Truth Be Told … Randy Simpson — “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”

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By LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX  — The Truth Be Told “Firsts” Edition at the Colfax Municipal Building’s Cozy Theater on Sunday, September 8, featured stories of “firsts.”

Storytellers included Ken Neuburg (First Pack of Baseball Cards), Randy Simpson (First Car), Jane Sonnentag (First Day of School) and Derek Westholm (First Date).

The Truth Be Told editions are hosted by Steve Russell and Kobi Shaw, who thought of the idea of local storytellers as a way to draw audiences to the renovated auditorium and to highlight the next project for the building: constructing an addition for an elevator and handicapped accessible bathrooms on all three floors.

Watch the Colfax Messenger in the following weeks for the other stories of “firsts.”

Here is Randy Simpson’s story.

Randy is from the eastern part of the state near Green Bay, but he has lived in the Colfax area for 25 years.

Low-tech

I spend my days in computer programming and website design, Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, marketing — I do a lot of high tech work.

But I want to talk about a very low-tech first. It was my first car.

We all had a first car, and it was probably the most special one we’ve ever had. Who remembers their first car? Before 1970? Before 1950? Before 1940? Before 1945?

[52 Chevy someone called out from the audience.]

My first car was a 1967 Chevy station wagon. Big boat of a car — 118 inch wheel base. It was a station wagon we’d always had. My dad bought it. He didn’t buy it new. I might have been 7 or 8.

That was our family car. We went everywhere with that car. We went to Canada. We went to Montana. Arkansas. Everywhere. Mom and Dad in the front seat and us three kids in the back seat. Camping stuff behind the back seat.

When us kids would get to fighting, my mom would get a flyswatter. And she would start doing this [waving the flyswatter behind her].

That’s the first time I learned discipline.

It didn’t matter who she hit. We stopped fighting.

We grew up with the car on these family camping trips.

Eventually my dad got another car, and the station wagon sat parked in the side yard. But my dad still used it to haul his boat around, and we’d go fishing.

Ice fishing

When I (was a teenager) we’d go fishing a lot. I grew up over by Green Bay. We fished a lot on the Wolf River, and we fished a lot on Lake Winnebago.

One of the highlights of Lake Winnebago fishing is ice fishing. You can drive anywhere on the lake in a really good ice year.

We would take that car out ice fishing.

Kids get bored when the fish aren’t biting.

My dad would take a 50-foot rope, tie it to the trailer hitch and to a big sled, and then he would do cheerios and figure-8s on the lake, and us kids would be in the sled, just screaming.

That was my first introduction to danger.

Also on Lake Winnebago, later in the winter, the wind would shift the ice back and forth on the lake, and these big cracks would open up.

People still wanted to go fishing, so they would lay iron beams across these cracks. They would build bridges across the cracks. Two feet, three feet — 10, 12, 15 feet.

We’d roll down the windows, crack the doors open so you could get the doors open if you had to, and we’d drive really slow across these bridges.

My second introduction to danger.

First beer

How many people remember their first beer?

My dad and I would go fishing, and I might have been 15, on the Wolf River in the springtime in the evening, and my dad would always bring along two beers to have on the drive home.

It was about a 30 minute drive. We’d get done fishing in the evening after sunset.

Dad would say, “Get me a beer.” I’d go into the back seat, get the beer, open it up and hand it to him. He’d finish that one, I’d put it in the back seat and get the other one and open it up and hand it to him.

He’d have them on the way home — don’t do that now today, please!

One night Dad said, “Get me a beer.”

I got a beer, opened it up, handed it to him. He said, “Now get me the other one.”

I got the other beer, opened it up, and he said, “That one’s yours.”

Here I am. I’m drinking a beer in the car with my dad as we’re driving home.

He turns to me, and he says, “Don’t tell your mom.”

We got home with two empty beer bottles.

Dad always had two beers on the drive home. Mom never knew.

I eventually did tell Mom — when I was in my 20s.

So that car was really part of my growing up. We got it when I was a little kid. Camping trips. All the way up through teenage years.

Driver’s test

Now, when you’re taking driver’s ed, taking your driver’s test, you have to have a car.

This is a 118-inch wheel base car. Four feet in front (for the hood) and four feet behind the back seat. So that’s the car I took my driver’s test with.

Cars today are small, tiny, little maneuverable things.

There was no power steering in this car. It was power steering by Armstrong. It was two hands on the wheel the whole time.

(The driver’s license examiner) made me parallel park.

We pulled up in front of the police station.

He said, “Parallel park.”

I thought, “Really?”

So I pulled up. I looked back, and there was about 10 empty parking spaces behind me.

All I had to do was not hit the building.

Okay. So you turn the wheel this way and back in, and then you turn the wheel this way, and you’ve got to back up a little farther, so you’re even with the driver’s side door, then you turn the wheel this way.

I backed in — and the back wheel popped up over the curb.

Okay. Now I’ve got to turn the wheel this way, swing the front end around.

Then that front tire pops up on the curb.

There we were [sitting tilted, passenger side higher than the driver’s side].

He said, “Get off the curb.”

I got off the curb.

He said, “You don’t have to do it again. You passed.”

I have never parallel parked a car after that.

You will see me drive around and around and around, looking for a parking space. I will drive around the block until I find a parking space. You will never see me parallel park — because I can’t.

To school

So I got my driver’s license. And that was my car.

Me and my brother and sister would take it to school. My sister is older, me and my brother are twins, and we all have to drive the same car to school.

This car was cool because we no longer had to walk to school. It was a mile and a half walk to school.

The fence in our backyard was the city limits.

If you lived outside the city limits, you could ride the bus, if you lived inside the city limits, you could not. We would walk up the hill towards school, and (a stone’s throw away) our friends are getting on the bus, and the school bus is driving right past us. We always had to walk, and this car was so cool, because we didn’t have to walk to school anymore.

We had a car!

We could go places and do things, and Mom and Dad didn’t have to take us, because we had a car!

Now I could go fishing on my own. Me and my friends, we could go fishing by ourselves.  We could go to Lake Winnebago ice fishing.

If the car goes through the ice, no big deal — 155,000 miles on it.

On fire

We went ice fishing one day.

Now, these are stories of “firsts.” And this is the story of how I set the car on fire for the first time.

I will also tell you the story of how I set the car on fire the second time.

We were out ice fishing. It’s Wisconsin. It’s January. It’s 20 below. There’s a 30 mile-an-hour wind. And there was a 40-50-60 below windchill.

And we’re freezing.

This is an old car. It doesn’t really have a heater. There was a little heat to keep the windows clear. But there was no way to get heat to the backseat.

We had a Coleman camp stove and some hot dogs. We had a frying pan. We were going to cook up lunch because we were going to be fishing all day.

We thought, “Oh, cool. The camp stove is going to warm the car up!”

Unfortunately, when it’s 60 below, an old Coleman camp stove doesn’t light that well.

So we’re pumping on it, pumping on it, pumping on it, pumping on it trying to get the valves to pressure up the tank.

We’ve got matches, and we’re holding them along the valves, trying to warm up the valves.

And finally that valve opened up — let loose with a jet (of flame about three feet long).

It started the backseat on fire.

Four or five of us kids pile out of the car, throwing snow in the back seat to put the fire out.

We looked at each other — “Don’t tell Dad.”

It turned out [not to be a big deal] that the car had a burned spot in the backseat.

When I was 19, after high school, I was working on the third shift, 11 to 7.

Middle of winter, I backed out of the driveway.

I looked down at my feet, and there’s an orange glow.

“What’s going on here?”

I put the car in park and shut it off and looked under the dash.

The fuse box was on fire.

It’s the middle of winter.

I throw snow on it.

I put the fire out.

I get back in. I start the car up. I go to work.

You can’t DO that with cars today. Cars today are not built to have a fire in them that you put out with snow and then you start it up again and drive to work. It’s just not going to happen with new cars today.

Camper

This old car, it was the original camper. You put down the backseat of the station wagon, and you’d slide a twin mattress in, and it would fit.

We would go camping with a twin mattress in the car.

We had a roof over our heads. We didn’t get wet. We didn’t get rained on. It was great.

Now, you can fit two guys on a twin mattress but not three.

The third guy always had to sleep in the front seat.

Who remembers the little triangle windows in the front? That was our air conditioning.

[An audience member said she remembered having them in the back windows, too.]

Oh, triangle windows in the back — that was a fancy car.

It was also the car I learned to change oil on. You’d open the hood, and you had about 40 square feet to move around in. You could crawl underneath and knew what you were looking at it.

You can’t FIND the oil pan on cars today.

Screaming

One time I pulled up to the drive-through at the bank.

I graduated in 1985, and after high school I was still driving it, so by this time, the car is almost 20 years old.

I pull up to the drive-through at the bank, and I’m talking to the lady at the window, and all of a sudden, the car starts screaming. It’s like I’ve got my foot on the gas all the way to the floor. It’s just screaming. So I pulled the car forward and off to the side. I got out. I opened the hood.

I’m trying to see what’s going on, but I can’t find the problem.

So I start the car again. It’s just screaming.

I look under the hood. I can see little sparks next to the engine block. The spark plug popped out.

I shut off the car. I put the spark plug back. I started the car up, and away I go.

You can’t fix cars like that anymore.

Broken

Let me tell you about the time I broke the car. Because I did break it.

I was taking a friend home, and I pulled into his driveway. I turned the wheel, and all of a sudden, KA-THUNK from the front of the car.

Okay. Something broke.

I tried backing out of the driveway.

I couldn’t get the car to go straight.

I got out. The tire on the driver’s side was leaning like this [tilted inward].

Yeah. Something’s really broken.

Do I tell Dad?

I’m on the other side of town. How do I get this car home?

I backed out of the driveway.

Now I’m steering like this just to go straight [with the steering wheel cranked as far as it will go].

The front tire is angled, and I have to make left turns to get home.

Getting the car to turn right was really easy. Just let go.

Turning left was something else.

I finally get into the driveway at home.

“Dad, there’s something broke on the car.”

It was only about the third time I’ve ever seen my dad really mad.

He thought I ran into a curb or drove over a [concrete] parking lot [barrier].

“No, Dad. All I did was stop in the driveway.”

Well. You can’t fix that. The axle was broken.

The car had 190,000 miles on it.

Dad called up his mechanic, and he came over, and he said, “I can use that engine. I need that engine for my demolition car.”

He pulled the engine out and put it in his demolition car — so that engine was running even after the car was gone.

He gave my dad 50 bucks for it.

So that was my first experience with selling a car.

Thank you.