Last Friday, Baxt and I went to the Guest House Museum, which for residents of Fort Bragg is known as the big brown building on the hill. I hadn’t been there since kindergarten, and she hadn’t been there since high school, so we were very excited to explore this megalithic figure in the Fort Bragg landscape. Plus, it only costs $2, and it’s a whole lot more fun than a miniature ice cream cone, which is pretty much the only other thing you can get for $2 in this town.

See, here’s a picture. I didn’t actually take that on Friday, it’s from a while ago, but I promise you it hasn’t changed that much.

Small town museums are really interesting because they are basically just collections of old pictures and weird junk that people donated because they thought it was interesting, or because they couldn’t bear to throw it away. So the Guest House Museum has everything from beautiful examples of antique harness:

To things I didn’t take pictures of, because they were not very exciting, like a military uniform from Iraq and old lard pails. The Guest House has an interesting collection of photographs, which I also didn’t photograph because, well, I hope that’s obvious. But they are well worth checking out, because it’s really fun to try and orient yourself in perspective to old pictures, and I love looking at the clothes people wore in times of yore.

I really loved this saddlemaker’s bench:

Which, uhm, yeah. I think my more kinky readers can come up with uses for this bench which go beyond saddlemaking. But it’s awfully pretty, and very cool.

I was also surprised to learn that the whistle they used at the mill was actually an antique steam whistle which had been in service for a very long time:

I guess if it’s not broken, don’t replace it, right? The sound of that whistle is indelibly etched into my mind, and I’m sure I’m not the only one; it’s a pretty iconic noise, and I still miss it every day at noon.

This is in a room dedicated to the history of the train. There’s also a very cool antique bed, but the picture didn’t come out at all well, so you’ll have to take my word from it when I say it’s cool. And lots of pictures of trains, as you can probably gather.

The Guest House used to be, you know, a guest house. So the museum staff have kept a lot of the original fixtures:

Check out those taps! Bet those saved a lot of water back in the day.

That’s the main stairwell, complete with awesome stained glass. Alas, the picture is too dark for you to tell, but on the right there, you can see some original redwood water pipes; we had redwood pipes through the 1950s! How cool is that?!

I really enjoyed our little expedition, and I think Baxt did as well. You, in turn, can also visit your very own personal local museum, because chances are good that there probably is one, and there might be something interesting to be found there. Every community has a history, and it’s neat to meet the people who are trying to preserve it; unfortunately, chances are also very high that your local history museum, just like the Guest House, needs some financial help or volunteer effort to keep going. So why not support your community by helping to preserve the past?

Today was definitely my low point. I was bitchy and bitter because I smelled bad, every block in town had power except for mine, my phone was dead, it was cold, and all my food was rotting.

I wrote a blog entry on a paper bag in case the power stayed out…about the paper bag thing…I don’t have any paper in my house, which I know is kind of dumb for a writer. So I used scraps. Call it arty if you like. Yeah. Arty.

My Chinese mother brought over a cookstove, which was much appreciated, so I made some tea. Then I spent the rest of the day moping and being cold and stinky, until around four, when I went to friends to charge my phone and take a shower. They also very kindly fed me and were generally hospitable and excellent. (See the earlier post from today, which I wrote from their computer.)

When I got home, the power was on, and I rejoiced, falling upon the internet like a starving beast.

Although I was bitchy today, I still enjoyed the storm. I liked walking around and seeing the damage, and it was fun to interact with people. I also definitely appreciate my nice cold fridge and nice hot water, and the heaters that are running in an attempt to get the house toasty before bedtime. I’m glad the PG&E figured out whatever was wrong with our block and fixed it.

That said, PG&E is getting an earful from me about my father’s house.

On the night of the storm, a tree fell across his driveway, literally ripping the phone and power cables out of his wall. The tree also took out a power pole, and would have nailed his house if the wind hadn’t been blowing last night. Power was cut to the lines, as it is automatically when a line breaks, so the situation wasn’t really a safety issue.

My father reported it in the morning, after the phone company came by and reinstalled the phone line. I’m not sure how the phone company knew to do this; maybe the system sends out a damage alert or something. Anyway, props to SBC for getting out there within hours of the breakage. PG&E said they would get to the tree when they could, and that my dad shouldn’t touch it. Which was reasonable; there’s a lot of damage across Northern California and while three households were cut off along that driveway, I understand the need for triage.

However, those three households house a 99 year old woman, a woman in her 80’s, and my father. Fortunately my Chinese mother was willing to play shuttle, and so she drove to the base of the driveway to pick up my dad, who went into town and got supplies for all three houses. He also made sure that woodstoves were in order, and so forth.

All seems well, albeit annoying, right?

Well, earlier today, my father heard a strange popping noise, and all his lights started flickering. He realized that PG&E had restored power…to the downed line. Which was tangled in the tree. And thrashing around in a ditch. A ditch full of water. Old people. Live power lines. Ditches of water. See a problem here?

My father called PG&E, who said they would “send a trouble crew out.” When I last talked to him, that had not happened; the line was still live, still crackling around, still posing a major safety risk. Because the line is damaged, his house was only getting partial power, which may have fried his pump. He turned his main off so that the fluctuating voltage couldn’t cause any more problems.

Now, I know PG&E is really busy right now. And I am a little bitchy at them for not getting my power back until two days after the rest of town. But I feel like a live power line in a ditch of water is a serious safety risk which should be attended too. I’m not asking PG&E to come out and take the tree away, put up a new phone pole, and make everything dandy, I just want them to cut power to the damn line so that my father doesn’t electrocute himself and so that the old people’s houses don’t catch fire. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, is it?

So there was a big storm. And the power went out. And I wasn’t actually able to post on Saturday, 5 January. But I did write a blog entry on the back of some pages from my “Stuff on My Cat” calendar, and I did take pictures. So enjoy.

First, the blog entry above, which I wrote in the morning. Then, I cruised downtown to check out the damage…

Lots of downed lines.

Later adventures in town yielded a fiesta of downed lines. Everywhere.

I also snapped a neighbor’s newspaper:

Here’s a downed tree, by the Guest House. It was at this point that I noticed that downtown had power, and I started to feel a bit irked, because I did not.

The Skunk Train’s sign fell down.

I wandered around town for awhile, noting that all systems appeared to be go and hoping that my power had gone on in my absence. This turned out not to be the case, and after sulking at home for a few hours, I went back out to Headlands, where I bitched and moaned about not having power, and then I left and got some delicious food at the Bistro. And then I went to visit friends who live a block away, and do have power. I skulked at their house as late as I decently could and then I went home to my freezing cold house and set up for bed:

I hoped the power would be on in the morrow.

Obviously, I didn’t actually write this entry late at night on Friday, 4 January, because my power went out. I am, in fact, guilty of back posting. But I wanted my storm posts to have continuity for future generations of readers, so I went ahead and did it anyway.

I woke up on Friday morning to the sound of…generators. And the sight of no power. Given the extreme weather conditions the night before, I wasn’t that surprised, and I settled in for the long haul. Fortunately, Petey and Baxt came by, and we went on an adventure to go check out damage. First we swung by City Hall, and then we went to the harbor:

The sky was momentarily blue, but you can see the foreboding clouds overhead.

For all I know, these stairs have been washed ashore for months. I don’t really hang out in the harbor all that much. Anyway, here they are, being stairs.

Walking towards the water, we were greeted with this friendly sign:

And these rough waves. The water is brown, incidentally, from washed out topsoil, not because the Noyo is some nasty polluted river.

It was pretty choppy out there.

We also went to Harvest, which was a complete madhouse. People were stocking up on beer and other random items. Lines were long. I got satsumas and bread. Mmm. Bread.

Later that day, Felicia brought me dinner, which was awesome, and we played a game of Scrabble by candlelight:

After she left, I went to bed, mounding on the blankets against the growing cold and establishing a candlit bedside light:

Given that I normally post in the morning, gentle readers, you are probably wondering why I’m writing so late today. And I know that you do sorely miss the sites of interest for the day, but I swear that I have an excuse for putting an entry up so late, so never fear, all is well! More or less. I mean, I’m not dead. But parts of my house are.

One of the exciting things about living in older houses is that they occasionally have catastrophic problems. One of these problems happened to manifest today, when the power to around half of my house abruptly vanished and would not return despite my best efforts at the breaker box, so I was forced to call my landlord so that an electrician could come out. Since I’ve already been pestering my landlord about the heat situation, I felt rather awkward calling yet again, but I thought that my power might not be working because the house was about to blow up or something, so I mustered up the will.

As it happens, the power went out because I was missing a neutral, and judging from the condition of one of the “receptacles,” as the electrician charmingly calls “outlets,” there was a lot of heat in my electrical system, which is bad. The electrician is also a fireman, so he blanched visibly not only out of professional concern but out of thankfulness that he didn’t have to show up with his other hat on.

So the electrician traipsed around the house while I traipsed in and out turning off breakers, and the problem is going to require more work, which means that…only about half of my outlets work right now. So I had to perilously string a cord to one of the three working outlets in the house to write this entry. It’s kind of exciting, I feel like I’m camping out, what with the guttering candles and so forth. Fortunately the stove and the hot water heater are on dedicated circuits, and the circuit which powers the fridge has all of its neutralness intact, so I can bathe, cook, and eat, but my house is dark. And there are wires in odd places.

The electrician says that he will try and come within a few days to do the rest of the work, and now that I more or less have power for my computer and so forth, I think things will return to normal, although I am going to have to mop for around three hours to get all the mud out, given that it was raining and there was a lot of traipsing in shoes.

However, I did learn a valuable lesson today, dear readers, which is why I am posting a relatively boring story instead of a more interesting entry. And that lesson was that if I ever build/remodel a home, I am totally making a wiring plot. We could have saved ourselves several hours of work today with a wiring plot. Well, I use we in the royal sense. But, the point is, make a wiring plot. You never know when you might need it. Also, do not hide junction boxes under your house in corners that cannot be reached.

So I was minding my own business in the cemetery yesterday, straightening headstones and uprighting flower vases, and I kept hearing strange clattering and tooting noises to the South. I finally glanced up and saw a little railroad maintenance car, which I thought was odd, since our railroad doesn’t use railcars, it uses old vans with specially fitted wheels. However, I thought that it was entirely plausible that the railroad probably has a railcar or two sitting around, and I went back to minding my own business when I looked up again, and saw another one.

And then another, and another, and another.

I realized that my insatiable curiosity would only be satisfied if I went over to the site of the commotion to see what was going on.

When I arrived, this is what I saw:

For those of you who aren’t intimately familiar with the cemetery geography of Fort Bragg, the train tracks run right past Rose Memorial, and the cemetery was directly behind me when I took this picture. Literally; a friend’s grave was about 20 feet away from where I was standing. I hope none of the people in our garden of the dead had a problem with the Skunk Train.

I still feel kind of shy about photographing and talking to people, so I took another shot before I worked up the nerve to ask someone what in the heck was going on.

As it turns out, most railroads sold off their railcars at some point, to replace them with foolish looking vans with train wheels on them. The next time I see the Skunk’s van, I’ll photograph it. It looks like a total 1970s molester van, it’s awesome.

So, at any rate, when the railroads sold their railcars, people bought them because they thought they were neat. And people started fixing them up and decking them out, and pretty soon organizations like NARCOA arose. People get together with their railcars and make arrangements with railroads to go on excursions, and these guys came over from Willits with railcars from all over the country. There were a lot of really neat rigs; some were obviously custom, and others were clearly vintage, and everyone looked like they were having a jolly old time.

Some people even had pi!

Everyone was very nice and friendly, and it was neat to check out all the railcars. They were gathering by the cemetery so that they could cross town as a group, rather than holding up traffic for an extended period of time as they straggled through one by one. They were very efficient, with their own flaggers on board who moved into position to stop traffic to allow the railcars through.

I got this shot of the railcars moving out and then my batteries died. Despite the fact that I have spare batteries squirreled away in almost everything I own, I for some reason wasn’t carrying any yesterday. I trailed after the railcars until they hit the Skunk Train’s lot, and they went through the forbidden gate to the Mill Site, where Skunk stores its trains and whatnot. I thought about following them through, but I would have stuck out like a sore thumb the way I was dressed, so I waved good bye and resolved to come back on their way out to get more photos.

Alas, I missed the return trip, although I did get to watch the locomotive maneuver itself around the tracks; I think they stuck the railcars on the back lot so that the railcar people could wander around town, and so that the railcars would be out of the way of the real train when it returned. The railcars had to wait for the train to come back, since we only have one set of tracks, and the train came back earlier than I thought it would so I missed the grand departure. However, now that I know about the NARCOA site, I’m keeping my eye out for Fort Bragg excursions so I can get more pictures next time.

It just goes to show you that something marvelous and amazing really is always happening, even in sleepy little towns like ours. If I didn’t go to the cemetery occasionally, I would have totally missed this event, and I think that most people in town did. Wander around your hometown some day, and you might be surprised by what you find!

So help me, friends, I think I might have entered a passive aggressive note war. If you don’t think that note wars can get serious, think again. I don’t know what possessed me, honestly, I don’t, and I’m not proud.

First, some backstory.

When I moved into my new house, I was informed that the post office wouldn’t deliver to me, which I thought was kind of weird, but I actually prefer post office boxes, because they are generally more secure, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I got a post office box. I receive mail in it. On a regular basis. I get a lot of mail, actually.

However, the thing about banks and financial institutions is that they want your street address. Which is pretty reasonable, all in all. So I have two addresses on file with all of my accounts, my street address, and a mailing address. This is standard practice. People do it all over the world. At any rate, my bank got profoundly confused, and they have been sending mail here, and that mail has ended up in my neighbor’s box. Probably…three or four times. I have been discussing this with the bank, and I think that the bank and I have finally agreed on the post office box as an address.

Imagine my surprise when I got home yesterday and there was a rain sodden piece of mail from the bank tossed on my porch with a note (in pencil, so it wouldn’t run!) that said “S-Get a mailbox! -P.” Now, I should note that this piece of mail was a formal notice that my address had been changed, which the bank presumably uses in cases someone hacks my account and tries to redirect my mail.

Now, I had just had my haircut, and I was feeling pretty awesome about it, so I basically went from “hey, it’s raining, but my hair is cut, and that’s great, and I’m going out with friends later, which is also great,” to “I hate my fucking neighbors. I hate all of them, and their noisiness, and their rudeness, and their selfishness (except for S., who is great).”

So…I wrote a note back. On the same envelope.

“Hi ‘P.’-While I appreciate your snarky note about getting a mailbox, I am actually having a dispute with the bank right now about where my mail is being sent. I apologize for the undoubtedly immense inconvenience of three or four pieces of misdirected mail. However, this should be the last one. -S.”

Will this be the final salvo in the note war? I hope so. I realize that my childish rage should not have overcome me, but, damnit, I was pissed. I had already talked with the cool neighbor, S., who lives downstairs in the front house, about the issue. He thought it was funny, but wasn’t really that upset about it. I can only assume that ‘P.’ lives upstairs; I have never been introduced to him, but there’s an older guy I see around a fair amount who is always really rude to me.

Now, while I realize it is kind of annoying to get mail for someone by accident, this is a small town, and it’s no big deal to drop it off at my house, especially considering that my house is right next to the parking space that the old dude always uses, and that in order to take out the garbage, you have to walk by my gate. And, honestly, I wouldn’t notice or care if I didn’t get any mail from the bank, because I do all of my banking online, and most of the shit they send me here is just advertising.

So…while two wrongs don’t make a right, I feel kind of entitled for leaving a bitchy note, because, damnit, he did it first.

Neighbors are a fact of life for most of us, I suspect. I think that one of the major defining separations between many city dwellers and many small town residents is the interactions that people have with their neighbors. Here, I know my neighbors. I know their names, I know their children, and I know their habits. If my neighbor’s house was on fire, I would call the fire department not out of self preservation, but out of concern. Likewise, if I saw strange behavior, I would probably speak up about it, and I know that my neighbors would do likewise. We may not be the best of buddies, but we look out for each other.

In the City, I felt like that was not the case. (And before you jump all over me, I am fully aware that there are neighborly regions of cities all over the world, where neighbors are friends and they do look out for each other, just like there are frosty, hostile neighborhoods in small town. I’m generalizing, people. Generalizing.) I didn’t really know my neighbors in the city, and they seemed suspicious and confused when I helped them out, or invited them to Thanksgiving because they were young art students who might not have anywhere to go.

I know that I complain about my neighbors a lot. Some of them are pretty noisy. But all of them are good people. I have a reasonably friendly relationship with the people who share this lot with me; there are actually two separate households in the front house, and we exchange baked goods and greetings and offers of assistance periodically. I also have two friends on the same block whom I interact with pretty regularly, and I exchange friendly nods and smiles with my other neighbors. I may not know everyone by name, but I know who lives where, and what they drive, and more or less what their working hours are.

I’ve noticed that some people who relocate here love this. My friend P, for example, is really pleased by the fact that people know her and her husband, and that they genuinely care about what’s going on in P’s life. She’s assimilated well to this aspect of small town life, which also has an ugly side; gossip, for example, spreads quickly here because everyone knows everyone, and it’s very hard to deal with something in private here. Other newcomers seem to really resent the fact that people here are generally (not always, I know) friendly to their neighbors.

At one point several years ago, my father and I were walking on the Coastal Access Trail I mentioned yesterday, and we ran into the property owners. The wife seemed like a nice lady, but the husband was very hostile. My father and I simply introduced ourselves, and my father mentioned that he was their neighbor, and that they should call if they needed assistance with anything. The wife thanked him, but the husband sneered and was rather rude. To my father’s credit, he responded with aplomb, merely saying that he was in the phone book if they ever needed anything, and that he would be happy to have them over to tea with some of the other neighbors so that they could get to know the neighborhood, if they wanted to.

They never called him, and I think this cut my father more deeply than he lets on. He made a genuinely kind offer, I think, and they treated him like an ignorant hick until he mentioned that he was an English professor (with more education than either of these yuppies (yes, Nicholas, they were in fact yuppies*) had). It’s sad to me that people seem almost afraid of neighborliness these days, because I think it’s excellent to know your neighbors. Especially when you’ve set up an adversarial relationship with them by trying to block a Coastal Access Trail; most people are willing to give you a second chance, if you decide to grow up and behave like an adult.

Not just because they might help you out some day when you need it. It’s just easier to be nice than rude, and it’s easier to get things solved by working together as a community. This town has a lot of problems, and they aren’t going to be solved by being rude to each other. I think that this divide between neighborly attitudes and frosty ones is a major issue in a lot of resort towns, and it generates a lot of resentment. Small actions make a big difference, especially in a town filled with people who have memories like elephants, primarily because we have nothing else to think about. People remember when you’re rude, or disparaging about the place they live in. They also remember when you tip them poorly, when you fail to be polite to their grandmothers, and when you make an ass of yourself in public.

After all, what’s wrong with being nice to your neighbor? Growing up in Caspar, we all knew each other, played soccer together in the street, had parties together, ate together…and banded together when someone needed help. That’s why I choose to live in a small town, because I like knowing that the people around me care about me. I like knowing that if I was in a major accident, a fund would be started at the local bank to help me with my medical bills. I like knowing that I can leave town for the weekend, assured that my neighbors will keep an eye on things. I like knowing that children and animals can play safely around the neighborhood, because people will watch out for them.

This is not to say that people don’t fall through the cracks; this is a town with some dark secrets and problems of its own which do need to be addressed. But being neighborly is a good way to start addressing these issues, by promoting friendship and goodwill among the people who live here. The only way to keep people from falling through the cracks is to know them.

*Furthermore, Nicholas, I would like to argue that yuppies are a serious problem here, as are WOOPs. The difference is that yuppies buy vacation homes that they only visit a few times a year, while WOOPs buy vacation homes which they slowly relocate to. WOOPs, at least, contribute to the local economy by buying things and paying taxes, while yuppies swan in and out of town bitching about how boring it is, which begs the question of why they bothered to buy property here at all.

Furthermore, I in no way shape or form mean to disparage the service industry. I greatly enjoy the efforts of the hardworking men and women in the service industry up here. I just think that an entirely service-based economy is not healthy, and that not all people are happy to work in it. To choose to devote your life to service is an excellent thing; to be forced into it is another. And although many employers here take great care of their crews and pay as well as they can, a service industry job does not generally pay a mortgage. Perhaps I should devote another entry to my issues with service-based economy, and my own suggestions for ways to break out of that here, assuming everyone isn’t tired of my ranting about this issue.

I have a vacuum cleaner. It’s pretty sweet. It’s a “Hoover Widepath Ultracharge Mechatron 9000 with Extra Sass.”

Anyway, my vacuum and I have a pretty good relationship. I purchased it back in 2003 from our local Sears. It’s a bagless, which I’m all about, and it’s a pretty easy keeper. Sure, the stupid cleaner attachments for the wand keep falling off the back because they’re not really secured, but it does suck. In a good way, of course. Especially when all the filters are shiny and clean, my vacuum is nothing short of formidable. Formidable, I tell you. Cats have been known to be sucked across the carpet with its force.

About every three to six months, I break my vacuum down and service it. I take the whole thing apart, remove random clogs of cat hair, wash the filters, and so forth. Every six months I replace the belt, and every year or so I try to replace the paper filter in the dirt cup. All of these parts are readily obtainable through the Hoover site, so it’s not a big deal, and it keeps my vacuum superfantastic.

So I was peacefully vacuuming on Wednesday, and my belt broke. Just…broke. It was very upsetting. Being a savvy girl, I headed to the Hoover website to order a replacement. But…my model number isn’t listed on their website anymore, and the part number I have returned no results.

So I had to call Hoover.

And then Hoover told me to call some subsidiary in San Leandro. So I called them, but they left me on hold for a really long time, so I hung up on them and called another Hoover subsidiary in San Francisco. The person who answered the phone didn’t sound too bright, but I figured we’d get our scene together.

I told him my vacuum model number, and I said that I needed a belt and a fresh filter. I also said that I needed to order these parts, as I live in Fort Bragg, not San Francisco.

“Uhhhh…” he said.

After rummaging around for awhile on their computer system, he said that they did, indeed, have the belt that I wanted. Oddly enough, the part number I gave them actually worked, although it didn’t work on the Hoover website. Fascinating.

Onto the filter. Now, for some reason, although my owner’s manual lists the part numbers for the belt, two filters, replacement headlamp, replacement light lens, replacement dirt cup, replacement primary filter, replacement brusher array, replacement wand function, and replacement handle…it doesn’t list the part number for the filter I needed to replace.

“It’s the paper filter,” I said. “The one that looks like an accordion. In the dirt cup.”

“Uhhhh…” he said. “The HEPA?”

“No,” I said, “the secondary filter. In the dirt cup.”

“Ok, ok, we have that,” he said.

“Great,” I said. “So, can I, uh, order those?”

“Yeah, we have them.”

“Er…can you ship them to me?”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah.”

After about twenty minutes of having my address repeated back to me, he assured me that the parts would be shipped.

“So, er, do you want a credit card number?”

“No, no, it’s cool man,” he said. “We’ll bill you.”

“Oh, ok. Well. Thanks.”

About twenty minutes later, he called back.

“Yeah, uh, my manager says I need, uhm, a street address? And, like, your credit card number?”

“Sure,” I say.

Amazingly, the parts arrived yesterday. I was fully expecting them to ship via the slowest possible method, so I was shocked when my father called and said there was “some box from Hoover” at his house. (I don’t get packages at the hobbit house. Don’t ask me why. It’s complicated.)

So, he brought the box over and offered helpful fatherly advice while I rapidly stripped the vacuum cleaner down to install the belt and new filter.

“Er, you’ll want to unscrew that, there,” he said, as I positioned the screwdriver over the bottom of the vacuum.

“Hey,” he said, when I took the bottom off, “there’s no belt! That’s your problem!”

“Yes, yes,” I muttered, fitting the new belt on.

Yet, when I turned to the box with the filter in it…it was very obviously the wrong size. It was also, very obviously, the wrong filter. It was a filter for a “Hoover Windtunnel Ultraplus Bootlicker 6000 with Extra Nazi Filtration.” Very much not the part I had ordered.

Sigh.

So I called them back again, and got a totally different man who was very nice and helpful and actually looked up my model number and said “ah, yes” when I mentioned the thing about paper accordions. He claimed to be shipping out the new filter “that very instant,” and said I could put the wrong one back in the mail “at my leisure.”

We shall see, my friends, we shall see. I suspect that my vacuum’s clever plot isn’t over yet.

While walking downtown to check the mail the other day, I noticed some awesome vintage cars. Blabberon chronicles shopping carts…I apparently am destined to track the population of beautiful old cars. I’ve noticed that there are often one or two in the Skunk Train parking lot, especially on the weekends, and I suspect that the owners probably come up in convoy. Whatever the reason for it, I love seeing a lineup of old cars gleaming with loving care.

Often, the cars are beautifully restored, and it’s obvious that the owners love them very much and handle them with kid gloves. These paint jobs looked fresh, with beautiful polished fittings and gleaming hubs. I swear to Pete, if I didn’t know better, I would have thought these cars were brand new. I would really love to get a peek under the hood someday, but I never seem to spot an owner with an old car, and I’m not about to charge up and start poking around. Although it’s tempting.

These two cars looked a lot alike from behind, so I swept around front to check out the scene. It took some close examination for me to see the differences—but the front view really show what different cars they are. I also checked the backseat for rum runners, just because these seemed like those kind of cars. I didn’t spot any, but here’s a back view of the Graham:

Look at those curves! Amazing.

These beautiful vintage cars make me wonder about the cars around us today. Most cars seem so clunky and ugly, I can’t imagine people collecting them and lavishing attention on them. Of course, given how shoddy car construction is these days, I’m not sure any late twentieth century cars will be around in 70 years to restore, even if people want them. Whereas these vintage beauties will probably still be purring.

I think I might be suffering from car envy. I don’t even really want a car, but some of these vehicles are mighty sexy; and they probably require a huge time commitment. When I’m old and retired…