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Yahrzeit for Rochelle
On December 21, 1987, a high school classmate, with a doctorate in psychology, committed suicide. She had a profound effect on my life, in fact, she probably shaped the direction that would lead me to four marriages, seven children and twelve grandchildren.
In 2007, I published an entry in LiveJournal, my first blogging site in the internet age. I’m going to try to link it, as a novice in word press.
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How I Learned History and Gained Caries in the Process
In 1941, Albany Park was a safe place for a five year old to be growing up. It was a lower middle class/working class area, probably 75% 3 story apartment buildings and relatively few single family one and two story homes. Children seemed safe. I was a happy little boy with my own set of wheels, a tricycle. I had no higher aspirations. Something pretty exciting was coming up. I was going to be starting school. It was 4 blocks away. On the first day, my mother took me to school and I met a bunch of kids and my new teacher, Mrs. Helen Golub. Kindergarten was a lot of fun, once I convinced my mother that I was a big boy and she didn’t need to take me to school. After all, there were patrol boys with their white belts with diagonal bands. They, and an actual patrolman, one of Chicago’s finest, made sure that the inattentive did not stray into the path of vehicular traffic. Being a fireman had not yet dawned on me so my ambition, when I got big enough, was to be a patrol boy. As I recall, kindergarten was half a day.
In first grade, we had an hour off for lunch and went home to eat. It was a nice break from Dick, See Dick Run, Run Dick Run. This was our apartment on the second floor of 4941 N. Troy Street, as it looked to Google Maps in October 2021.
4941 N. Troy, Chicago in October 2021, from Google Maps From Troy Street to Ainslie down to Kedzie where the policeman stood and the streetcars ran. Just north of Ainslie, on the west side of Kedzie, was Mrs. Freed’s Candy Store, where a penny got you Fleer’s Double Bubble, or brown dots on a paper strip, and 2 pennies got you a balsa glider. Double Bubble disappeared when the war started, and in 1942 along came War Gum.
“The “War Gum” trading card set by Gum, Inc., was the last of the great bubble gum card series to be issued in the United States before the war effort cut off all supplies of essential materials. The 132-card series began distribution in 1941 and continued well into 1942. The timing of the series allowed the Gum, Inc. team to cover many of the current events of the war; to report the actions of the first American heroes; and to spotlight many Allied leaders as well.
The artwork featured in the series tends to focus on the bravery of Allied servicemen and leaders, rather than on enemy atrocities, i.e. “Horrors of War” series. The cards are captioned both front and Back, however some of the titles differ slightly, mostly in the use of abbreviations. The cards are numbered on the Back only. The American Card Catalog number for the series is R164.” Skytamer.com
The gum that came with War Gum didn’t facilitate the bubbles that were much easier to fabricate with Fleer’s, but for some reason, Fleer’s was gone for the duration. The sugar content of either gum was more than enough, together with that kindly old lady’s other offerings, to keep several generations of dentists quite busy. They’re still busy.
The interest in history was stoked by the events of World War 2, and the information sources like Life Magazine, Movietone News and the many propaganda films of the 1940’s. The library on Lawrence Avenue proved to be a more reliable source.
Mrs. Freed’s balsa gliders were an affordable introduction to the thrills of flight. Trading cards, this time from Wings Cigarettes, supplied by my future step-mother, were accompanied by an even more ominous threat, unrecognized lung cancer, and the hazards of secondary tobacco smoke. <https://www.skytamer.com/T87.html>
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The One That Got Away, and the One That Didn’t
The One That Got Away, and, sort of, The One That Didn’t was originally posted in Facebook, on October 15, 2021.
It was a sentimental and nostalgic post in Practically Free Porsche that got me to refocus on my obsession with a particular brand of automobile, Porsche, and where and how it all began. Of course it began just after I learned to walk, and it began with a particular toy, Tootsie Toys, they were called, in pre-World War 2, Chicago. They were the American equivalents of Matchbox cars, but less detailed, and not reproductions of existing cars, but had a realism that even a boy of 4 or 5 could discern. And it started with a form of parental blackmail. I was a sickly little kid, afflicted with asthma, and in those days, the burden of what could be done lay heavily on parents. Allergy testing was suggested, and this involved a trip to the allergist where possible offending allergens that might trigger an attack, were introduced into the skin by very careful, superficial cuts in the skin…. on the arms… of a screaming 4 year old. To assuage my suffering, my dear father would take me to Marshall Field’s toy department, or maybe, it was Woolworth’s Five and Dime, and allow me to pick up a Tootsie Toy, for being so brave! Well, it was the child’s equvalent of a DFC, at least to me. I remember a particular pickup truck that had removable milk cans in the truckbed.
So after the Spitfires had been introduced, in the WW 2 propaganda and morale lifting movies, and we had defeated our enemies, and the boys came home, the metal toys that had been replaced by cardboard punch-outs to further the war effort, returned, but I was a big boy now. I was 9, and there was now a flood of new cars hitting the market, as production turned to civillian goods. Soon I was wearing glasses, and as there were no more Nazis flying Messerschmidts to shoot down, my dreams came a bit closer to the ground, and it was the September roll out of the new models, each year, when the dealerships had their display windows covered, for the big day….. Introducing the 1947 Studebaker…. why it looks like it might just be able to fly.
Skip ahead to my driver’s license, earned, as I recall in 1952, in my Uncle Herb’s 1948 Packard Clipper, which had been my Uncle Sam’s new car indulgence, before it got passed along in the family. Dad had never had a car, unless we go back to a a Model A Ford that he and my mom drove on their honeymoon, to California. But he could always borrow Herb’s, and Herb had stepped up to a fabulous and sort of ritzy Packard from his 1940 Chevrolet Master De Luxe. Cars were beginning to mean something to me.
1952 was such a big year! Our high school team won the Chicago City Basketball Championship, before losing to Pinckneyville in the Illinois Sweet Sixteen Tournament. I went down to Champaign-Urbana with the City Championship Tennis Team, before losing in doubles, in the very first round. But I still have my letterman’s sweater!
It was in 1952 that we moved from a brown brick Chicago apartment to a pastel stucco Los Angeles apartment, and it was Dad and I driving down Route 66 in a brand new powder blue Plymouth Cambridge, his first new car. I was to discover the California car culture, during my last year in high school and my brown bag college experience at UCLA. It was at UCLA that Bob Foster drove his MG TC, with windshield folded flat, under the gates at the student parking lot. It was in UCLA pre-med that I got to drive Adahm Wareh’s 1955 tan Volkswagen Beetle, and fell hopelessly in love with a Porsche Design.
Now all of this is mere introduction. What followed were 9 “Porsches” with a 10th on the way, for April 2022. They were a black 1957 Volkswagen, my first car. This was about 1960, Los Angeles County Hospital – stuffing a VW with medical students. I’m second on the right. 1957 Volkswagen.
(2) a black 1966 Porsche 912, (3) a light blue 1969 Porsche 911S, repainted. The 1969 Porsche 911S after it had been modified, in increments, to the approximate configuration of the 911ST, due to the inspiration of Bill Yates. By this time, after a rebuild, it had been purchased by my son, John Lewin. (below)
(Above) John, initially, chose a beautiful blue, lighter than my preferred midnight blue, and this was the end of the first external restoration.
(4) a brown 1972 Porsche 911S,
(5) a midnight blue 1977 Porsche Turbo 930 seen with sons, Geoffrey and Dirk, daughter, Eve, and my second wife, Jaroslava.
(6) a midnight blue 1996 Porsche Turbo 993. The 1996 Porsche 911 Turbo arrives as one of the first in Orange County, and soon to displace my Mazda RX7, a fine car in its own right, but still, not a Porsche. My wife, Lin, had urged me to get a “safe” car, and she urged me, on her birthday, yet, to buy the Mazda which had introduced the airbag. (Below)
(7) a silver 2001 Porsche Turbo 996, which I owned for 2 days, and sold to a computer entrepreneur, at a $25,000 profit, split with my son, Josh.
(8) (Below) Jump to 2011, and now I’ve decided that the 911 Turbo S 997 has the performance of the Andial 993, a PDK automatic transmission that improves the performance, and the electronics that allows me to handle the telephone calls, hands free, so foolishly, I buy my “last” Porsche, as I can’t work forever, no matter how much I like it, can I? That’s John and my grandson, Geoffrey Robert, Lin, my beautiful wife, and the 993, and me, standing by my new 2011 Porsche 911 Turbo S. I would drive the 993 home, as Lin prefers not to shift. She did just fine in the 997, but was afraid of what she might do to my new pet.
(9) (Below) a midnight blue 2014 Porsche Turbo S 991.1, delivered at the factory in Stuttgart, followed by a trip with my princess to a castle on the Rhine, Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge for Memorial Day, and a week in Amsterdam at the International Congress of Nephrology meeting. The car would be shipped to Falmouth, Maine for a courtesy delivery, and we would cover about 4,500 miles in 17 days across the USA. So I was going to hang in there for anoteher few years, or more, and those 7 dialysis clinics required service from the undisputed, fastest nephrologist in Orange County But, this would be my last Porsche. Sure.
Porsche (#3) was ordered with the help of Alan Johnson, a Porsche SCCA champion, and an eventual Porsche dealer in the San Diego area. My 1969 911S had a different ring and pinion gear and “airport gear ratios,” set up to favor acceleration, at the expense of top speed, and I had one hell of a car. It was so good, that it has remained in the family. My eldest son is in the process of restoring the car, and repainting to his taste, adding it to his Porsche 911 GTS, and Cobra replica. He favors manual transmissions over PDK’s and used his Tesla 3 to advantage in the high occupancy lanes of the Los Angeles freeway system.
Following the CSCC racing scene, I became enamored of a beautiful red Porsche 911 driven by Bill Yates, who owned San Juan Capistrano Volkswagen-Porsche dealership. His car had beautiful wheel wells, wider tires, and engine enhancements, and he was beating every Porsche he faced. What I didn’t know at the time is that he had a connection to Porsche that allowed the improvements in the 911 ST to be incorporated in his car. With his help, and that of a Santa Ana bodyshop, my wonderfully geared 911S, looked like the picture below, just after I sold it to my son. He removed the required front license plate, and I see that my peace decal is missing from the windshield, thus timing the photograph.
.And now to the very best Porsche I have ever owned, and it was the one that got away. I couldn’t end without telling about my very favorite Porsche, (#6), a 1996 993 Turbo. A fabulous car, and then, through adversity, turned into the pinnacle. One day, taking my youngest daughter to school in the early morning, and traveling at about 30 mph in the school zone, with the sun very low in the sky, behind me, a Mercury Minivan made an abrupt left turn directly in front of me, as though I wasn’t even there. The lady was headed into the school parking lot, and with the sun in her eyes, she didn’t see me. It was a two lane road, and it was over before it began. The airbags deployed. My daughter had minor airbag burns, but no one was really hurt. Only my pocketbook. The initial estimate for repairs was $35,000. Before it was done, it had risen to $45,000. The repair was excellent, but, of course, the value of the car to another owner had near evaporated. The car had about 35,000 miles on it. I read an article in Excellence about an Andial twin plug 3.8 993 with ~ 500 HP, and since Andial was servicing my car, and doing a fabulous job of keeping the 1969 optimized, I asked Dieter Inzenhofer if I could get a ride in one of the cars he had modified. It took about 6 months to get the ride, and 5 minutes to decide that I would come up with the ~ $50,000 for the modification. It became the best Porsche I have ever owned, and I totally regret selling it. It had 195,000 miles on the odometer, and Dieter’s engine was running like a clock, and passing California’s smog laws, too. If I had the space to keep it, and the neurosurgeon who purchased it from me, was willing to sell it back to me, and I had the money that he would be asking for it, well…. the fantasies continue. The moral of the story, is, if you can possibly do it, hang on to the car of your dreams, or in my case, the cars of my fantasies…. and you don’t even know about the Shelby GLHS!
My favorite photo of the 1996 Porsche 911 993 Turbo, after it had been vigorously massaged by Andial, and was my near constant companion, as I drove from dialysis unit to dialysis unit on the freeway system. The roll bars are visible. The dialysis clinic is in Norwalk, across the street from the court house where John was establishing his credentials in the district attorney’s office. Appearing to be the end of the rainbow is a DaVita Clinic, where the pot of gold, resides, by legend. I never found it, myself, but DaVita is doing pretty well, thank you.
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How I Got Here
Retirement, the introduction of the internet and dissatisfaction with my initial blogging site, LiveJournal, as well as the limitations of Facebook, the migration of social interchange to just what the computer has to offer, and the forthcoming UCLA vs Kentucky mens’ basketball game, led me to the “whinings of Dr. John Huang.” He was commenting on the Kentucky Wildcats, his daughter’s wedding and Dr. Seuss, and his writing was thoughtful, empathic and very well done. What was this medium? I was coming off of Facebook, and the depth is usually not there. I crave a deeper dive. That search, and some encouragement from a lady who is a member of our amateur philosophy group, who having read a pinned post, “The One That Got Away and the One That Didn’t,” replied “You should get that published.” Then, another kind FB friend confirmed that WordPress was a suitable place. So here I am, an old geezer with a bent for introspection, craving an audience, to display my thoughts, realizing that those whom I most desire to communicate with, are busy living their own frantic lives, with the exception, of course, of my own best friend, Lin (Linda Ellen), a Milwaukee girl who is my best friend and wife of 37 years.
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Tinkll's Senescence 