Small talk at the dog park

I’ve been taking Big Lips Bruno to the dog park almost every day for four years. Bruno is a grey and silver brindle mastiff with floppy ears and a cropped tail. From time to time we’ll meet up with a black and bronze mastiff with cropped ears and a long floppy tail. I’ve never had more than a passing “how ya doin’” with that other mastiff’s dad, until today. He used to deliver his pooch to the dog park in an orange Audi RS3. I was a car guy and I notice stuff like that. In the past week I notice Buddy has been bringing his brindle in a new RS7. That caught my attention. That’s a serious car. Over 600 horsepower out of a 4.0 litre V8. It’ll beat a Dodge Hellcat in a drag race. I’m not somebody who strikes up conversations with strangers, but I couldn’t help myself. “I see you got yourself a new winter-beater.” “Ha ha! No, I traded in the RS3 for its big brother.” So we get to chatting about his 1980 Corvette and my 1973 Trans Am SD, and about how messed up it is that the Germans can get more out of a four litre V8 than the Americans can get out of a supercharged 6.2 litre hemi. He had no idea we were talking about the demise of the American Empire.

Burning rubber on Memory Lane

I was 18 years old. Budd Automotive in Kitchener hired me on my 18th birthday. No skills to speak of, and no high-school diploma, but back in the pre-NAFTA days, factory jobs like that paid a decent wage.

Decent enough that I considered buying a house. I even had my eye on one, a little bungalow in Guelph, available for a mere $20,000. I also had my eye on a 1973 Trans Am 455 SD at Weiland Motors. This was a few years before they snagged a Ford dealership and became Weiland Ford.

The Trans Am had a mere 6,000 miles on it. She was a beauty; red exterior, white interior, four speed. It didn't have that ugly bird plastered on the hood. Insofar as a red Super Duty Trans Am could be subtle, it was. A good solid example today will run you well into six numbers.

The payments on the Trans Am were approximately the same as the payments on that bungalow. I was 18. Of course I went for the car.

And it was a beast! That motor made tons of torque. It could literally break the tires loose in any gear anytime you stood on the gas too hard, which was most of the time.

It wasn't all that impressive on the top end, though. That beastly motor ran out of wind pretty quick once you passed 5,000 rpm, and with the 3:42s in the back that meant your top speed wasn't going to be much more than about 120 mph. But it sure got there in a hurry!

I used to cruise around the high school I'd dropped out of the year before. Girls who'd never noticed me when I was a student clamoured for a ride in the Trans Am. At 18, I was more than happy to oblige.

I'm 18, making good money, driving a red Trans Am... life was very good indeed!

Then disaster struck. After the 1973 Arab-Israel war, the Arabs got together and unleashed an oil boycott. That eventually trickled down to seriously crimping the market for the big cars Budd built the frames for. Six months after I bought the Trans Am, I got a lay-off notice.

Looking back, I think that oil boycott is what triggered my interest in geopolitics.

The oil boycott also crimped the market for cars that only got 10 mpg. Without a job, I couldn't afford to put gas in the car, nor could I afford the payments. I eventually traded it to a dealer in Toronto for a somewhat ratty 1969 Dart GTS 340 and two thousand dollars cash. The money got me through to the next job, but the girls weren't nearly as keen on the Dart.

But I made the best of things, and I got by...



That bungalow I passed up for the Trans Am recently sold for over half a million.