Young Willys Peck sits behind the wheel of his pride and joy, a 1931 Chevrolet.
Saratoga never matched anybody's concept of Motor City, but 55 years ago the Village could boast three garages and three service stations. Underline "service." Along with gasoline dispensed by the attendant, windshields were washed, water, oil and tires were checked and one didn't have to ask for a key to use the restroom. For a mechanic's services we had the Saratoga Garage, now the fire station; Varner's Garage, at the corner of Saratoga-Los Gatos Road and Oak Street; and Hansen Motor Service, where the Village Center now is on Big Basin Way. Although a native Saratogan, Harold Hansen was the new kid on the block, garage-wise, which may have accounted for the fact that he let callow youths like me work on our cars on the premises, seek his advice and occasionally use his tools.
If it weren't for this indulgence, I probably couldn't have kept the Flying Eight Ball running. The Eight Ball was a 1931 Chevrolet four-door sedan that I bought for $50 in the fall of 1941 and that had, to put it charitably, seen better days. Long before, the odometer had mercifully ceased registering miles traveled, one rear door had to be tied shut, the paint job was just a memory and the air was beginning to show in one of the tires. But it ran.
It seemed appropriate to bestow a name commensurate with the element of disadvantage, or even hazard, implicit in the term "behind the eight ball," so that's what I called it, adding wings to suggest motion. In painting this emblem on the car, I included a Latin phrase, Fata obstant sed vade mecum (The fates oppose but go with me). That was on the two front doors. On the back I painted the same emblem but with a different Latin motto, Probitatem quam divitias (Honor rather than riches), as a sort of left-handed apology for the rather shabby appearance.
The great thing about that car was the accessibility of its vital parts. Everything was comprehensible; everything made sense. Generator, coil, distributor; fuel pump, carburetor--all right there for easy repair or replacement. I probably wouldn't have tried monkeying with the clutch, transmission or differential, but all else was fair game. I count as a mechanical milestone the time I disassembled the engine and put in new piston rings and bearings. This was done at home but under Hansen's tutelage, and I had him grind the valves in the cylinder head. If I do say so myself, that car ran like a Swiss watch afterward.
As hot rods go, the Eight Ball wasn't. Shortly after I got the car, I nudged it up to 55 mph just one time to see what it would do, but when it came to everyday driving I kept to 35 mph, which one could do in those days without being a hazard to navigation. What I needed was reliable transportation to my job in the shipping office of the old Pacific Manufacturing Co. in Santa Clara, where I was working for a year after high school to earn money for college. My choice was Whittier College, east of Los Angeles, and when the time came, I drove there in the Eight Ball. The trip took two days, what with a little sightseeing and a brief delay occasioned by a recalcitrant valve-rocker arm, which an obliging mechanic in Salinas repaired for 25 cents. After only a few months, I found that I needed money more than I needed a car, so I sold the Eight Ball to a fellow student for what I had paid for it, $50. Not long after that, the Army intervened, and I never learned the car's ultimate fate. It's reasonable to believe that it ended as scrap metal, perhaps in time for the war effort, and it would be nice to think that it found a new incarnation in a certain 20th Armored Division half-track, but that's too much to hope for.
Meanwhile, the Flying Eight Ball rolls on in memory.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, January 8, 1997.
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