The Rambler was "cool" in that she had those fold-down seats that would allow you to recline and sleep, hopefully when you weren't driving. Those seats weren't so "cool" the nights we camped over at Hastings Campground in the White Mountain National Forest. I had opened my window a crack and headed for dreamland, when I dreamed a doctor was stabbing me with a needle, then another, and another. I awoke to something I hadn't experienced in my short time in Maine, no-see-ums. The thing about no-see-ums is that they take all the fun out of camping in a Rambler with reclining seats.
Years ago we bought our first new car, a 1965 Plymouth Belvedere, red with a narrow stripe down the sides and a vinyl top.
And I felt terrible that night, stayed awake most of it.
This comes to mind, because recently I have been meeting folks whose good old wheeled beasts of burden have either broken down or been wrecked in a snow-covered-road accident. I feel bad for them and wish I could kind of take them by the shirt -- or blouse -- and shake them awhile until they wake up.
They're not saving any money by clinging to their old clunkers. And some of them not only are not saving any money, but their clunkers are out of commission.
As a young guy, I first drove my older brother's hand-me-down, a 20-year-old 1936 Plymouth, also with a soft roof which I don't think was vinyl because I don't think God had created vinyl by that period in history. This critter also boasted an electric heater parked on the floor in front of where the passenger's feet went. The windshield was one piece, flat, and could be cranked open at the bottom if you wanted more fresh air. I never did so I never turned the crank.
She had a long stick shift on the floor.
Which brings up the question: why do we call boats, cars, trucks, buses, airplanes, and some other nonliving stuff "she?" If you know, I'd love to know too.
Anyhow that stick shift was kind of fun. I remember driving it one snowy morning and coming to a stop sign. Being young, I didn't quiet yet understand that hitting the brakes is not always the best way to stop at a stop sign when the road is slippery. But being young, I was kind of creative (My parents never found out.), and when she wouldn't stop, I shifted her into reverse and kind of backed into a stop.
It worked on the old '36, but don't try it at home or wherever you happen to be on a snowy road.
She did have one problem, which is why I carried my fishing pole with me in summer. On hot days, she would develop what "they" called "vapor lock." I have no idea what that was, but I do remember that she would stall and I'd have to let her sit for a quarter of an hour or so before she would decide to let those Plymouth wheels carry me on home.
I got to fish a bit if the vapor lock locked near a stream.
Then I had a two-year old 1957 Chevy, whose model name I forget but who I see sitting once in awhile in a dooryard and at a McDonald's in Brewer. She is now an antique.
I might be one too, but I don't think so.
I drove her until she clocked about 80,000 miles. (The "Chevrolac" was what my big brother dubbed her because of the chrome along her sides and her blue and white color. My brother's was only blue, a Chevy, indeed.) Then the Chevrolac's engine looked dirty, so I bought a 1962 Rambler.
The Rambler was "cool" in that she had those fold-down seats that would allow you to recline and sleep, hopefully when you weren't driving. Those seats weren't so "cool" the nights we camped over at Hastings Campground in the White Mountain National Forest. I had opened my window a crack and headed for dreamland, when I dreamed a doctor was stabbing me with a needle, then another, and another. I awoke to something I hadn't experienced in my short time in Maine, no-see-ums. The thing about no-see-ums is that they take all the fun out of camping in a Rambler with reclining seats.
Our next car was the Plymouth Belvedere, after the Rambler died because I had put water in the radiator that ruined the engine. After I did it and ruined that engine, lots of people told me to never put water in that engine. I didn't, because there was no engine.
It was the night of the day that engine died of over watering, that our first baby was born. A friend drove us to the hospital in Norway and stayed there all night to bring me back to Bethel the next morning, a happy father.
I still am a happy father.
The night after we bought the Belvedere I worried that we had done the wrong thing. I was in the ministry then, and older preachers told me I should have purchased the smallest car possible to save money and not appear to my congregation to be overspending. Also, some of my fellow preachers apparently felt a small, cheap car was a more spiritual choice. I can't seem to find that in my Bible; I can't even find 'Car Purchasing' in either the Old or New Testaments. Maybe my Bible is old and out of date.
Now we buy the smallest Toyota we can, because they get 40 or more miles per gallon with gas at $3.23 per gallon and because they last so long. But back in the red, sporty-looking Belvedere days, after worrying about our decision to buy the brand new Plymouth, we kept her. My Bible did tell me I shouldn't worry.
At 140,000 miles, I had the transmission adjusted, tightened a bit because it felt a little sloppy.
"That transmission looks good for forty thousand miles," said the mechanic.
I explained she had 140,000 and was thankful he was a better mechanic than reader of odometers.
Following that during a period of little money, we had older cars, all of which had fairly routine problems fairly routinely. I remember when the head gasket blew on a Chevy, and we traded even for a similar Pontiac with a motor longer than our present entire Toyota...or nearly so. We got to know a mechanic and used-car dealer, who found our cars for us when we needed one.
"Don't buy anything from my lot," he said on at least one occasion. "I'll call you when I find the right car."
He did, and his cars ran pretty well, but still had problems sooner than any of the three new cars we've had over the years. One small Ford, a Falcon, I believe, got grumpy when it rained and needed an additive to the fuel to keep her from bucking and turning the air black behind her. Another raced a lot, but when I bought her at 120,000 miles, the previous owner warned me. At the time, I was teaching 30 miles from home.
I took her to the Ford dealer, since she was an LTD station wagon with a medium-sized V8 to have them take care of the racing.
I had to leave for school by a certain time, so dropped down to the Ford dealer to pick her up.
"You can't have her," the mechanic said. "We stopped the racing, but now she stalls."
Stalling. I'd had that in other cars. I knew stalling. Actually, I stalled at times when I didn't feel like doing some chore I knew I had to do.
"Just give me the keys, and I'll take care of the stalling," I said.
And did. For the rest of Henrietta's* life, I learned how to kind of nudge one foot onto the gas a little while idling with the other foot on the brake.
Three or four older Subarus filled in some years. I found a mechanic in Ellsworth who would inspect any Subaru as long as you brought your own duct tape. Not a bad deal.
When I met Dolores, she had just bought a two-year-old Toyota Corolla, thus beginning our love affair with the Japanese auto maker.** Poor "Tommy." It turned out that he had had his frame bent in an accident and the engine banged around, apparently in that accident. Two people whacked him while he was parked. Eventually he died of a popped head gasket.
And we bought "Ellie Echo," a tiny Toyota we had rented for a week from Enterprise and then purchased. When the guy who handled the transaction told me how well she had handled at 80 miles per minute or hour when he drove her up from Massachusetts, I worried that we were buying a ruined car. She had been harassed for 25,000 miles by renters when we purchased her. But in our minds, she was nearly new.
At 107,715 miles today, she still gets over 40 miles per gallon, uses no oil, and scampers right along as fast as need be or climbs up the log roads where I do my Maine Appalachian Trail Club volunteering. She also carries bales of straw for our garden, seed for the critters, and gets me to work every morning rain, shine, or too much snow.
Dolores, having been seriously ill about 15 years ago, hadn't felt comfortable driving. But in recent years, I felt bad about her being at home in the woods with no vehicle in case of an emergency.
So, while I was having "Ellie" lubricated and her oil changed at the Toyota dealer in Brewer, where I learned they do great work and don't over charge, I wandered into the sales room and told salesman Lance Tara that it would be nice for Dolores to have her own Toyota. He ran our credit, told us we could have whatever we wanted, and sold us a brand new Yaris with no money down and no interest.
"Miss Kitty Yaris," now with 4,370 miles under her tires, also gets that over 40 miles per gallon.
"Miss Kitty Yaris" (left) and "Ellie Echo" are wondering if there will be any nice spring drives in the country this year. Milt Gross photo.
I have to admit, I'm retired -- though I work -- and so feel I shouldn't have to go out and scrape ice off the windshield. In cold months when I just let them idle to warm up the windshield and have to "plow" through sometimes unplowed roads, the mileage for both "Ellie" and "Miss Kitty,"drops to about 35 -- higher than most cars get anytime.
I told a person I knew, whose three too-used cars were broken down, "The thing about a new Toyota, or one you've had for awhile, when you go out there on that cold morning and wonder if she will start, the answer is always, 'yes.'"
And on the first try.
I've recently met several folks, whose older cars were having health problems, and suggested the head on up to Downeast Toyota and meet with Lance.
"And tell him I said he'd better behave himself," is getting to be my line.
"But my husband thinks we owe too much on other things," one woman said.
"Why not let Lance decide that. He knows the car business and will tell you the truth. And if you need to improve your credit, he'll tell you how," I said.
One man told me he had to skip work at a good-paying job because his pickup was in an accident. I suggested he rent a Toyota while deciding what to do next...which, I also suggested, could involve meeting Lance.
"By renting a car, you can go to work so your time isn't a total loss," I said. "And you'll earn more than you spend on car rent." "And after a week or so I should learn what my insurance company will do about my old pickup," he said, adding that he agreed that by renting a car he could still go to work.
None of the several folks I've met have yet visited Lance, as far as I know. There seems to be a cultural blindness that precludes moving up to a new car, when people can drive an old clunker that breaks down a lot.
I haven't done an analysis of the cost of driving, but I read somewhere that it costs the same over a year to drive no matter what you're driving. (What I read hadn't mentioned a car that gets 40 or more miles per gallon.)
We know when a car payment or registration is due. We never knew when our old beasties would collapse in harness and cost a lot in a day.
So why drive -- or not because it's broken down -- an old clunker when a nice new one is waiting outside to ferry me to work on Monday morning?
"But what if it doesn't start Monday morning?" you might ask.
Need you ask?
Milt Gross
* The students at the private school,whom I regularly took on "field" trips to places like the old section of Portland or up Bigelow Mountain, named her Henrietta after a car in one of their favorite movies. I never knew which movie, but I could never forget her name.
** Since driving Toyotas, I've sometimes explained that while the Japanese lost World War II militarily, the won the longer war, the war of the world by making Toyotas and selling them to Americans.
Milt. Gross
Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at
"Think of the story of Jesus walking on the water, found in Matthew 14:22-33 and Mark 6:45-52," Strobel writes, quoting a scholar he was interviewing. "Most English translations hide the Greek by quoting Jesus as saying, 'Fear not, it is I.' Actually, the Greek literally says, 'Fear not, I am.' Those last two words are identical to what Jesus said in John 8:58, when he took upon himself the divine name 'I AM,' which is the way God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3:14. So Jesus is revealing himself as the one who has the same divine power over nature as Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament."
A man way up in Danforth, actually who was known in those long-ago days when you could describe him such as the town drunk, said to me while we were in the general store, "I touched a moose and nobody believes me." He explained that he had canoed down the river, landed on a small island, and seen a moose standing still, just standing there. The man had walked up to the moose and touched its nose. It still stood there.I knew that in those days there was a nerve disease circulating through moose herds, which rendered them fairly helpless. They would just stand still, even if you didn't touch their noses.
Before leaving the dock, the Elizabeth Ann's captain, held up a lifejacket for us to see and even strapped it around himself. He explained that should we tip over -- maybe diesel-powered vessels don't tip over like our canoe doesn't because we're careful and cowardly about being in Maine's cold, cold water -- those life jackets would save our lives. I wondered why you just wouldn't hold onto the vessel as we would our canoe in the event it ever tipped over. Probably some Coast Guard rule.
The approximately 150 miles of trails are as varied and scenic as ever, and the Island Explorer buses allow circle hikes. Up one trail and down another. Not yet succumbing to GPS except to find corridor-boundary markers and recording their GPS settings along the Appalachian Trail (150 miles north of Acadia) as a Maine Appalachian Trail Club volunteer, I recommend a map that shows Acadia National Park's trails. The long southern part of Cadillac mountain, which the 3.5-mile South Ridge Trail follows from Route 3 to the summit.
So I poked though our little library and came up with the perfect book about green, Adventures in Contentment, by David Grayson. A fellow employee gave me this book back in the year 2,000. I remember the year only because we were working on the U.S. census together, that is, until I realized how ridiculous it was to be starting the census in rural, woodsy, lakeside Maine in mud season.
Copyright 2013 is held by the nominated authors on this article page.
The Download book does not contain a section on Seder Olam
Definition: King's Calendar Chronological Research
The Premise: Between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE (but continuing down to at least 104 BCE), Sectarian redactors transcribed the legitimate 'solar year' chronological records of Israel and Judah, into an artificial form, with listed years as each comprised of 12 months of 4 weeks of 7 days, or 336 days per year, thus creating a 13th artificial year where 12 solar years existed.
When the Synchronous Chronological Data provided in the Books of Kings and Chronicles for the Divided Kingdom Period are measured in years of 336 days, the synchronisms actually align. [Refer to Appendix 5. to see how it synchronises the Divided Kingdom Period]
About the KingsCalendar Publisher
R.P.BenDedek is the owner and Editor of KingsCalendar.com which was originally set up to publicize his research results into the Chronology of Ancient Israel. Those results were published under the title: 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran'.
Whilst there have been many attempts to solve the chronological riddle of the Bible's synchronisms of reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah and their synchronism with other Ancient Near Eastern Nations, no other research is based on a simple mathematical formula which could, if it is incorrect, be disproved easily. To date, no one has been able to dismiss the mathematical results of this research.
Free to air Academic articles set forth Apologetics for and results of his discovery of an "artificial chronological scheme" running through the Bible, Josephus, the Damascus Documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Seder Olam Rabbah.
During the current economic downturn, this book has been drastically reduced in price but will eventually rise as the economy improves.
Check the Chapter Precis Page to see details of each chapter and to gain access to the Four Free to Air Chapters
R.P. BenDedek writes social commentaries and photographic 'Stories from China' both at KingsCalendar, and as a contributing columnist at Magic City Morning Star News in Maine USA.
(He has been teaching Conversational English in China since 2003 and currently (2013) is teaching in Suzhou City Jiangsu Province.)
