Peter Behrens's Blog, page 498
November 20, 2013
69 El Camino, San Francisco Bay
Thank to Michael Moore for these. Autoliterate caught a nice 66 or 67 El Camino in Santa Barbara last spring.
November 19, 2013
1961 Chevrolet Apache
I learned to drive with a stickshift on a '61 Apache, GH Ranch, Sundre, Alberta, 1973. Caught this one parked beside the courthouse in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas.
El Llano Estacado Texas & New Mexico
A lot of the Llano is an environmental disaster. In the one hundred forty years since we finally won it from the Comanches, it had been over-grazed, farmed to dust, irrigated, feed-lotted, urban-sprawled and generally fucked around with by people who bellow about their patriotism...patriotism which apparently has absolutely nothing to do with caring for the physical land, the actual American ground. For all our silly blather about love of country, and for all the crazy, ersatz, pumped-up, steroid-military-culture patriotism on display at insane American carnivals (like the pre-game show at last night's Monday Night NFL football game, New England "Patriots" vs Carolina) I think we really don't like our country very much. We really hate it. It makes us uncomfortable. We want to turn it into something else. One big feedlot. One big shopping mall. One big ATM machine.So I'm posting pictures of the beauties of the wondrous llano, which are still out there, on the remote range country in Texas and Eastern New Mexico, and in Palo Duro Canyon--but I wish I had grabbed photos of the poverty shacks lining the highway in Amarillo (traffic was going too fast, I couldn't stop) and the feedlots (again, blame traffic..couldn't pull over in time) and the other dismal wreckage that is I fear 80% of the reality of that sad, despoiled region.
1964 Dodge Polara. Yates Center, Kansas
These were relatively light cars and with the right things aboard, they went fast. I saw a quickened but still street-ready Polara for sale a couple years ago on bring-a-trailer.
November 18, 2013
1951 Chevrolet 3100
Thanks to Virginia McCracken for this handsome truck. If you catch it again, Virginia, I want to see more. Especially a profile shot, if you can. You know this has to be Santa Barbara, with those blue skies and palm trees. I remember how endless blue skies of November used to irritate me when I lived in SB. Sure could use a touch of that light now.
Nomad Wagon, Safari Wagon. Bushwick, Brooklyn.
When I first saw these photos on Scouting New York I thought they were of that legendary lost car-pound. You know--the lot somewhere in the outer-outer boroughs, where trangressive cars are hauled and impounded after bad parking choices are made. The car-pound that's never been found; the pound lost in time and Brooklyn. But what this really is a someone's collection of pretty good cars, stored on Myrtle Avenue, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It's not Jay Leno's garage, but some of the machines are far more appealing than standard-issue collector auto-baubles. The owner seems to have a trope for station wagons: I see a '55 Chevrolet Nomad and a 1955 Pontiac Safari, and what look to me like two or three 1954 Pontiac or Chevrolet wagons. Also, a 1957 Ford, and a Checker sedan from the early 1970s. I am definitely making the trip to Bushwick next time in NYC and will report when I'm on location. Thank you, Scouting New York.
