Datsuns on Parade

[FairladySPL]

Most of you who have known me the past ten years on the 311s website have heard the story of how I got my first Roadster in 1976 over Christmas break. It was a 1968 (titled '69) 1600 that replaced a '71 Capri that I was using as a commuter car. The Capri had a factory sunroof that I had hoped would approximate the wonderful open-air feeling of its predecessor, an Austin-Healey that I picked up when I was still in high school. I'm sure many of you are nodding forlornly that, no, a sunroof is not the same at all. Hence, the Datsun that came into my life.

Both drop top cars were in parades very early in my ownership, with the '68 taking around a candidate for Maryland governor during a university homecoming parade. A few years before, it was the Austin-Healey in a high school homecoming. I wrote up this story this past weekend to reflect.

Homecoming weekend !
A few things came together to help my old high school commemorate their October Homecoming parade.

30 years earlier I had graduated from there, and I had dug out the yearbook to reminisce. A photo of myself and my friend Kyle Crawford popped up, me in my bicentennial star spangled visor, standing along a fence to the track that surrounded the football field. It occurred to me presently to try to see if I could get my sports car down on the same track for a ride-around & photo op. Strictly for my own memory bank.

In high school I had a 1966 Austin-Healey, and had taken one of the Homecoming princesses, Karen Brown, around that track for the parade back in the day. So, 30 years later? 1969 Datsun Roadster, same sort of thing. School administrators okay'd the idea, and also I was connected to one of the faculty organizers, as it turned out, for the upcoming Homecoming, who asked me if I wanted to actually take someone around again!

"We need convertibles," she said, asking if I knew of other potential drivers. Well, indeed. A friend of mine since these same high school days also has a Datsun, as does another friend I've known since the early 1980s. So we made plans!

In high school this time of year we used to have illicit, nocturnal "Field Parties" on Friday or Saturday nights, in the farmland where we all were growing up. Someone would declare a location during the week, the word spread, and we then would converge up a dirt road or through the woods to get out in the field. Usually there was a makeshift campfire, and always some alcohol to ward off the chill. I don't remember the police ever bothering us.

An alternative place to party was a small park beneath a reservoir dam. We decided after the Homecoming parade that this would be where we would adjourn for a picnic at that location.

That was 2004. So, 2019, it's now been another 15 years. These kids are well on their way in life, we can hope, and it is nice to have contributed to their memories from an even more distant past. Maybe I ought to take the Datsun out that way for its 50th birthday ...

[jarhead]

beautiful

[S Allen]

Very nice.

S

[RustyBucket]

Paul - Did you go to high school in Annapolis or Baltimore County area?
I ask because in 1974 my high school was in Balt Co And beside my ‘69 SPL there were a number of kids who had old Brit sports card in the parking lot ( and secretly drive them up on to the Athletic track for photo ops)

[RustyBucket]

One of your photos looks like Koch raven dam area. Is it ?

[FairladySPL]

No this is at the spillway for the Triadelphia Lake Dam, bordering Howard & Montgomery Counties, Maryland.
It's been a popular place for our group, dating back to "senior skip day" in high school more than 40 years ago.
You might have a typo if you meant the Loch Raven Dam. Been there too, but I don't think you can get this close for a photo op. We had to get special permission ourselves, anti-terrorist protocols and all that, sheez!

[RustyBucket]

Tridelphil dam is not far from Ellicott city. My sons and I used to paddle there.

The Loch Raven dam reservoir was close to my childhood home. In the day.
The whole spillway has be changed a number of times over the years due to floods. (Same goes for Ellicott city downtown area