DELTA 88 ROCKET

No childhood would be complete without your first car. Maybe I should not tell this story but its too funny not too..See I never had a Mustang or a GTO for my first car in High School I got a Delta 88 Rocket. Very similar to the photo above but my car was pea green. At first I hated the car (I got it from my Aunt for like $50.00) but the more I drove the car the more it grew on me. First off the car had a large V8 engine. When I got the car it never ran on all 8 cylinders but only 7 due to some oil in the 8th plug.When you punched it you could tell it would miss a bit. But for $50.00 I had it over 120 mph a few times when I was really having some fun. The front right wheel well was ripped up and the car looked like shit. It looked like someone had taken a huge can opener and lifted up on it several thousand times. But when I parked I never had anyone park next to me. They must have thought anyone with a car that looked this bad must have a bad driver.

We lived on a farm back then and each summer our dirt roads became very dusty. One day while driving down the dirt road dust started coming in the back of the car. I had to take evasive action and opened a window. This in turn created cabin pressure and kept the dust from coming into the car. Lucky for me I was able to think on my feet that day or I could have died from all the dust. Anyway the car was very large and a few times my friends and I took the car we had anywhere from 6 to 8 people in it. We would drive to Marshfield WI/ go shopping and then back home. That dam car had enough room for 12 people if you really crammed them in. Sometimes (and I know everyone has done this) we would put like 4 people in the car and hide the other 3 in the trunk before we went to the all night drive in theatre.

In the winter I would throw some bags of salt in the back and it would go through a lot of snow. That car was so heavy it was probably better than a front wheel car of today. If you think of a big green Sherman Tank that is really what my car was like. Except that it could go a bit over 120 and a tank cannot.

All good things must come to an end. And one summer day they did when the car finally died. See my friends and I were really goofing off and we decided to jump a bridge in our town. The bridge was an old wooden bridge built like a brick shit house. At one time as I recall someone tried to burn the bridge down. But it was built with railroad ties covered in oil (it was like invincible and could not be burned). Anyway I think we hit the bridge doing about 50. We were air born and that's when I think I shit myself. It seemed like a good idea at the time but then when we were air born I remember thinking we were going to die.


The good news is we jumped High Bridge with no problem. The bad news was when we landed we dropped the tranny brace/ the transmission and the muffler all in one fell swoop. Everyone was ok and so to be honest I was very lucky for that/ since looking back on it this was the dumbest thing I did in my life (well wait...that's another story)..

The brakes worked ok and I was able to stop the car. We got a tow from a guy who use to drive school buses in town. I think I finally sold the car for $50.00 and that guy put on another 20K miles. He was a mechanic of course and sold and bought cars all the time.

Whats the moral of this story? The great thing about US cars back then is a kid could change his own oil, spark plugs etc. The engine area always had a lot of room and most cars were built to last 12 years or more. My dad drove the same car ars for many years it was a big old blue chevy station wagon with a tree on the column (I remember 3 cars growing up total).....Today you cant work on your own car...You have to pay someone to do it.....And sometimes if your lucky you can get 5 years out of a car. Bottom line is nobody works for the same company for more than 20 years and cars are not built like they use to be.

To bad we cant just go back in time just a litte...............................................................................

The Black Widow