Times, they are a-changin’….

Outside my café

What a summer! Went by like a silver streak…. and it was in many ways quite wonderful (and often funner than said Gene Wilder comedy). I have divested myself of iron money-pits for the time being, yes the three Plymouths are gone to good homes. Being a Mopar guy, of course, I had to stay in the family with regards to my daily driver. A well spent few grand later, and I now own what is likely one of the cleanest M-body mopars in the bay area, if not Northern California! Won’t dwell long on it, but this Chrysler spent its life garaged and babied by a retired war hero in Sebastopol. Not everyone is a fan of these old fuel-chugging emissions-choked cars, but with a few tweaks and mods they’re quite a nice drive. Mine happens to also have the smoothest, cleanest and prettiest leather interior I’ve sat in….

Now that I have my vehicle situation handled, every other paycheck need not be invested in a hard-starting noisy beast! Of course I’ll miss the days I spent on the highway behind an oversized steering wheel, feeling heat through the floorboards and a rumble resonating through an old well-worn bucket seat….

I do plan, of course, on returning to my former ways and purchasing/driving another classic car. Not today though, and not soon. I have had my fill of “projects”, and it seems reasonable for me to grow the hell up and just buy a finished car that always starts. I like to fiddle and tinker, I just don’t want to have to!

So in the meantime, I have stockpiled a few more rare and/or collectible N gauge items (there’s more trains than track, which actually sounds like a euphemism for lunacy!) and tinkered on a nice 2’x4′ double over/under loop. Let me tell you, it’s a good thing I have more motive power than freight tonnage; an 8% superelevated graded curve is fun to see, but takes a bit more tractive effort than a prairie or 4-4-0 can handle! All in all it’s temporary and fun, so that’s (little) money well spent. There are a few nice pieces I have procured, including a diminutive replica of a train station still-standing in my region of rearing; my father recognized the build and was as enamored as I. Thank the preservation-minded north easterners for the relic, thank some north eastern hobby folks for making it easily attainable!

I’ve been working on some terrific cigars recently; yesterday it was a La Gloria Cubana Serie N that had my palate simply awestruck. The right cigar at the right time can be a beautiful thing. I’m working my way through some 5 Vegas Maduros that seem to be consistently tight and canoeing…. not a common problem for the normally 5-star cigar brand. Oh well, you win some/you lose some. Of course, for the pennies I paid I suppose I still kinda won! Furthermore, some Fonsecas and Cusanos have trickled through my smoking list recently. I have a few different Cusanos from a delicious sampler, and they came in a 4-veriety 12-pack so I’m smoking my way through 4 similar and delicious cigars three times. I have found Cusano  to be somewhat of an underdog- not oft seen in the lounges or blogs (from my experience, ymmv) but a reliable and enjoyable smoke (to the nub!) nonetheless. Then there’s the Macanudos in drawer 6, or the sun-grown untrimmed torpedoes, or the…. hell, there’s too many to list right now!

I should share this next bit, it’s saddening on a rainy day- I relocated halfway through writing this, from a nice pleasant cafe to my deperately-in-need-of-a-maid apartment (my fault!). Now I am sitting here being forced to listen to some hip-hop garbage my neighbors are blasting from their minivan speakers. I regret two things right now: 1) not staying in a quiet, comfy and classy environment and 2) living near Oakland. Take that as you may, but myself? I simply can’t stand hip-hop/rap “culture”. It’s angry, it’s ignorant and it’s really quite offensive. Some of the garbage I hear in those songs makes me pity the fools who take it literally, other things I hear make me despise the fools who wrote it. OK, stepping off the milk crate now.

Back to more positive (and appropriate for this blog) things; a particular new product has caught my eye, something I had long-ago ordered and am (with any luck) soon to receive. It’s a replica model of a once often-seen and quite beautiful style of passenger railcar; the Western/Eastern style smooth side dining car. Several prototypes can be seen here, and the models I’m referencing currently adorn this page over at M.B. Klein. The cars I await look like this-

Wouldn’t it have been something grand, taking a cross-country trip dining and sipping scotch in these pieces of rolling art? I am sure (relatively) that some folks who visit this blog have done just that. With regards to style, something screams “art deco” to me from this car’s fascia; perhaps it’s those smaller side windows (likely in the kitchen of the real car) or the skirting adorning the car…. of course there’s a very Modernist paint scheme (a la Raymond Loewy) decorating the particular road name’s pullmans. I’m more a fan of the earlier “Pine Tree” paint scheme these cars carried through 1953,  but that’s a picture for a different post.

It’s sunday and I have spent half of it drinking coffee and thinking about all these wonderful additions to my life, now it’s time to partake! So off I go, to smoke another tightly rolled 5 Vegas Maduro the size of a baby’s arm, and maybe play with some trains. It’s raining, and seeing my all-too-recently washed & waxed ride get piddled on by dark, looming clouds is almost too much 😉