I consider myself an automotive and life journeyman

    As the great  Jay-Z once said "allow me to re introduce myself". My name is Cliff Brown, I am from the great and sometimes horrible state of Maryland, I am into all kinds of cars and trucks, and I don't mind getting my hands dirty or taking a random long road trip. I consider myself a journeyman of cars, but also of life. The journey takes you a lot of different places, and everyone's is different....but this one is mine.

   I will be updating this blog at random, and the topics will be random also. The journey of my life has a lot to do with the journey of me and cars. You learn a lot about life touring the country with your friends going to car shows, or working all nighters in the garage. You learn a lot about life and what the best times and worst times look like, but the main part of that is that you LEARN.


So,
   I am currently 34 years old, but I was first bitten by the car bug at a very young age. I considered myself hooked on cars about the age of 15, but my dad would tell you otherwise. He would tell you how as a young kid, around the ages of 5-6, I would just stand at the end of the drive way at our house, and I would just stare at all the cars going by. He always said that I just seems "fascinated" by them, I guess he was right.

   Over the years I have been into many many many types of cars. From old VWs, to hot rods, to rat rods, to lowriders, to really anything that took time and effort to built/create. The cars I have personally owned have covered mostly the minitruck, lowrider and VW worlds, but I still love to be around and work on any of them.

   I think that my "car life" can be broken into a couple different chapters. Id call these chapters
1.the into part A.watching the guys driving by in their bugs. Part B. my first bug.
2. the custom niche
3.wild times-CaliStyle
4. re-invention of the bug
5. ??????


Today I will tell you about chapter 1.

PART A......................

   There were these three guys in my neighborhood where I grew up , and all three of them had some of the most awesome custom bugs. I was about 13-14 years old, and I would watch these guys FLYING down through the neighborhood, snatching gears, and bumping some quality 12" kicker subs, and the whole time these guys would be smiling ear to ear and you could tell that they were just loving life. There was just something about how free they always looked that made me want to be just like them one day. I loved the custom stuff done to them, but I loved this "beetle" style and look. It was honestly the first time I think that I understood what "cool" meant......it was them, and it was these cars.

   My dad was not as thrilled with the "snatching gears" and speaker bumping as I was. He had two young kids that loved to play outside, and looking back, these guys really did drive like assholes...but as a kid I thought it was awesome. The day my dad threw a brick at the windshield of one of them as they were speeding, was the day I figured out that he as indeed not a fan lol.








PART B.......................



   I was 16 years old, I had just moved to the Eastern shore of Maryland, it was 1993-4, this was total hillbilly land, I had a long bowl cut, a handful of facial piercings (very NON common in those days), and I was a jnco jeans -bomber jacket-doc martin wearing kid that no way or shape fit the bill of a 'country boy'. So naturally the only other person that I guess you could say "fit" my style was this raver chick in one of my classes. She was pretty damn hot,and she hit on me a lot, but I had a girlfriend and wasn't interested; plus her being a raver that took drugs, and me being a die hard straight edge kid....ahhh that didn't work either.

    One day she asked if she could show me around the area, so I went along with it and she picked me up after school. She picks me up in her custom painted convertible BMW and we drove around town. I will admit.....it was pretty cool driving around with this hot chick that was into me-while we cruised her custom money green drop top BMW.....hey it was the 90s!, and it was awesome. BUT ANYWAY.... as we were driving around, we passed this gas station with an old 74 bug setting in the parking lot, and it had a forsale sign in it. She noticed me noticing the car and asked if I wanted to look at it. I was hesitant but said 'sure lets go check it out'. So we pull up and check this baby out..........

   Let me try my best at describing this thing. First it had the 5"tall chrome trim all along the bottoms of the doors and rockers, custom hub caps,it was white, and it had red velvet interior, and it smelled of an old black man. What was not to love?

   So, the sign said $850 firm, and I had about $20 to my name (which is normal for a senior in high school), so I just said "man that's a good deal, and I REALLY love these cars, but oh well". As we drive away she looks at me and says "I will buy it for you, and you can pay me back when ever you want". I turned it down at first but she really sold me on it, so I called the guy and struck a deal (after we went to her bank haha).

    So the old black man drops the car off, I hand him money, he signed the title , and off he went, leaving me my first real car......my 74 VW bug.

   I remember my dad FLIPPING OUT when he got home. My mom broke us up from us about to get into a fist fight, and we went our separate ways for a day or so. As it turns out , my dad was almost killed in a bug when he was younger while he was driving to take my mom out on a date. He wrecked it, and they almost never made that date, or me for that matter.

    I loved that 1974 beetle, you have no idea. I grew up not knowing how to do ANYTHING  to a car. I learned by asking, and by doing, and by "doing"-I mean doing it wrong and then fixing it. I didn't even know how to change the oil. All I knew is that I looked at the dip stick and the oil was alllllllllllll the way at the bottom of the stick..by this little line. So I just added oil until it reached the top of the dipstick...all of about 7 quarts. Oh it was at the top of the dipstick alright!!. And lucky for me the old black man made the mistake of leaving his tag on the car , so naturally this just became my new tag and I wanted to take the car out on Rt.50 to see how she would drive now, you know, because now it had all of its oil in it.

   I made it surprisingly about 2 miles, and as soon as I turned onto Rt.50...BOOOOOMMMMM. It scared the shit out of me, and it put out so much white smoke that it COVERED the highway, and i'm still shocked to this day that nobody was killed. I limped it home and that's when I learned how to change my oil...the correct way.

I remember driving around with my buddy Joe, buying .25 cent sodas from Safeway, putting 5 bucks in the tank for the night (because that meant 5-6 GALLONS back then), and just driving driving driving all night just looking for something to do. I guess looking back , driving around was our thing to do lol.

   During the winter months I would have to get up early to scrape the inside and outside of the windshield. I wore a beanie hat and gloves to stop from dieing, and you had to be careful not to fog up the windshield with your breath. She was a natural car, and by that I mean what ever nature gave you is what you had on the inside of the car too. No AC, no HEAT, and honestly I never even cared one bit. We would laugh it off, and we had some of the best times in life in that car.

Damn those were the days..............................




Until next time, keep those knuckles dirty, and those dreams high.


PS, you will also learn that I sometimes do not care about grammar, punctuation, or spelling.