HELP!
This is a note from Jim's techie wife...
Well, I'm really not a techie. It's just that I help with that part of doing Jim's blog. Neither of us are very adept at this. Jim likes to write and I like to help him get his writing "out there."
If you use a reader program (like Google Reader) to read Jim's blog and are not getting updated writings, please let us know.
We subscribe to "Google Reader" and read our favorite blogs that way. We know a number of you also do the same with Google Reader or another form of a Reader program. We are noticing that ever since I plunged into using Feedburner to try to understand more about Jim's Blog and its readers, the Google Reader we use is not updating his blog material. (The latest post on the old Pontiac retiring is the post that does not appear no matter what I've tried.)
Are you having any trouble with accessing Jim's newest post updates on your reader program? If you are, let us know. If you're not, but have some good tips to help a tired brain, please pass them on.
Hey, it's been nice to visit out loud. Happy blogging!
Voula (not Blanche) Heffernan
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Pontiac Without Tears
By Jim Heffernan
First they came for the Plymouth, and I did not speak out because I did not drive a Plymouth. Then they came for the Oldsmobile, but I did not speak out because I sold my one Oldsmobile years ago. Then they came for the Pontiac, and I am finally speaking out.
Not that I care that much that General Motors announced last week it is scaling back its nameplates to Cadillac, Buick, GMC and Chevrolet, and dropping Pontiac except as a “niche” car.
What’s a niche car? A car driven by a German philosopher?
The only reason I bring all this up is that it seems so incredible that certain things that seemingly have been around forever and were likely to remain a part of our lives forever can suddenly disappear. No Pontiacs? It’s like saying there is no Santa Claus, or that peanut butter might be unsafe for human consumption, or that those big, tall banks in New York City, with fancy plazas and imposing signs above them, are insolvent.
Here’s a letter I never received:
“Dear Mr. Blogger, my name is Virginia and my little friends say there will be no more Pontiacs. My father says to go on the Internet and ask. He says that the Internet knows everything now. So I ask you, will there be no more Pontiacs?”
Yes, Virginia, there will be no more Pontiacs (or bananas). We will only have memories of this middle-range GM automobile that in its day had a reputation for being the hottest thing on four wide-track wheels.
It had several incarnations, but starting in the late ‘50s (after they dumped the straight-eight engine and installed a high-horsepower and huge cubic inch V8), the Pontiac was the car to own if you knew what was important in life: Burning the rubber off your rear tires on takeoff, beating the car next to you in an impromptu drag race at a traffic signal, or cruising the highways at upwards of 100 mph, drinking gas through dual four-barrel carbs like a desert rat at an oasis.
I owned two Pontiacs, one a 1964 Grand Prix two-door hardtop with an engine so powerful it could pull a steam locomotive into history. On the highway, if you weren’t watching the speedometer carefully, it would creep out of the 80s and into the 90s mph without straining. Highway cops would not accept the excuse that the car was speeding, not the driver, when they pinched you. This was back in the days when cops pinched woman drivers, too.
My other Pontiac was a 1969 Catalina convertible with an eight-track tape player in the dashboard and a wide-track stance at the wheelbase. It also would go very fast, but I was a family man by then, so I tried to keep in under the century mark on the highway for the sake of the children.
Long before Pontiacs were considered “hot” cars (in 1958 some models like Bonneville had side chrome sculpted like a space rocket) Pontiacs were distinguished by chrome stripes running up the center of the hood and down the trunk like the centerline on a highway. Also, the hood ornament was an amber sculpture of the face of a noble Native American, presumably Chief Pontiac, after whom the car was named. The chief’s face lit up when the lights were turned on. You don’t see that kind of thing on cars anymore.
Maybe if they still had stripes and the hood ornament they could have saved Pontiac. Maybe not.
Not that I care that much that General Motors announced last week it is scaling back its nameplates to Cadillac, Buick, GMC and Chevrolet, and dropping Pontiac except as a “niche” car.
What’s a niche car? A car driven by a German philosopher?
The only reason I bring all this up is that it seems so incredible that certain things that seemingly have been around forever and were likely to remain a part of our lives forever can suddenly disappear. No Pontiacs? It’s like saying there is no Santa Claus, or that peanut butter might be unsafe for human consumption, or that those big, tall banks in New York City, with fancy plazas and imposing signs above them, are insolvent.
Here’s a letter I never received:
“Dear Mr. Blogger, my name is Virginia and my little friends say there will be no more Pontiacs. My father says to go on the Internet and ask. He says that the Internet knows everything now. So I ask you, will there be no more Pontiacs?”
Yes, Virginia, there will be no more Pontiacs (or bananas). We will only have memories of this middle-range GM automobile that in its day had a reputation for being the hottest thing on four wide-track wheels.
It had several incarnations, but starting in the late ‘50s (after they dumped the straight-eight engine and installed a high-horsepower and huge cubic inch V8), the Pontiac was the car to own if you knew what was important in life: Burning the rubber off your rear tires on takeoff, beating the car next to you in an impromptu drag race at a traffic signal, or cruising the highways at upwards of 100 mph, drinking gas through dual four-barrel carbs like a desert rat at an oasis.
I owned two Pontiacs, one a 1964 Grand Prix two-door hardtop with an engine so powerful it could pull a steam locomotive into history. On the highway, if you weren’t watching the speedometer carefully, it would creep out of the 80s and into the 90s mph without straining. Highway cops would not accept the excuse that the car was speeding, not the driver, when they pinched you. This was back in the days when cops pinched woman drivers, too.
My other Pontiac was a 1969 Catalina convertible with an eight-track tape player in the dashboard and a wide-track stance at the wheelbase. It also would go very fast, but I was a family man by then, so I tried to keep in under the century mark on the highway for the sake of the children.
Long before Pontiacs were considered “hot” cars (in 1958 some models like Bonneville had side chrome sculpted like a space rocket) Pontiacs were distinguished by chrome stripes running up the center of the hood and down the trunk like the centerline on a highway. Also, the hood ornament was an amber sculpture of the face of a noble Native American, presumably Chief Pontiac, after whom the car was named. The chief’s face lit up when the lights were turned on. You don’t see that kind of thing on cars anymore.
Maybe if they still had stripes and the hood ornament they could have saved Pontiac. Maybe not.
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