The #1 thing about vandalism is to be glad that you're safe, and it didn't escalate into someone being injured or killed.
Some wheel stories, some tire stories:
In the early 1970's, when the Miami Dolphins won two back-to-back SuperBowls, and The Perfect Season was one of them, a friend who owned a garage for repairs, inherited some $ from an aunt. He went out and found a car to flip, a DeTomaso Mangusta.
Car and Driver famously said, "
there are cars we would rather drive, but there are none we would rather be seen in."
Where the Jaguar XK-E was voluptuous curves, the
Mangusta was an early example of the
creases and folds automotive style. Those are two of my all-time favorites of automotive design. They were designed about ten years apart.
My
Mangusta-owning friend decided to enter the car on-display at the Miami Auto Show. The week before the show was to open, while enthusiastically cornering the
Mangusta he hit a curb on a roundabout exiting onto State Road 1, more commonly-known as A1A, here in Florida. That road fronts onto the Atlantic Ocean.
Problems! The wheel wasn't capable of being repaired. He had to Air-Freight a replacement wheel from CA and he was able to get it on, and the car entered, just in-time. It drew a lot of attention as mid-engined road cars were few and far-between then.
I was hanging out at the car and my friend was speaking to some interested people when a large guy wandered up and started walking-around the
Mangusta, taking in its style. Of course I recognized him immediately, despite his dark sunglasses, it was Dolphin #22, Eugene
Mercury Morris. Here was one of the NFL's biggest stars, looking at my friend's car.
Since the owner was still speaking with the other people, I volunteered to answer
Mercury Morris's questions. We spoke for a few minutes, and I gave him the owner's phone number. The owner sold the car soon after to someone else. But I had a story to tell my friends about meeting
Mercury Morris at the Miami Auto Show, and showing him a DeTomaso
Mangusta for sale.
This past weekend, during the NFL games, maybe you stayed in your seat during the time where all the games had a notice on the death of Eugene
Mercury Morris. They mentioned his being part of two victorious Dolphins SuperBowl teams, including The Perfect Season. They also made mention of his legal troubles, some mentioned that the conviction for cocaine trafficking was overturned. He retired from the NFL in 1976 after being traded to the Chargers.
When I heard the news of Morris's death, I remembered standing in the Miami Auto Show, speaking to the highest-scoring, most yards gained halfback, (Dolphins records at the time) who in his rookie game (1969) for the Dolphins, ran a kickoff back for a touchdown, 105 yards against Cincinatti (still a Dolphins record). My friend's
Mangusta was well scrutinized by the Dolphins #22, while I answered his questions. May he rest in peace.
Wheel/tire yarn #2:
The highest point in Miami Dade County on which a vehicle can travel is State Road (S.R.) 836, the Dolphin Expressway. That runs east-west and it connects two expressways, I-95 to the east and the Palmetto Expressway (S,R, 826) to the west. By I-95, as S.R 836 ascends over the Miami River, it casts a shadow onto the Federal Building, which sits to the north of the expressway. S.R. ascends to a height of 104 ft. above the ground there.
In the movie starring Al Pacino,
Scarface, about the Mariel Boatlift from Cuba, recently-arrived immigrant Tony Montana who is being kept in temporary housing inside chain-linked fencing located beneath the rise of S.R. 836, kills a Communist defector who was responsible for the death of another Cuban, back on the island. He does that to gain his immigrant resident card, the deed requested by another earlier Cuban immigrant who had become wealthy in Miami. That refugee camp is just down the street from the Federal Building, where every morning, an assigned worker collects all the sacrificed animals left-behind by the practitioners of
Santeria, who have left offerings behind for favorable results in federal court for those appearing in federal court that coming day. Pop culture and history lesson, concluded.
I was ascending S.R. 836 and was about to cross the apogee, and to start my descent, when I had a catastrophic failure of a rear tire on my Chevy van. I threw on my 4-way flashers, and pulled to the right lane, and dropped-down to idle speed. I safely was able to get to the downside of that road, and soon was able to pull-onto the paved shoulder where the road levelled-out. I got out to inspect the damage.
My Michelin tire was perforated by a lateral slice across the tread, almost its entire width. I threw on my spare, and headed to a tire store. When the tire tech worked the Coats machine, as he removed the tire, he reached-inside the carcass, and he pulled out that which killed my Michelin. It was a 'vanity' pipe, a chrome tip for the last few inches of your exhaust, and held-on by two sheetmetal screws 90 degrees apart. The gaping slit in my Michelin tread had many frayed steel ends just waiting to perforate the skin of someone stupid-enough to feel them.
I considered myself lucky not to have gone over the guardrail when the blowout happened, which for sure would have been the end of me. "He landed next-to the
Scarface Mariel refugee camp and that's where he croaked," they would say about poor unfortunate me.
[end]
www.nbclosangeles.com
