Ha ha ha! The .... ummmm ... "good ol' days?"

[Thumper]

Published in Popular Science Magazine even ....

13459

[BarryBobPosthole]

Back when oil was so cheap itcost more to clean it than produce it? Back in my low budget days I was a loyal customerof ‘Good Oil’, which our locations sold on the oil racks for cheap. It was filtered used oil, which doesn’t ‘wear out’ like most folks think it does.

BKB

[Thumper]

Remember it well P-hole. I bought an old ‘49 Plymouth for $75 and regularly stopped for a couple gallons of gas and a quart of oil! Called it “remanufactured motor oil”. It was in glass quart bottles with a metal spout and would be in a rack between the gas pumps. You’d dump the bottle and return the empty to the rack.

[BarryBobPosthole]

There was a recapping place in the next little town over and if you took a core, you could get it recapped for $10. They might last 10k miles, but given what I usually drove 10k might have been optimistic. And a couple dollars worth of gas and you could go places!
BKB

[Thumper]

Ha ha ha! That sure brings back memories! I knew the number 2 man in command at the GM Assembly Plant in Arlington, Texas and he talked me into moving to Texas to work at the plant. Due to union rules, I was required to start on the assembly line, but he had a spot in the main office he wanted to move me up to (he said it would be a quick process once I was hired). Long story short, I pulled the well-worn Uniroyal Tiger Paws off my 1960 Pontiac, put on a brand new set of recaps at a Firestone tire store, then loaded everything I owned into the trunk before hitting the road. It was EXACTLY 500 miles (I could watch the odometer roll over) from my folks house in Memphis, to my apartment in Arlington. It was the summer of 1971 and I don't think I ever got under 90-95 mph on I-40/I-30. The speed and that 100 degree Texas heat did a job on those recaps! I threw a tread on one, then threw the spare on. I threw another tread and limped into a gas station on the core, where the guy sold me a used tire and mounted it for $3.00. I had him throw the recap in the back seat. Before I got into Arlington, I'd thrown a huge chunk off the THIRD recap tread and limped it on into town ... thumpity, thumpity, thumpity! I took it to a Firestone store and they actually gave me my money back in full and I bought the cheapest NON-RECAPPED tire they had there. Never had another problem. :)

Spring forward a few years and I was in the military. I'd spent almost 3 years based in Northern Thailand, but got sent down south during the withdrawal from Vietnam (fall of Saigon) in April '75 as well as the Mayaguez Incident the following month, May. I went from Mil. Intel. to being a bogus cop (MP). There were only three of us (highest ranking) guys they gave patrol cars (brand new 350 cid Chevy Chevelles). I was in charge of security at the Deep Water Port (where we took in the Mayaguez after the battle in Cambodia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayaguez_incident The DWP was just a few klicks from the Army base, so I made a lot of trips back and forth. It was a big mistake giving these cars to the Three Stooges (Sgt. Kribbs, Sgt. Winters and Sgt, Greene) as we were all race fans. I couldn't tell you how many races we had in the wee hours of the mornings. We'd station a Thai military dude at the entrance to the port, we'd line up side by side, the Thai Marine would flag us off and the race was on! ALL supplies, bombs, munitions ... basically EVERYTHING came through that port for distribution, so during the day, it was busy. There were so many trucks in and out of there, the road the military built was like 6 or 8 lanes wide (can't remember persactly). There was a long sweeping curve that we'd take side by side at over 100 mph, so it was quite a race! It got so crazy, we started carrying tool boxes when we'd report for duty and once we were off-post, we'd hide in the port, pop the hoods and go to work, I'd bump my timing a tad, turn over the top of the air cleaner (is there ANYONE here who didn't do that to mom and dad's car back in the day?), etc. Problem is, these vehicles had recaps! WTF? Police pursuit vehicles??? The dude at the Motor Pool got sick of us stopping in all night for tire swaps.

Then one night I went in with a torn up tire to get replaced and spotted another Chevelle back in the rear of the motor pool. I drove back and they had the car on a service rack about 3 feet off the ground. It had stars on the front plate and little flags on the fenders with stars on them, I checked closely and BINGO! Guess what? The GENERAL did NOT have recaps on his staff car! My car ended up with a brand new set of REAL tires and I kicked Winter's and Greene's asses constantly and never tore up another tire. I never heard a word about anyone discovering the set of recaps on the General's car. Heck, I'm not even sure why it was there. As far as I knew, there was no General on that post, but I assume they kept the car ready in case one showed up.

We had a radio 10 code we'd call when we were really feeling crazy. The post had a mountain on it and we'd many times call out that code (dispatch had no idea what it meant) to race to the top of that mountain. It was a narrow, dirt/gravel road that circled the mountain all the way to the top! We'd sit up there and jump in one car to b/s on the slow nights. One night we received a radio call that someone had broken into the Officer's Club and were thought to still be inside. We scattered back to our cars and Greene was the first to haul ass to head down that hill. Winters floored it and threw a frigging chunk of gravel through my windshield and in all the dust Greene had kicked up, all I could see was Winter's brake lights DROP out of sight! He missed the frigging road and drove right off the damn cliff! I radio'ed Greene and told him we had "car issues" and we'd meet him at the OC. I climbed down the hill and found Winters high-centered on a rock, but somehow the oil pan was spared. I pulled out the bumper jack, jacked the back of his car as high as I could and told him to punch it as I shoved it forward off the jack. It worked and he bounced all the way down the side of that hill until he landed on the road below, then hauled ass toward the OC! I had to grab his jack and hoof it back up the hill to get my car and head there myself. When we got there, the place had been burglarized, but nobody was inside. We found footprints on the beach and saw where they'd pulled a boat onto the beach to load their loot and haul ass!

Those f'ers ended up blackmailing me at one point. They called out the 10-code initiating a race to the top of the mountain and I took off. There was one hump on the way up that got pretty hairy, but I got used to it and would hit it HARD, That night, I thought I'd seen a flash of light, but had no clue what it was and forgot about it. About a week or so later, those two a-holes came up to me and said, "We OWN you Kribbs!" They then handed me a photo of me in my patrol car, totally airborne! All 4 tires were about 2 feet off the ground and I could be clearly seen driving the car with my unit number on the front fender! Of my whole time in the military, that's one photo that I really wish I had (I never received a copy). Anyway, sorry for the re-cap related Thump post. It was a pretty sticky time as far as the war goes, but we made the most of it. ;)

[Chicken Dinner]

I rode a fair amount of used retreads back in my high school and college days. I may go back if the price of tires keeps going the way it has lately.


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