Jean Shepherd's Spitfire

Nobody can sell like the British. Nooobody. Whether it's a national airline or breath mints, you know they're gonna have a coat of arms. Something with a lion, a stag, some flag stuff and Latin. "Everything for Nothing - Nothing for Everything" is the motto I've selected for The Trad's coat of arms. I'd appreciate it if someone would put that in Latin for me.

Jean Shepherd did the voice over in this Triumph Spitfire commercial back in the early '70s. Shepherd, known mostly for A Christmas Story, was a writer who figured large in my world through fiction in Playboy and a column in Car & Driver. There was really nothing else I needed to read (except Penthouse).

Shortly after the commercial aired, Shepherd was on the Tonight Show and Johnny Carson asked him about the commercial. Shepherd tells a story of how even he was so impressed by this commercial that he bought a Spitfire. Minutes after driving off the car lot, Shepherd hits a LA highway and is happily cruising along until the car bonnet flys off.

I came very close to purchasing a white Spitfire because of Mr Shepherd. I also didn't buy a Spitfire because of Mr Shepherd. "Everything for Nothing - Nothing for Everything"

One Sexy Rear End: Penthouse 1973

Amazing isn't it? I'd like to wash her naked with a really big sponge and some...


Turtle Wax. The Volvo 1800 ES. Pretty sexy...

Especially for a wagon.

Mmm, A bucket of warm water, a bottle of Wash & Wax and thou...

Steve McQueen's Porsche

UK Classic Cars Magazine - 1993

The guy who insured pig farms came up with the idea over lunch. Get a syndicate together and buy Steve McQueen's Porsche 911. The marketing guy, who dreamed up porn movie plots, was in for $10,000. His best, a bizarre "I Dream of Jeannie" plot device where Major Nelson's penis size increased with each Jeannie "blink" while being boinked.

The pig farm guy was in for $20,000. He wasn't married, came from money and was boinking the agency owner's secretary. A courageous and ultimately foolish decision. I was married, poor and boinking no one so $10,000 to me was a stretch but not impossible since bonus time was fast approaching.

But January turned into February and rumors of the big day spread across the 20th floor of the Hancock like wild fire on the Serengeti. B-Day finally came in April -- Never under estimate the power of keeping people economically off balance. Account executives sneaked calculators into bathrooms where they would attempt to make sense of numbers in symbolic privacy.

Vice presidents closed office doors and, whether in defeat or celebration, called wives. Celebrants somehow managed to find each other after 5:01 PM and proceeded to drink, smoke cigars, fall off bar stools and show each other their bonus checks.

By midnight, the celebrants stumbled into homes where wives called them beer smelling ashtrays. The tirades cut short only by showing a crumpled piece of paper that turned into a new kitchen, car, bathroom or house. It did not turn into a 69 Porsche. I never did like Steve McQueen.

Is Smoke Bomb Hill Kosher?

From Left: A couple A team sergeants and Dad on far right

Smoke Bomb Hill and Hammond Hills (click image to enlarge)

I remember him walking home. At eight, I was in my Hammond Hills bedroom researching an MG-TC. The Old Man was racing in the local SCCA club and I desperately wanted him to dump the Berkley with the chain driven motorcycle engine for a British Racing Green TC. For some reason, I look out my window and I see the swagger. More shoulder than hip - he had cocky written across his forehead.

The captain bars on his green beret glint from the sinking September sun. Starched jungle fatigues are cut at the waist with a web pistol belt. My Old Man is walking home from Smoke Bomb Hill with his XO who has less than seven months to live before drowning in the Son Toy River. Later that night, I'll fill an empty Budweiser bottle with water and wander out to the patio and stumble and weave in front of these two men who'll laugh their asses off.

10 years later I drank draft beers at the main post bowling alley with three of Dad's team sergeants from his tour in Vietnam. Two were still in Special Forces. The third had retired and spent most days sitting outside his trailer in Spring Lake, playing gospel music over a surplus PA system. The two sergeants told me how Dad used a Boy Scout wire saw to garrote VC. They laughed while the gospel lover just stared at me.

I was in the middle of zero month for the SF Qualification Course. Phase I at Camp McCall wouldn't start for another two weeks but I was happy fucking off on Smoke Bomb Hill. SF was a fairly loose group and I watched senior NCOs dry hump each other out in front of morning formations. There was so much dry humping in the Army that when I went back to college, still shitting army chow, I dry humped Roland Schumann who was bending over an ice box looking for a pint of chocolate milk. He turned and looked at me with this unmitigated terror in his eyes... and I realized he didn't get it. Neither did the 300 or so other students watching from the dining room.

Back in the Army, I knew I wasn't going to make it through Special Forces training. One of the few times I've accurately predicted anything. Of my class of 88, only three would get a green beret and they were all second term NCOs. The washout was so great, I was told my class was the last to allow anyone under E-5. But knowing I didn't have a prayer took a whole lot of pressure off and I Ghosted, disappearing to avoid details, whenever I could.

Another formation, more dry humping and names of the 85 "No-Go" are read. The 1st Sergeant repeats, "82nd Repo" over and over and over…until XVIII Airborne Corps goes to an PFC infantryman. Everyone looks at this bastard and wonders whose dick he's sucking. I'm wondering what the fuck an infantryman does at a corps headquarters and as I ponder the thought, my name gets closer and closer and the first sergeant, who's fond of saying to the formation, "You, in the green pants and black boots, come here," says my name and XVIII Airborne Corps. And everyone looks at me and wonders…

To this day, I still do. Before my father died a couple years ago I asked him for the umpteenth time, "Was it you? It had to have been you." He sucks on a cupped cigarette, inhales and blows out a pin stream of smoke and tightly wrapped words, "That wouldn't have been kosher."

Off My Back: Primary Colors & Attitude

David Chu LINCS - Yellow (Gold) University Stripe Oxford

Class bow tie from El Paso Community College

Yellow university stripe oxford is a tough fabric to find. I've told you about this before. In fact, everyone who had it two months ago seems to be out of it. Nelson Mui of David Chu Design surprised me with this shirt last week while generously offering a venue for my interview with Robert Bryan. I gotta read my horoscope 'cause stuff like this never happens to me.

It's a beauty of a shirt. At 11 ounces (I weigh shirts as well as wear them) it's in the ball park of MTM but shy of the 13 1/2 ounces you get at Mercer & Sons (we'll get to Mercer next week). While the pattern matching yoke to sleeve isn't dead on --it's pretty darned close. That's amazing.

That's the great news. Bad news. It's made in China and you have to go to Dillard's. Whatever that is. Swear to God, never been to one. The shirt comes in a profusion of bright colors like Lime Green but it's still an oxford.

Primary colors. Blue, yellow and red. The Trad hallmark as far as I'm concerned. And it is with this observation that I pass along some advice. Never forget how you look to others. Got that? It may save your life.

I know a lot of you don't give a hoot about what other people think of you. And that's fine. But I'm talking about something else. When you're strolling around in a cardigan sweater, a bow tie and a yellow stripe oxford - you're sending a message. Robert Bryan does a brilliant job defining this in his book. He writes, "Because menswear is so precise, the smallest selections, such as bow tie, work boots, round glasses, or a fedora, can speak volumes about the character of the man who wears them."

I often forget what I'm wearing. Or driving. And that can spell trouble.

There's a lotta baggage that comes with this car. Never mind it's a 2002 model with over 100,000 miles on it and worth less than a Hyundai. I moved to New York City in this car and parked it in a midtown garage for a couple of months. Just before Christmas, the Golf Foxtrot and I headed south on the NJ Turnpike. I pulled into one of the first gas stations and when I got out of the car to fill up a young kid comes running over to me, "Full service, full service!"

I give him a credit card and he swipes it, sticks the hose in my tank and runs off to another car. I'm a quart low of oil (always) and I grab a quart I carry in the car (always), pop the hood and top off my oil. The windows are caked thick in some frozen kind of dirt from the parking garage. I'm looking for a squeegee but all the windshield wiper buckets are dry and there's not a squeegee anywhere.

The attendant comes back again, yanks the hose outta the tank and I ask, "Do you have any squeegees?" "No," he says handing me my credit card and receipt and off he goes. As he's leaving I say, "You call this full fucking service?" He stops and turns and says, "What did you say?" And I say, "You call this full fucking service." And he replies, "Yeah, well fuck you!" And I reply, for lack of any better words, "Fuck you!"

I hear laughing and turn to see the other attendants who appear to be enjoying this immensely. As I walk to the car, my attendant shouts out, "Merry Fucking Christmas!" At which point I try to be more personal and shout back, "Happy Fucking Three Kings! I get in the car and drive off. The Golf Foxtrot, who is not happy with my behaviour, lets me have it. That's another post unto itself. After she stops we ride in silence for two and a half hours.

Why did he go off? I dunno. Maybe the car and the Florida tags could have something to do with it. He was busting his ass in the freezing cold two nights before Christmas and I'm sure I was asshole number 37 that night. The Shaggy Dog Shetland, hi water chinos, pink socks and Bean Moccasins could have also added hi test to the fire. He was Hispanic. I'm Nordic. We both end in 'icks.' I'd probably go off on myself that night given the right circumstances--of which there were many.

Sometimes I forget how I appear to others. I also know I'm not how other people see me. Yet, I can barely see myself which may be part of the problem. So, tread easy in bow ties and cardigans and shirts of primary colors. Just because we're well dressed doesn't mean we have to be assholes about it.

You Are What You Drive...

1967 MGB

If so, then my first car makes me hard to start, not very fast and unreliable.