Are you suggesting I'm making it up? I'm surprised because there were pullout's with available radiator water going south over the Grapevine as well as Hwy 17 into Santa Cruz, over the Altamont pass even into the 1990's. You've never been to Baker, Barstow, Indio, Thermal, Death Valley, 29 Palms, Palm Springs etc. on a hot summer day in the 50's or 60's. You've never seen a warning to turn your AC off "steep grade ahead"? There are photo's right here on this website of people putting water in their overheated radiators from desert bags. Desert bags weren't just for drinking Most people weren't fortunate enough to have AAA back then, never mind a facility alongside the road to make a call.
I have been to all of those places. Maybe the answer is that we had better cars than you did. Our 50-55 Lincolns, 59 & '60 Oldsmobiles, my 58 Impala, and '59.Cadillac never overheated including with the A/C on. We never used a Desert Water Bag. YMMV!
In the 50's my family spent a week or two at the Jersey shore. The trip home was sometimes 4 hours to go 60 miles in hot humid cars with no ventilation at 3 mph on overcrowded roads....The road side was filled with open hood cars steaming away...I can still hear the rattling radiator caps...My dad speeding up the engine when not moving..
I’m going to guess Lew Arrington’s AWB ’65 GTO fuel funny car "Brutus", maybe when he first tried running Pontiac engine on heavy loads of nitromethane, which didn’t go well. It might even have been driven by “Jungle Jim” Liberman when this picture was taken.
The Adobe house on Petit Ranch in Encino prior to being razed in October 1950. The adobe had eight rooms and was located on the southeast corner of Balboa and Victory Boulevards. William Justice Petit was a rancher and grower who bought vast tracks of land in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties. His son, Stanley Norris Petit, was known for his pioneering efforts in ranch operations and aviation in the San Fernando Valley. He and his father owned and operated Encino Rancho, the largest single parcel of property in the Valley before the Sepulveda Basin and Birmingham Hospital, now Birmingham High School, were built. After subdividing the ranch, Petit Avenue, which runs across the Valley to Encino, was named for William Petit. The area where the adobe sat is now part of the 2,000-acre Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, which is a flood control basin managed by the Los Angeles City Department of Recreation and Parks.
The Jalopy Journal
