Memories From the Closet

By Parrothead Jeff, on 4 June 2012

So, I’ve been packing for quite a while. I know I’m glacial in my pace, but I’m getting it done

One of the reasons I’ve been taking so long to get this done is that I’ve been going through stuff and deciding what to throw away, what to keep, what’s important within that stuff.

I came across a couple of pictures while going through my closet and I figured y’all might like to see ‘em

Me and my 1988 IROC Z-28 back in the late 1990's

Oh, what a bunch of bittersweet memories this pic brings back! I bought my IROC from a supposed friend and ended up replacing a few things like the starter, alternator, engine computer and the ENGINE Oh yeah, it also leaked enough oil that we nicknamed it the Exxon Valdez and I just replaced the filter every once in a while because changing the oil was kind of redundant Then there was the fact that the air conditioning never worked and it was a black on black car with almost nothing but glass above the tops of the doors. Yeah, it got just a bit hot in the summer.

Still, it never left me on the side of the road and I do miss a few things about it. I miss the rumble of the V8 under that hood, the glass T-Tops and running across the Coronado Bay Bridge at night with the tops off. The streetlights would strobe through as I passed under them and I always liked that

In the end, the check engine light wouldn’t go out even with all the magic the local Chevy dealer tried and it was going to fail the smog test it was required to take. A 17 year old girl ended up crashing into it about a week before the registration was due to expire and I got a good settlement out of it. It was a mixed blessing – I miss the car, but I was thankful to get out from under the financial burden.

And yes, I still want another one

SR-71 Blackbird - Dad took this picture at the Pt. Mugu airshow back in 1982

Another pic I came across was taken by Dad at an airshow back in 1982. I couldn’t decide which version of the edits from the scan to post, so I decided to post them both. Now, I was only about five years old when this was taken, but I remember being there when it was taken. The things I remember from that airshow are an F-4 Phantom firing a Sparrow missile out to sea in front of the crowd, aerial firefighting aircraft putting out an accidental brush fire that was set by some pyrotechnics, and this SR-71 flying by A quick Google search found some more pics of that same airshow here

It’s funny to think about how secret that SR-71 and its siblings were back in the day and how everyone thought we might never learn much about them. It’s funny because I’ve gotten to talk to many of the people who helped develop the A-12 which was the SR-71′s single seat predecessor and I’ve gotten to know a whole bunch about it since moving to Las Vegas If you want to know more, start with the Road Runners Internationale and Area 51 Special Projects