@MIZZOU ASKS YOU

Wonderful Wheels

@Mizzou readers share stories about the transportation they brought to campus…

My motorcycle was a 50cc Honda, presumably the first Honda motorcycle registered in Missouri. It was purchased in August 1961 from a Honda-exclusive cycle shop in Memphis, Tenn., presumably the first in the mid-South. The motorcycle was imported through a Miami port that claimed it was the first in the U.S. to import anything from Honda. The motorcycle was tuned every six months or so at a Harley-Davidson shop in St. Louis. I remember they made several phone calls to obtain tuning requirements. The only motorcycle similar in size on campus was the Italian Vespa.

— Felix Robbins, BS EE ’64

I rolled into Columbia in a big beautiful 1956 Oldsmobile. The only problem was that I started at Mizzou in 1993, not 1956. A pledge brother and I drove it home to Southeast Missouri for Thanksgiving break. The car gave up 60 miles from home, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. My dad came and got it running just enough to get it home; it’s still parked in his shop to this day. Someday I’ll get that thing running again.

— Chris Best, BJ ’97

— Donna Kearns, EdD ’92

While recently transporting my younger daughter and most of her worldly possessions from one campus apartment in Athens, Ohio, to another in Athens, Ga., to pursue graduate work in the classics, it didn’t escape me that she required two pickup trucks to load up for phase one and “just one” Ford F-150 double cab for phase two.

This, I marveled out loud, was in contrast to the trip I made in the summer of 1963 from my parents’ residence in Wheaton, Ill., driving a red 1957 Thunderbird with a trunk full of all my gear for J-School. Being something of a pack rat, and a car guy, I still have the T-Bird and wouldn’t dare take on such duties today.

— Stewart Bradford Dyke, BJ ’65

I brought my 1956 Austin Healey to Mizzou and participated in Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) racing events. I never got a ticket in Columbia.

— Jerry Thompson, BS BA ’61

My wheels at Mizzou were basically my bike and my thumb. Although hitchhiking is no longer popular, most of my trips home to St. Louis were facilitated by my thumb up and down Highway 40 and Highway 70 to and from Columbia. I met a lot of very interesting people, including a major league umpire and a Big 8 referee named Dave Phillips.

— Mike Walsh, BS CiE ’77

Early in my college career, I discovered the joy of cruising. This extracurricular pursuit added an average of 750 miles each week to my car’s odometer (remember gas was cheap then) and earned me the nickname Cruiser.

Needing to turn some of that mileage into money, I went to work for Shakespeare’s Pizza. Between the springs of ’74 and ’75, I delivered 5,000 pies in my ’73 Gremlin (yes, it had an 8-track tape player). And as far as I know, I still hold the record for delivering the most pies in eight hours – 98. That’s one pie every 4.9 minutes!

Oh, the stories I could tell. There’s the time I decided to take my dog on deliveries. Figuring it was more efficient to leave my car running while I carried pies into dorms, I enlisted my dog to ride shotgun and guard the undelivered pizzas. What I didn’t count on was my dog helping himself to a pie!

My favorite story happened one winter’s night. It was so cold, and the snow was blinding – not a good time for my car’s gears to freeze. Because I was the only delivery person working that night; there was no choice but to deliver pizza in reverse. My shotgun rider (person, not dog) kept his door open and head out as we made our way around campus, backward. Periodically, he’d look in at me to give directions and his beard was totally white (and frozen) from the snow! We didn’t set any delivery records that night, but hungry students got their Shakespeare’s Pizza. The biggest challenge was deciding which side of the road to drive on.

— Cruisin’ Ed Schwitzky, BA ’75, MS ’76

When I arrived at Mizzou half my car was missing. I had been hit by an old lady the week before. When it was finally fixed, we would drive out to McBain, Mo., to the river’s edge and enjoy the scenery.

— Rebecca Lamb, BA ’03

All kinds of problems kept annoying us. The radiator steamed like mad, and we stopped for water more times than I could count. Other stops here and there were for tire repairs. We had barely arrived at our destination when we decided we’d better head back to Columbia. We had agreed to pool our funds, but we ran out of money, almost making it to the Columbia city line. All of my friends jumped out of the car saying they preferred to walk home! Looking back, I can say they made the wiser choice!

— Irwin Breslauer, BJ ’49

As a sophomore in 1967, I was not permitted to have a car on campus. However, my freshman literature teacher had an empty garage and offered to rent it to me for $10 a month. Every Friday I would walk to her house and pick up my car: a 1962 Chevy station wagon. Then on Sunday I would drive it back to her garage. Mizzou changed its policy during second semester, making it legal to have a car as a sophomore.

— Kerry McGill, BS BA ’70

In the winter of 1983, I was driving the 1981 Buick Skylark I had bought new with money I had saved since age 10. I needed to get to Columbia for my interview for admission into the College of Veterinary Medicine. During my drive from St. Louis, I slid off Highway 70 near the Lake of the Woods exit during a bad ice storm. The car hit the ditch, flipped trunk over hood, slid backward on the roof for a while, and then rolled back right side up. I was towed out of the ditch with a functioning, yet dented car, and drove to my destination. I never mentioned it at the interview, which apparently went well.

— Kevin J Kohne, DVM ’87

As a freshman in 1942, my roommate and I purchased a 1926 Model T Ford for a total price of $10. The car had no top and a flat, right front tire. We had the flat fixed, and on the first weekend, we drove the car to St. Louis in very cold weather. The car’s radiator had a bad leak, and we had to stop for water on numerous occasions. The trip to St. Louis took approximately five hours. While in St. Louis we had a good used radiator put in the car, and it only took three hours on the return trip to Columbia. It was a good car. I left Columbia to join the Marine Corps, but before leaving in February 1943, I sold the car for $25.

— Ken Bounds, BS Ed ’51

My dad and I drove up from Florida in my Mazda MX6 back in January 1993. Because I only had lived in Florida, I was not used to driving on snow. Mizzou had just had a huge snow storm the day before we arrived (a pretty bad one for Columbia, as I recall), so after sliding into two street curbs, I was quickly indoctrinated to driving in snow! The funny thing was that I ended up doing my master’s degree project in Anchorage, Alaska, where that winter, they experienced their second most snow in history. Needless to say, I was an expert after that winter, and Columbia, Mo., was just a warm-up!

— Delinda Crampton, MA ’94

I drove an emerald green Ford Pinto hatchback that could accommodate all my stuff (including two large speakers, a receiver and a turntable), not to mention a trunk. Thank goodness I never had a flat on the way home at 4 a.m. with my goodies from The Bakery.

— Carolyn Darst, BS Ed ’81

I had an ’84 Gold Ford LTD named Gertrude, or Gertie, for short. She was like my grandma, slow and old. She took me through many times, both good and bad, like a grandma should. Once she forgot to tell me that she needed gas and broke down in the intersection of Stadium and Providence (causing an unnecessary traffic jam). It wasn’t until I had Gertie towed that I realized she needed gas and wasn’t going to explode. She helped me get many parking tickets, yet she got me out of driving to bars all the time. (Who would want to ride it that thing in public?) Then, there was the drunken incident where my friends decided to take turns kicking her. (Mom still thinks that a car hit me in the parking lot of College Park). Gertie was angry at me after that and blew a head gasket. May she rest in peace.

— Amy Foster, BA ’02

In 1946 I had a four-horsepower Cushman motor scooter. It had a top speed of about 40 miles per hour. It was a great way to get around campus. For instance, I had a 10 a.m. class at Mumford and was able to get to my 11 a.m. class at the beef barn way south of town. It also was a nice conveyance to get to the Hinkson with a girl and a blanket. All in all, I found it to be nearly perfect as a means of transportation on campus.

— Harrison Milne, BS ’51

I remember that there was lots of ice and snow during the winter of ’63. My ’55 Chevy (a used car) would not start well in the cold. It was an automatic with power steering and power brakes – none of which worked until the engine started. I remember one time being pushed by another car to help get it started. The automatic transmission needed to be moving 30 mph before it would kick in. Imagine the feeling of flying down an icy street with no steering and no brakes. How did I ever survive?

— Larry Eder, BA ’65

Cars were still hard to get in ’47 when I came back to the U.S. and school after World War II. I finally found one I could afford.

The ’35 Plymouth two-door sedan was actually in a farmer’s yard with chickens in it when I first saw it. I bought it for $700. It smelled bad and wouldn’t go over 42 mph. I tore out the lining in the two front seats, replacing it with kelly green felt and woolen black and white houndstooth check material.

After draining all the various liquids (transmission, brakes, etc.), I put in new filters and oil. The car ran smoother, but still no faster than 42 mph. After 500 miles I again changed all the different liquids. One day out in the country, I put my foot all the way down on the gas pedal, which I normally did to get up to 42 mph. I barely made the first curve, which luckily was about a quarter of a mile long. I was going 90 mph. After that incident I had to buy new tires.

It was nice having a car, but often my dates preferred to double date so that we could go in other students’ cars. Mine was called the Houndstooth Hopper.

— Hugh Cort, BJ ’49

My last year at Mizzou I brought a baby blue 1949 Plymouth sedan. It was big, comfortable and slow. The floor boards were so rusted that my girlfriend’s purse kept falling through to the street, and we had to double back to pick it up (she’s my wife now). However, because the clutch slipped so badly, it was a great car in the snow. To pay graduation fees I sold it for $50 to a guy who took it to a demolition derby.

— Gary Burandt, BJ ’66

My car was a green ’68 Plymouth Fury II, which my girlfriend called “The Green Latrine.” In 1970 I was one of the few freshmen to sneak a car onto campus. I hauled so many people to parties and back and forth to school that I had to install air-lift shocks. The Green Latrine took us to the Rio Grande and to the Boundary Waters in Canada on “wilderness adventure” trips. The car usually had kayaks or canoes strapped on top. I never sold it; I just put it out to pasture (in the pasture).

— Dave Haubein, BS PA ’74

I had a small motorcycle on campus, which allowed me to avoid parking hassles. There were other motorcycle owners on my floor at the dorm, and two of us would ride every night at 10 p.m. to the Columbia Donut Shop.

One night, while hot-rodding back to the dorm with our floor’s order of day-old donuts, we raised the ire of a campus police officer. He rolled out of his parking lot hiding place with siren and lights blazing. We were ahead of him at a T intersection, just three blocks from home. A quick conversation confirmed that there was no reason for both of us to get caught, so my friend turned right (toward the stadium), and I turned left toward the dorm.

The police officer chose to follow me. I jumped the curb at the dairy barn, and crossed the back lawn to Hatch Hall; the police car was unable to follow. We scurried inside with our donuts. Another motorcycle friend of mine was working on his machine outside where I had parked. A minute later, the officer I had eluded came driving up, looking over the row of motorcycles. Pointing to my motorcycle, he asked my friend how long the bike had been there. My friend told him “about 20 minutes.” The officer muttered an obscenity under his breath and departed. My friend came inside to collect his free donuts.

— James L. Amick, BS CiE ’67, MS ’75

My freshman year, I lived in the chapter house and pledges didn’t have parking spaces. I didn’t want to pay for a spot over at Hearnes (far south lot), so I had to use the streets around Greek Town. This was a challenge, as I had an ’86 Chevy extended cab 4x4 pickup with a five-speed transmission. I definitely learned great lessons in parallel parking. To this day, I amaze (and embarrass) my wife with my ability to get the car into some of the tightest parking spots imaginable, without a scratch!

My younger brother (Matthew Stephens, BS ’99) has much better stories about his ’89 Ford, which was jacked up about 8 inches with monster 35-inch tires and a booming stereo system. I think people just moved out of the way for him.

Luckily, we both drive much nicer (and more socially acceptable) vehicles now.

— Joe Stephens, BS ’96

I started at MU in 1963. At that time freshmen were not allowed to have cars except in special cases. I went all four years as an undergraduate without a car. I did not have a car until my father gave me a very old one when I was a first-year medical student, and he only gave it to me because I lived in Gatehouse Apartments. I kept that car, a rather large Oldsmobile, through my general surgery residency and got rid of it around 1975. I walked everywhere when I was an undergraduate, and it did not hurt me a bit.

— Donald Wehmeyer, BA ’67, MD ’71

When I got to Columbia in 1973, I brought a 1962 Rambler with a push button starter and automatic push button transmission. It had a Normal Baptist Church sticker on the back window and its gas gauge never worked. Its name was John. I bought the car for $50, had it for two years when I was in graduate school at Mizzou, and then sold it for $45 to a friend. When I dated a man who John didn’t like, the car wouldn’t run. I could always depend on John to pick out the right men. I think John ended up as a flower box in a field at a friend’s house just outside of Columbia. He may still be there.

To this day, I miss my little, boxy, blue bottomed, white-topped Rambler with the buttons that would sometimes push right through the dashboard.

— Marla Lowenthal, MA ’75

I had a blue, rust and primer colored VW Beetle while at Mizzou with no back bumper and matching dents in the two front bumpers. In 1975 we played a football game at the University of Colorado. Mark, one of my fraternity brothers, planned to meet his girlfriend in Fort Collins that weekend, but his ride to Colorado fell through. On Friday afternoon around 4 p.m. he asked me and another fraternity brother, Toni, if we were going to the game and could give him a ride. We weren’t planning to go to the game and had no tickets, reservations or plans. However, on a dare, we took him up on his request and headed west.

About halfway through Kansas it occurred to us that we only had enough money to pay for the gas to get to Colorado and back. We flipped a coin and decided to continue the trip anyway. We dropped Mark off in Fort Collins and headed to Boulder thinking that we could stay at our local fraternity house, only to find out that Colorado didn’t have a chapter of our fraternity. So, we spent the night in the stadium parking lot, which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that Toni was 6 feet 4 inches and couldn’t begin to find a way to stretch out, so he ended up taking the back seat out of the car and putting it on the ground to sleep on (he hung off both ends). In the morning, security woke us up and gave us five minutes to leave the parking area or face arrest and impoundment of our car.

We moved the car several blocks away and then went back to the stadium for the game. We tried to sneak into the game with the band as they got off the bus, but were unsuccessful, so we ended up climbing a pine tree in the end zone and watched the game from there. Unfortunately, Mizzou lost a close game and the local kids sharing the tree with us pelted us with pine cones every time Mizzou scored. We only had the clothes on our backs and faced another night without a place to sleep. We returned to the car only to find that it was in a construction zone and that the road in front and behind it was either torn up or closed off. Some understanding CU students on the way home from the game agreed to help us pick the Beetle up and carry it over the torn up pavement so we could drive again. They laughed so hard at our plight after hearing our tale that they gave us a few dollars and said we could sleep on the floor of their room that night.

We picked Mark up in Fort Collins the next morning and limped back to Columbia with only one gallon of gas left to spare. It was one of the great weekends I had in my four years at Mizzou. I’ll never forget it.

— Max Carey, BS BA ’77

In 1976 I came back from Thanksgiving break with a “lipstick red” Ford Pinto. My best memory of that car, besides the color, was the fact that 10 people could cram into it for a midnight trip to Columbia Donut for fresh apple fritters. My car would smell great for days!

— Lisa Flittner, BSF ’79

When I arrived as an incoming Mizzou freshman in late September 1969 (I graduated in three years and we started the third week of September just as the Ivy League Schools did), freshmen were not allowed to have cars on campus unless they had a very hard-to-get dispensation. So my parents brought me, moved me in, said good-bye and left! There was no orientation, no Freshmen Interest Groups, no anything other than a little dance party with residents from Hatch (seven floors of boys) and Schurz (seven floors of girls).

On my floor were a whole lot of sophomores who all knew each other. Throughout the dorm there were freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. Women had to be in by 11:30 p.m. weeknights and 1 a.m. on weekends – NO exceptions. During second semester with permission from your parents – only with permission, even if you were 21 or older (as I remember) – you could check out a key, but it had to be returned by 8 a.m. or you went before judicial review. The big “scandal” of the year was “intervisitation,” a protest in which students all over campus intermingled in dorm rooms in single sex dorms to try and force intervisitation. University officials filmed students and expelled some; others were put on probation. Seems like it was a century ago, and yet, it was only 1969.

Later there was the infamous sit-in on the Quad in front of Jesse Hall, May 11, 1970, to protest the Kent State murders. Then there was Chancellor Schwada’s unconstitutional overreaction and the arrival of the Missouri State Highway Patrol just in the nick of time under court order to stop University Police from continuing to arrest MU students and faculty for peacefully protesting and assembling; and the early closing down of the campus. But that is definitely another story!

— Susan Marshall Roberts, BS Ed ’72, M Ed ’81, PhD ’85

As incoming freshman in ’69, we were not allowed (Is it illegal if you don’t get caught?) to have cars on campus. Actually, with my finances I was unable to own one that year anyway. However, during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, my uncle, who was a dragline operator at Peabody Coal in Illinois, got me a summer job. Minimum wage at the time was the princely sum of $1.25 per hour, but Peabody was paying $5.21 an hour to basic labor.

Talk about top of the world! I decided against spending all of that hard-earned money on the sports car I was eyeballing in favor of being able to eat all year (the “suggestion” from my dad played a huge part in my sudden fit of fiscal responsibility). So I bought a white 1960 DeSoto ambulance for $600 instead.

The DeSoto still had the “bubble gum” red light used in those days on emergency vehicles, as well as two red flashers on the front bumper. My good friend Milo Walz got some nice carpeting for the back from his dad’s Jefferson City furniture store. I installed the latest in stereo equipment, including an eight-track tape player. We were in tall cotton!

I was late for work one night on the Illinois side, and in a moment of incredibly faulty judgment, I turned on the red lights to ease my passage through traffic. The older (than me) Illinois trooper who stopped me asked, “Why is an old ambulance with Missouri plates going like a bat out of hell on MY Illinois highway? The trooper chewed me up one side and down the other. He must have been somewhat amused as well because instead of giving me a well-deserved ticket for going 82 mph in a 70-mph zone, he told me to have the bubble gum light off the top of the vehicle and on his desk no later than Monday morning.

When I asked him if I should remove the flashers from the bumper and bring them with me as well, he replied with what may or may not have been a grin, “Ah, hell, it’d look sorta funny without ’em, but you better not turn ’em on in MY state again!” I’ll always be grateful to that trooper because I didn’t have to report a ticket to my folks, who would have been unsympathetic.

Alums who went to Faurot Field from 1970-73 might remember the old white ambulance (many described it as a hearse) that drove down onto the track at home football games. I parked it just in front of the rock “M” behind the band. I was a Marching Mizzou member, and Dr. Pickard got me a pass from the University so we could convey M2 props and Golden Girl stuff to the field for the half-time shows. He tried to get funding to paint the old car in Tiger stripes, but never could sell it to the powers that controlled the purse strings.

It was a big, old car, and Mr. Walz and I proved beyond a doubt that it would hold two KAs and 14 Tri-Delts along with two kegs!

— Steve Taylor, BS Ed ’74

It was during my junior year in 1964 that I bought a used British Austin-Healey Sprite MKI from the foreign car dealer behind McReynolds Hall. It was a maroon-burgundy red with two white racing stripes. Being into sports car racing and living mentally on the Continent with all the stars of Formula One, it was a great car for me.

Although I was well over 6 feet tall (and quite a bit lighter than I am now), I fit easily into the driver’s seat. Oh yeah, I could sit up straight and look right over the windscreen, but I slouched down and found it to be a driving position that was, if not comfortable, suitable.

Dating in the car was fine for hauling a female body from one place to another. However, even though a car was also a mobile place of privacy, the Sprite was a pretty good preventer of any “interludes.” The seats were separated by the driveline/transmission tunnel (it was a four-speed) and the cockpit was not that of an American car with bench seats. The Sprite’s bucket seats were purpose built: to keep one in the car without sliding around while the driver performed various racing maneuvers (not “racy” maneuvers).

Parking was pretty easy because the Sprite was not very big. I didn’t have a parking permit, so University lots weren’t an option. But I could squeeze into a space on the street that was not suitable for American iron. The little Sprite was quite maneuverable. And herein lie the problem.

All of my housemates in Francis House, McReynolds Hall, were quite enamored with my sports car. Sure, they liked the looks; it was something that not many guys in that era saw, especially compared to the horsepower and bold, tire-burning antics of Chevy Super Sport 409s and big Fords. My little Sprite 998cc engine (that’s just a bit less than 1-liter; the pistons were the size of small soup cans) was just a four-banger and made for winding road courses, not drag strips.

In the mornings when I came outside to go to class, I could never be sure where the car was. The first time when I looked where I parked it, there was nothing there. Heart beating, thinking it had been stolen, I looked up and down the street. Then I saw its bugeye headlights and the tip of the bonnet peeking out from between two large Detroit monsters. As I walked up to it several of the denizens from Francis House were standing on the stairs outside the house laughing heartily. Somehow I failed to see the humor. This went on for several mornings, never consecutive. I just had to look upon the “move Towne’s car” as a sport enjoyed by college “friends.”

But the real corker came one morning when I walked out of Francis House to go to class and was greeted by most of the house standing outside. The snickers turned to horse laughs as I looked around to see what was so funny. Standing there on the stair-walkway over the “moat” around McReynolds Hall, I caught a glimpse of maroon burgundy below me to my left. My Sprite! It was parked in the moat! How the heck did it get there?

It seems that the little Sprite, a lightweight among automobiles, was no match for six or eight strapping young men. They had picked it up from its parking place and walked it over the grass berm and deposited it into the moat! I was quite furious, which only incited more hilarity.

Now some 40 years later I can’t remember how the Sprite was removed from the moat. I don’t think it could have made it up the moat’s sides and over the berm without becoming “high-centered.” So I think the guys took pity on me and picked the car up and carried it out the same way it had been carried in.

I continued to drive the Sprite until, on a trip to Chicago, it chewed up its gearbox; it was time to unload it. I found an enthusiast in the Windy City who knew he was getting a great deal, and I was without wheels once again.

Since then British sports cars have always been a part of my life. I’ve owned a Lotus 7 and raced it, a Lotus Formula Junior, a Mini-Cooper S, an Austin- Healey MKII racer (still in my garage) and still have a Bugeye Sprite currently undergoing restoration (slowly). But I never forgot my first Sprite and wish I still had it. I’ve rebuilt Sprite gearboxes many times since 1964. But that first little Sprite provided me and my Francis Housemates with lots of fun. Each of us had our own kind of fun, you understand!

— Towne Comee, BJ ’66

Coolest fad comments that we received after the August issue of @Mizzou was already published …

For those of us in the Greek system who also enjoyed an alternative night out, The Blue Note was it. With Cyndi Lauper as our guide, we would “punk out” in ruffled miniskirts, colorful tights, V-necked neon sweaters with bright tank beneath, ballerina shoes, a headband, ungodly huge earrings and tons of bracelets!

— Suzie Seward Carlysle, BJ ’88

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Last Update: November 15, 2007