1957 Ford Thunderbird
![Pellom's Time Shop [Updated with a Sermon by Rev. Sensing]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/pellomstimeshop-227x300-1-150x150.jpg "Pellom's Time Shop [Updated with a Sermon by Rev. Sensing]")
![Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ginsbergnirvana-150x150.jpg "Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]")
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
FSA/8d22000/8d224008d22491a.tif
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Van der Leun: The Normblog Bio of Your Host
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Comments on this entry are closed.
Love the T-Birds! They should have stayed with the sports car. Even so, my favorite run was the 1961-63 space car versions, although the 1964-66 were damn fine also. After that- eh- just another Ford.
JWM
My grandparents had a ’57 T-Bird, baby blue in color. They traded it in for a ’65 Mustang, also baby blue.
I came along too late for the classic two seater Thunderbird, or even the Square-birds (1958-60) , Bullet-birds (1961-63) or anything smaller than the “Bunkie-beak” (1970-71) cars.
I remember the Big Ass Birds that shared the Mark IV platform (1972-76) and the downsized and very popular downsized Bird (77-79)
Being a teen in the 80’s let’s skip the 1980-82 Birds being built in Bob’s video. I loved the Aero-birds (1983-88) and tried to get my mother to buy a 1983 to replace her Buick LeSabre.
Mom bought a Buick Century. With a four cylinder. 🤦🏻♂️
Just another Ford? Maybe compared to the original two seater (1955-57). But don’t forget the original Thunderbird cribbed from the 1955-57 Ford mainline styling and parts bin.
And for a racing crazy 😜 teen, Bill Elliott (aka Awesome 😎 Bill from Dawsonville) driving that dominating Melling Tools/Coors #9 T-Bird made a “mere Ford” a world beater.
I liked the BMW inspired 1989-97, but towards the end Ford lost the narrative and held on too long. But that generation made the Blue Oval a feared threat in NASCAR. The less said about the 21st century reboot the better.
The sad part is everybody wants a CUV or SUV and coupes are passé. I keep my Mustang to enjoy a car with two doors, two windows, and me and my lady side by side.
Ride on all! 👍🏻
Yeah, back when cars were cool!
The T-Bird has some real class.
Now, everything looks the same…a Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Kia, Ford, Chevy,,,,everything looks the same.
Two classic beauties.
Eyes . . . left! Nice T-bird, but the lady in the red dress owns that picture.
Terry:
That’s one of the great things about looking through old magazines. All the car ads featured gorgeous women dressed to the nines.
JWM
1957 was probably the pinnacle of pinnacles for american car design. Across the board, all models were stunning that year.
Was my fambly weerd?
Each year, in Sept or Oct, my dad would load all of us up in the stationwagon after supper and we’d hit the car lots to see all the new models. All the sales dix had left for the day so we could roam as we pleased. It was a big deal. My dad would point out all the new stuff or differences from the last year. He told me how you could look at the tail light lens and see the date of manuf. All that chrome. Jeez, square yards of it. And the sneeky places they put the gas filler. Behind the license plate! Who’d a thunk it? The 57 Chev had it in the drivers side fin. We went to Andy Mohr in Plainfield (top dealer in the state) a few years ago to look at rides and I was bored to tears in 5 mins. There isn’t 5 cents worth of diff between anything now and everything is 5 times more expensive than they are worth. Unless I win a major lottery I will most likely never own another new vehicle. Mediocrity killed the american car, and just about everything else. yawn
Then there was Thunderbird wine whose radio & TV spots ran in dialogue:
VOICE ONE: “What’s the word?”
CHORUS: “Thunderbird!”
VOICE ONE: “What’s the price?”
CHORUS: “Twenty, twice!”
Everybody knows that the bird is the word.
My grandfather was an engineer for Ford in the late 50’s to the early 60’s. He had a hand in a lot of those old cars, including the Edsel, and the Mustang. One of my prize possessions is a rendering of a Ford concept car, The All-Aluminum Ford Piedmont. It’s mounted in a piece of windshield glass. Some miserable POS b*tch I used to date deliberately tried to break it. She succeeded in cracking one corner, but it’s still an awesome piece.
In 1991 I made it back to Detroit on a road trip, and went to the Henry Ford Museum. I went to the archive desk, and after they were sure I wasn’t trying to sell them something I managed to talk my way into the concept car archives. I spent a couple hours looking through some wild renderings of stuff the might have been, but never was. Like the Nucleon atomic powered car, and the Leva-car, which floated on a cushion of air. Fun stuff.
JWM
‘57 was a “woman’s car”.
‘56 chevy had the gas filler in the drv side tail light.
I came along way past the two seaters, the Square-Bird (1958-60), and the Bullet-Birds (1961-63). When I were a lad, the T-bird morphed into Big Bird, sharing a platform with the Mark IV (1972-76). Ford regained some sanity with the smaller 1977-79 and totally lost the theme with the even smaller 1980-82.
Then they struck gold with the Aerobird (1983-88). I loved that generation. I lobbied for my mother to trade in her Buick Le Sabre for one in 1983.
She bought a Buick Century. With a four cylinder. 🤦🏻♂️ Ah well.
I also loved seeing Bill Elliott wax GM tail in the NASCAR Aerobird he drove, becoming “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville” in the process.
I even liked the last generation from 1989 that looked like an American BMW. But then Ford just let it fade away. Now everyone wants CUVs and SUVs and Ford is making an E Mustang. 🙁
Ah well, maybe we can have fun, stylish cars again some day.
Of COURSE 1957 was a great year for everything- that’s the year I was BORN!
I was just thirteen when that beautiful car came out. We lived in So. California and were very aware of each new car model that came out. On a particular Friday night in September or October, the long row of car dealerships in our town would hold an evening open house displaying all the new models. We would get dressed nicely and walk through every dealership and learn about the new models. I wasn’t old enough to drive but just two years later, I was learning to drive stick shift in a 54 Chevy!
And then came THE CAR. THE ONLY CAR EVER. . . THE 1958 Corvette! IMHO the designers at both Ford and Chevy had lost their creativity by 1963. However, that was SO California in the time of hope, opportunity, jobs. My dear mom (8th grade education plus beautician technical training) was working in a beauty shop during the day and in between customers she made crafts to sell. She also cleaned commercial offices at night and in 1958 she had made enough money to buy a slightly used 1956 4 door pink/white Cadillac and matching 15 foot Shasta trailer. That was a great California then . . .in those days.
Hey Auntie Analogue:
What’s the word?
Thunderbird!
What’s the price?
Twenty Twice!
Who drinks the most?
Us colored folks!
That’s the complete version of that folk song. You’re welcome.
“what’s the reason?
grapes in season!”
-fin
The gent is wondering why his remote door lock key is not working.
Time slip problem.
“How’s it sold?
Sweet and cold!”
“What’s the jive?
‘Bird’s ALIVE!”