Prodigious memories were triggered by the motorhead column and a Millspaugh writes to point out that whenever he drove into the parking lot of Louie’s Shady Lawn, revving his four-cylinder Opel, he knew what motorheads were in the bar that night -- or lackadaisical afternoon -- by the make of cars parked under the sugar maples.

A Terwilliger states he remembers the day, as a ten-year-old, while standing in the parking lot of a car repair shop in the hamlet of Wallkill, holding onto his father’s pant leg like a snail to a rock, remembers a Roebuck car whooshed in next to them and out of the car stepped a legend, and he thinks the invincible car was named “Black Magic.”

“I was just standing there with my mouth open,” recalled Terwilliger.
As kids, these motorheads, who would never take a physics class, knew all about electronics, combustion, psi, tachometers, differentials, and timing belts. Proving, of course, that the speed of the acquisition of knowledge is in direct proportion to the desire to know your subject. They taught each other. Knowledge flowed between tribes. Even the odd-ball Volkswagen people, like Reinhardt, were tapped for their quirky expertise.

Didn’t have a tool? “Here, use mine. Goes in the top drawer. Just be ready for Friday night, you dirt bag.”

Vette people were a little different. Farm boys shied away from Corvettes because they were slung so low you couldn’t get them down the quarter-mile dirt, often mudpuddle lined, high-crowned in the middle, dirt lanes to the farmhouse. There was never any real competition between Mustangs and Corvettes. Vettes ruled that arena of motorheadness thanks in no small part to their superior modeling, Route 66, and having our own Corvette Specialty Center shipping Vette parts world-wide. Steve McQueen’s Mustang “Bullet,” gave this hierarchy a run for their money, but it was never close. James Dean died in a Porsche.

Early on, I came out of the closet as a Volkswagen guy myself, and I’ve owned either a Volkswagen or a Toyota ever since. I bought my first Bug for $500, and it was a classic with a roller for an accelerator, turn signal flaps that lifted from the sides of the car, a lever for opening a reserve gas tank that gave you another 40 miles, and of course, the small oval back-window. 56 horsepower.

My freshman year I drove it out to Indianapolis where I was a newbie at Butler. On the way, I kept track of the number of red lights that were green. Surprisingly, according to my survey, the majority of red lights were green! In the spring, after Kent State and the riots, on the way home, the Volkswagen broke down somewhere in Ohio. I parked it in the lot of a garage/gas station and continued home. A month later, when I went to retrieve the car, it was nowhere to be found, the owner of the gas station denied knowing anything about it. I am not a fan of Ohio.

The cars weren’t called muscle cars just because of what was under the hood. To work on these cars required actual, human muscle. The motorheads often had wrench bending upper body strength and Popeye spinach forearms. I was never able to grow any visibly perceptible muscle, and to this day my arms remain the shape of toilet paper tubes attached to hands with wrists like slinkies. So be it.

It was coincidental that the very week I started writing about motorheads, Leroy DeGroodt passed. Leroy was the quintessential motorhead. I don’t know what tribe he belonged to, I just know he liked his vehicles either brand-new, or old as the hills. However old they were, the cars had to be big, as he himself was a big man with arms the length of sidewalks. His cars were restored to pristine, mint condition, and he showed them regularly at car shows and meets. He was a man whom I doubt would be comfortable in the new electric-motor-age where sound is whispered and acceleration is accompanied by eyeball pressure but no gasoline fumes, no smooth firing of pistons to monitor by ear. Leroy had a woof-whistle, or an Aooga horn, attached to some of his cars, and for years while I was working in the garden by the state road he would blow these odd horns and I would look up and wave goodbye. Goodbye, Leroy.