DAN’S PAPERS
May 2, 2014 Page 19
D. Rattiner
danspapers.com
The Summer Car Adventures with a British Sports Car Imported to the Hamptons By Dan Rattiner
W
hen spring arrives, as it just did, it immediately sends me out the kitchen door of my house to the best thing I have ever bought in my life. It sits in the garage. It’s a little red sports car that I paid a man named Charlie Brown $800 for some years ago. It sits there all winter, shivering and hibernating in the dark waiting for its time. That time, as it is every year, is now. The garage door goes up. And there it is, bouncing back and forth on its little tires, just waiting to get the show on the road. I remember the day I bought this car. It was on a sunny spring day just like this one, and it was in the gravel parking lot of a small nightspot in Hampton Bays called Charlie Brown’s (now called C.B.’s.) Its top was down. The owner of this cute little English sports car, the owner of this night spot, was leaning on its fender. Behind him, on the windshield, was a big sign reading FOR SALE 1959 TRIUMPH TR-3. The year was 1967. It was 8 years old. I bought it. And when Charlie Brown took out the registration, I was surprised to see he really was a guy named Charlie Brown. I had been in that place many times. And I thought it was just named after the Peanuts character Charlie
Brown. Lots of bars bore names like that in those days. But this was a different Charlie Brown, from Patchogue. Many friends, male friends I have today, owned a Triumph TR3 or one of the other big British sports cars back then. In the late 1950s, they were available cheap. World War II was over. American G.I.s, stationed in England, had brought them home on boats. Their contemporaries were Austin-Healeys, MGs, Morgans and Jaguars. “I owned one of those,” I am often told. “But I sold it.” There were circumstances, they say. Divorce. Kids. A need for cash. Growing up. A belief that these sports cars were dangerous. (They are.) There are other friends I have today, mostly male, mostly rich, who own old English sports cars. They have them restored. They keep them in air-conditioned garages that are attended 24/7. Some of these garages offer video services. You can have a live video feed of your car sitting in its garage sent off to your computer in your Manhattan office. It’s what others do about babies. They do this about cars. They show me their sports cars, all shined up. They say they paid $22,000 for it, and now it’s worth $30,000 two years later. And they want to know what dealer sold me mine and what did I
pay for it. “I bought it from a guy who owns a bar in Hampton Bays for $800,” I say. “That was 46 years ago.” They do not skip a beat. “Care to sell it?” they ask. Out in the garage, I walk once around the car. It is bright red, sits low to the ground and has a metal frame to which you can attach a canvas hood if it starts raining. In the front grille, there is a hole. In the trunk, if you clear out the mouse nests, there is a metal crank you can stick into the hole. It is possible to crank the car to start it, though I have never done it. I lift the hood of my Triumph TR3, check the radiator water level, the oil level, the brake fluid level, spray some starter fluid into the dual air cleaners, hook up a portable battery charger, go around to open the driver’s door to sit behind the wheel in the bucket seat, turn the key in the ignition to “on,” pull out the choke, pump the gas pedal 10 times to prime it and then carefully press the starter button. The car coughs and sputs. We stop and do it again. Now it catches, and roars, and I keep the gas pedal down halfway to keep it roaring, to keep the engine getting used to this wonderful spring day. Blue smoke comes out the exhaust pipe at the back briefly as it blows the winter’s idleness from its (Cont’d on next page) long sleep.
Celebrating 40 Years of Service
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