My song today is, ‘Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car’. This was a 1988 single by Trinidadian-British singer, Billy Ocean. The record was based on a line in the Sherman Brother’s song, ‘You’re Sixteen’ (famously covered by Johnny Burnette as well as Ringo Starr). Part of its popularity lay in its cutting-edge video, which featured animation mixed with live-action sequences.
The song went to Number 1 on both the US ‘Billboard Hot 100’ and ‘Hot Single’ charts. It also peaked at Number 1 in seven other countries, including Canada, where it was the country's most successful single of 1988. It reached Number 3 on the ‘UK Singles Chart. The song was also featured on the soundtrack of the 1988 film ‘Licence to Drive’.
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Between the end of 1963 and 1965, I lived and worked in Canada, during which time I also visited several States in the USA. At the time, I had never driven a car or indeed owned one. Back home in England, working-class chaps did not own cars, Cars were owned mostly by middle-class people and the upper-working class who had established themselves in good jobs and were married with a family. In Canada and the USA, however, every young person drove their own car around as soon as they were old enough to get a driving licence, often when they were still attending High School. It was true that some of the richer kids would drive smarter cars than their poorer counterparts, but whether it was an expensive model of car or even an old Ford pick-up truck, every male over the licence age had a set of wheels. Those who had no car would often drive their father’s car.
The cars of the young men would be an essential requirement to take their girl out to a drive-in movie where lots of illicit drinking and heavy petting, and everything else would go on in the back seat of the steamed-up vehicle. Nobody watched the film. The chaps had their eyes and hands on other and more pressing matters of the moment.
I recall back home in England, one chap in his thirties called Ernest Haigh. Ernest lived on Third Avenue of Windybank Estate, and despite being a labourer at a local factory, he was so frugal that he saved up to buy a second-hand car. Ernest still lived at the parental abode and he was the proud owner of the only car owned by any Third-Avenue household member. In fact, the car was an American model.
While Ernest was not a particularly handsome chap, as a rare car owner in the locality, Ernest would nevertheless always be able to attract a woman who was prepared to jump into his car and give him ‘a ride on the back seat’ in exchange for him providing her with a ride upfront. Despite being nothing to write home about in the ‘good looks department’, as a car owner, Ernest was rarely seen without a woman passenger.
I also recall buying my first car. I was in my early twenties and earning good money. I was also engaged to be married. My first car was a second-hand Humber model which cost me £145. This was a considerable deal of money in the mid-1960s, and despite the car being 13 years old when I bought it, it was a reliable car for its age, and it was mine.
These were the days when much of any car owner’s weekend would be spent washing and polishing it or changing the oil and cleaning the spark plugs. There were times when I stripped down the engine to perform what was called ‘a decoking’ (a decarbonising of the engine). All petrol run vehicles produce power by burning fuel, and this creates sooty exhaust gases. Before modern oils and fuel technology came about, cars would need a 'decoke’ every few thousand miles, which involved opening up the engine and physically scraping off the carbon deposits, changing the engine seal, and reassembling. All keen car owners learned how to do these things to save on their car maintenance bills. None of this work is required to be done today with modern cars; all of which rely on a diagnostic machine to identify the fault and the remedy and not a mechanic!
Despite the age of my first car (which only had 100,000 miles on the clock), I still took it to tour around France one year with my fiancé before I was first married. That was a holiday to remember. During the holiday, we headed for the South of France, and I was behind a large wagon on a narrow uphill gradient. The heavens had just opened in a tremendous shower, and it was getting more difficult to see out of the front window, despite the window wipers. The French truck driver in front of me waved me to pass him. As I pulled out and started to overtake, I waved the lorry driver a polite thank you. Then, and less than mere seconds away, to my terror, I saw another car careering downhill towards me at tremendous speed. I do not know how we avoided a fatal collision, and to this day, I still cannot credit how any wagon driver could do that deliberately to an innocent tourist driving an English car? I can only presume he was one of those crazy wagon-driving weirdoes who needed to see a fatal accident on his daily travels, just to have something new to talk about with his French wife or mistress when he returned home at the end of his working day!
We had travelled over one thousand miles on our French holiday when the brake fluid started leaking from my brake pies. After making full inquiries, no garage could repair the fault down in the South of France without a small component which could only be acquired from a large garage in Paris; almost six hundred miles farther north. It was possible to drive the car (at some considerable risk) providing, one drained the fluid level each evening and filled up the fluid level again at the start of each day. It was also crucial that I did not need to make any emergency stops.
During the driving day, I needed to pump the brake pedal furiously each time I needed to stop, and all pumping of the brakes in this manner naturally lowered the brake fluid level. Fortunately, bleeding the brakes at the start of each day was a task with which I was familiar and had done previously.
While on our way back towards Paris, we stopped overnight in a campsite at Versailles. We were parked at the top of the campsite ridge, and in the morning when I was bleeding and refilling the brake linings with brake fluid again to take us to Paris, the car started to roll downhill towards one of those small low-levelled single-berthed tunnel-shaped tents that backpackers use. I exerted all my force trying to stop the car running over the small tent before me and crushing any sleeping occupant.
Seeing my struggle, two more male campers tried to assist me. One helped me to try and hold back the car while the other opened the driver’s door and jumped into the driving seat to apply the brakes, only to find to his utter surprise that nothing happened! His weight in the car made it roll down the slope faster, and eventually, the car ran over the tunnelled tent and flattened it to the ground. I instantly feared being charged with possible manslaughter, but fortunately, it turned out that the sole occupant of the tent (a Swiss backpacker) had been cleaning and toileting himself a few hundred yards away in the camp washroom at the time.
This was the very first time I had ever travelled to France, and it was also when I first appreciated the potential risk of what a man might have to experience, just to be able to sit in the back seat of one’s vehicle with an attractive woman at his side.
Love and peace Bill xxx