Sixty years is not so long — I’m five years older, Ha!

Chevrolet Corvette — It was a gold idea that almost became a disaster and now is an icon representing the best of General Motors.
The car, almost unbelievably, has survived six decades and is about to begin its seventh.
This weekend is the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the car’s initial production, June 30, 1953 at Flint, Mich.

(Illustration found here).

The Corvette has been my all-American Dream machine for decades, for me and a shitload of other people — mostly for guys, though.
Way-extremely rare is to see a female at the wheel of a ‘Vette — about as near-non-existent as seeing a beautiful, intellectual woman buy a 40-ounce King Cobra. Shit like that just ain’t done. Not saying it’s bad or anything, or that it doesn’t really happen somewhere/sometime, we just don’t see it.
Now what you really, really did see was a lot of hot chicks in the passenger’s seat, however, amongst them, a shitload of blondes.
Although I’d flirted with European models from time to time, the Corvette continued as the operative dream machine.

Fantasy of dreams.

One night a month or so after I graduated from high school in northwest Florida, about August 1967, a bunch of us guys were clowning around in front of an early form of those now-everywhere 24-hour convenience stores — we absolutely did nothing crazy in them days. We drank soft drinks, munched candy bars and bullshitted, though, no real cursing.  We were beyond ‘American Graffiti,’ but still well short of ‘Easy Rider,’ so to cinema-speak. A few of us, too, were just naive and not paying attention.
In sad/comedic, and a collective innocence of 1967 — most-likely a last year of some-type ignorance for a shitload of folks.
Just a few months away was 1968 and that watershed, glory-hole of reality — personally, I really screwed the pouch early and eloped with a red-head girl in February, the Tet offensive in Vietnam came two weeks later, King getting killed followed in April, Bobby Kennedy being shot appeared in June, the Chicago riots bubbled-up at the DNC in August, and the heartless arrival of Dick Nixon banged the year shut in November.

A pile of momentous events for a cheeky 12 months — as if 1968 drew a nasty, crude line in the sand and life afterwards was never the same.
Oddly and coincidentally, 40 years later it could also be said the same for the year 2008 — shit hasn’t been the same since then either.

Anyway, back to that hot August night 46 years ago — across the street from that convenience store was a car lot, and on that lot in the front row, a dark-blue 1967 Corvette, the 427 version. We all trooped across the street and stood around the ‘Vette, jabbering about the car, upchucking all the ridiculous-fantasy bullshit associated via movies, TV and our way-immature brains. I can’t remember at all any of the talk, but I do remember the car.
And a beauty.
Similar to the one in the above Corvette ad, except dark-blue and a stock version — the one shown has those hideous exhaust pipes below the doors — and has remained the most beautiful automobile I’ve ever seen in the flesh, or in the metal. The absolute-beautiful car ever is the Porsche 917, long-tail version. But that’s a race car, and maybe doesn’t count.

Since then all car impressions were off that ’67 ‘Vette baseline — the fantasy of power and machine. And a beauty slick as the American Dream. Aware, however, the danger of that dream — as Mr. Carlin spoke to reality: “…you have to be asleep to believe it.”
Nodding off while driving a 427 Corvette is just asking for trouble.

Although the Corvette has always been known as a chick magnet, the iconic image in reality is pretty-much pathetic, and maybe a bit creepy, too. Early on in life, I sensed a certain negative stench from the ‘Vette — the drivers nearly-always looked douchebag-like, or asshole-like, but most-usually, looked way-unattractive.
Strange the case.

You get the chick, but upon awaking, you’re still ugly.