Things you absolutely HAD to know as a teenage kid..

[electra225]

You had to be able to identify every vehicle built since the beginning of time, car, truck, tractor, little red wagon, what engine it had, what transmission it had and what size tires it took, where the dipstick was, where you put gas in, how to change a tire. You knew that if a Chevy had just the Chevy emblem on the trunk lid, it was a six. If you had the Chevy emblem with a "V" around it, that was a 283. If it had dual exhausts, it was a PowerPack 283 with a four barrel carburetor. If it had the "V" with flags in it, that was a 348 and you got more excited. You could easily tell if it was a "stick" or a "'Glide" by the way it took off. Ford had the 390 and the 352 in little flag emblems. No emblems, it had a 289 or a six. I was heartbroken when Ford did away with the little flag emblems and just had block script with "390" on it. Chevy had no flags for the 283, just a "V". Flags on the "V" meant it had a 327.
They put the engine size above the "V" in '65 only, no numbers for the 283 starting in '66. Chevy went to block numbers in 1968. You remembered when you went out with your girlfriend to each have two nickels in your penny loafers. If all went well, you'd have enough money to go to the Rexall drug store and share a 15 cent ice cream cone. If you had trouble, you had a nickel for the pay phone at the laundrymat so you could call home for help. You knew to be home by 11 on movie night or call if you were going to be later. You knew that Jenny, the phone operator had the phone exchange in her front room and would stay up knowing you were not home yet. You called your elders or those you didn't know "sir" and "Ma'am". You knew not to backtalk grandpa, or you would be sucking your chow thru a straw for a couple of weeks. You knew to ask an adult if you were in trouble, they could be trusted to help you. You knew everybody for miles around. You knew that if you drove a Buick Roadmaster, you had saved the $100 that a Cadillac would have cost extra. And that if you drove a flathead Ford V-8, you parked by the mailbox and walked up the driveway.

[TC Chris]

You had to be able to identify every car built since the beginning of time, what engine it had, what transmission it had.... You called your elders or those you didn't know "sir" and "Ma'am".

I knew all the engines etc., but the "sir" and "ma'am" stuff was an odd behavior exhibited by the Alabama cousins. Up in MI we didn't have to do that. Down south they must have figured we were pretty bold, not showing proper deference. Oddly enough, as an adult I do that in formal settings like court. "Sir, can you tell me...." "Ma'am, please state your full name for the record." Most of those folks don't get sir'd or ma'am'd a lot so they probably figure it's just an odd behavior.

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

I'd get my ears boxed sure if I failed to recognize an elder by sir or ma'am. You doffed your hat to ladies as they passed, and if the way was narrow, you stood to the side to allow them to safely pass. You spoke to people on the street, or recognized them in some way. I couldn't cuss in front of grandma or the circuit preacher. I could with mom around for some odd reason. Maybe because she was a champion of the venacular and wasn't particularly offended. I knew a kid who called his aunt by her first name, instead of Aunt Janet, he just called her Janet. I was appalled. I thought my Aunt Grace was named that by her parents. I had no idea the "aunt" part was a salutation of respect. I had two Aunt Ferns, two Uncle Fort's, and two Uncle Orens.

We always thought Indiana ended north of Lafayette. Anything north of there was Michigan. Michigan people were more "forward". My grandparents had friends from Michigan, and thought their ways were far too lenient. They let their kids get too "lippy" for my grandparent's taste. Nothing wrong with that, really, just a different way of looking at what was acceptable. They were wonderful people, good euchre players, the way that guests were evaluated by a teenage kid in the 1960's. They drove a Rambler, so that was different in GM country where we lived. My grandmother was from Georgia, my grandfather from Louisiana. Purebred hillbillies, with strong southern values, both good and bad.

One of my best buddies in school was named Barry. He worked part time at the truck stop in town. We had two truck stops in our little town, one on the south end of town and one on the north, across the road from the John Deere dealership. Barry worked at the north one. He was a truck fanatic. He "shadowed" a Roadranger transmission in study hall. He'd be "shifting" the 13-speed, air-shifted heavy truck transmission and making sounds like "Jimmy" which was the two-cycle Detroit Diesel engines then current. You did not chat with Barry and make a mistake about a truck. I mis-identified a Hendrickson cab one time. Hendrickson used Mack, International and their own cabs. He knew the models that used each one, and I made a mistake. He went into a screaming rage, wouldn't speak to me for a month. He even learned to "shift" an air-shift 4X4 which he thought was a big deal. As we got older, Barry got his girlfriend "in trouble" so they got married in our senior year. He went to work at the electric company with his dad, and, as far as I know, he never actually drove a heavy truck a mile. When I bought an old repossessed Autocar with a 335 and Roadranger, I offered him a ride to the grain dump one time. He couldn't have cared less.

[walyfd]

I knew EVERYTHING at 16...

And forgot it at 21...

Still trying to catch up at 53...

[electra225]

When I was 16, my greatest goal was to be able to drive Bill Bays' new Mack B-75. I got to do that. His boy still has that old truck, still hauls grain with it.

[hermitcrab]

I think everyone went through the phase where you knew it all and your parents were out of touch .... I get that from my kids today ...

[19&41]

In my hometown, state road 22 ran through the middle of town. There was a Chevrolet dealership on the north side of the street and in a space created when the Ford dealership burned down, the OK used car lot on the south side of the street. As a kid, at least twice a week we would walk around and ogle the offerings of the used car lot. The proprietors wouldn't let us near the new car lot, though we had mastered the technique of cupping our hands over the window's surface without touching it. We would then walk along Main street (SR 22) and search out any vehicle we had seen in magazine layouts. We would then cross Main to city hall where the community toy was parked. A Grant tank. When I first played on it, it was on display with all personnel hatches open. We quickly learned how to unlatch the hold opens and close the hatches, big flats of 3/4" steel. Someone, at city hall as time went by, decided we were having too much fun and tack welds were put on the hatches, but each time they did that, someone broke them and we were back to playing inside. One day we got into the engine compartment, revealing 2 large V array engines with "Cadillac" stamped into the rocker arm covers. After tiring of the tank, we would walk over to the Standard station to ogle the wrecks the tow service brought in. We always kept looking for blood in them, knowing from the papers that someone had been killed in them. It amazed me that they could bend cars into such shapes. When Corvettes bought it, they looked like a frame with broken up linoleum tile shoveled on them.

[electra225]

Your mention of Corvette, brings up the topic of "Route 66". Didn't every male human on the planet watch Todd and Buzz, with no apparent source of income, tool around the country in a new Corvette. They would get their noses in somebody else's business on every episode, but that didn't dampen enthusiasm for the program. We would fasten playing cards with clothes pins, attached to the fender braces, so our Western Flyer would sound as much as possible like Todd and Buzz's Corvette. If you wanted the sound softer or louder, you could adjust the volume by how far out on the spokes the playing cards were.

[19&41]

I remember kids would also tie "hot dog" balloons on the bike in the same manner to rub the spokes.

[Firedome]

I had to know to respect my elders, but all my family being New Englanders, at most we got a harsh verbal "dressing down", never physical punishment of any kind. But coming from my stern and austere Grandfather or Great Grandfather (a Swede from Gothenburg {Goteborg}) one withering comment could be far more effective than any "whooping". The extreme would be being told to sit in a corner and "think about it" for an hour. He only had to do it once.

Those "Grants" and "Stuart" tanks both used flathead Cadillac 346 V8s, right out of the cars. Each engine also got a Hydramatic transmission attached to it, one was shifted to Fwd and one to Rear to turn. The Hydramatics were improved and refined with the experience of using them in the War, and advertised as "Battle Proved" in 1946 Cadillac ads after the war. The 346 is a fabulous engine, so quiet and smooth, more so even than the later 331 OHVs. I miss my '47.