then failed to give it enough power on take-off. The wind caught the craft and flipped it over. We considered several ways to get it across the river. Finally, CMSgt Willsey called the Army at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and asked if they could send a lifting helicopter to pick it up. Their Skycrane picked it up easily, carried it down the Platte to the Missouri River, then up river to the Offutt wrecking yard.

As captain of the golf team, I really got a neat assignment. Our squadron had two young golfers who had been professionals before joining the Air Force. We also had two or three 'scratch' golfers who were civilian employees in our shops. A scratch golfer usually shoots near par. No other team on the base ever even came close to competing with that group. We actually had two teams. One that played 18 holes on the professionally designed course, and another that played 9 holes on a regular community type course. General Curtis Lemay, who had been the chief of SAC (the Strategic Air Command) had a lot of power, and had commissioned a really nice golf course for the base. Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents played on that course regularly. I played on the 9 hole course. We were tied for first place going into the last week of the season. When I drove up and got my clubs out of the trunk, my assistant took my woods out of my bag and told me to play only with my irons. I then shot the best round I had had that season, and we took first place.

While I was at Offutt, the Air Force came out with a new exercise program. This was our introduction to aerobics. The requirement I remember was that we had to run 1 1/2 miles within a certain time. It started in winter, and it way too cold outside to run, so many of us would go to the base gymnasium to run around the basketball courts. We were given 6 months to get in shape, and then had to take a timed test. I ran it in 7 minutes 39 seconds. It turned out I was the 3rd fastest on the base that first testing period. A couple of other officers who were part of the Air Force Cross Country Team invited me to join them. But they were both single and had jobs that allowed them to train seriously. I had a family and a more restrictive job, so I declined.

I did find it fun to play badminton at the base gym. That seemed to be a major activity there, with some very competitive leagues. I found I had good reflexes, which gave me some advantage. But really good players had developed strategies, which I never did.

As an officer, I was expected to join the Officer's Club. I didn't feel like I could afford the monthly dues, and since it was primarily an alcohol drinking club, I really didn't want to contribute to that. There was a lot of pressure to join, but I managed to avoid it. I was given assignments occasionally to inventory the warehouse at the club. I became familiar with the names of all the alcoholic beverages, and was glad I wasn't tempted to sample any.

I left the Air Force in May 1971, a little over 4 years after my entry. I had no intention of continuing in the military, but soon was asked to join the Utah Air National Guard. Accepting that request was one of the best things I every did.