Datsuns on Parade
Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2019 6:15 am
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 ...
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 ...