My 1963 Rambler Junkyard Story

My 1963 Rambler American was teal with aqua seats made of vinyl, hot as hell in the summer. I covered them with real sheepskin, the plastic steering wheel, too.

The old 4-banger was noisy, but oil tight, no smoke, and it chugged along like a lawnmower. It only had 80,000 miles on it. Big, cone-shaped hub caps and white sidewalls. No fancy stereo added, just an AM radio with one lonely speaker on the dash.

One fine summer day I was at a friends property fishing with the kids. My daughter, who was about 4 at the time, climbed into the car and started playing with the steering wheel. She laid on the horn, over and over, and I came running up from the pond, yelling at her to knock it off. Well, she did. My anger startled her and she yanked the steering wheel off. No kidding. No steering wheel. and the mount was broken and the wheel cracked. Not really her fault, it was probably ready to go. You could still drive the car if you held the steering wheel in place.

When you need parts for a Rambler American, there is only one place to go…the junkyard.

It was August in southern Illinois; hot and steamy, and my hands were sweaty and slippery as I held the steering wheel, now without the sheepskin, in place and drove up to DeSoto where I knew there was a junkyard with at least 4 Rambler Americans in it. This wasn’t your big city junkyard, it was the classic country boy yard consisting of lots of old rusty cars littered throughout some hillbilly’s 40 acre property. A toxic superfund cleanup in the making I am sure. The owner, hat slung low, met me at the gate, casually chewing some tobacco. I asked him where his Ramblers were. He pointed a thin hand down a rutted chunk of cow pasture that led into some woods. In there, in the sweltering shade of vine-covered Hickories and clouds of mosquitoes I would find the Ramblers.

Steering wheel in hand, to make sure I got the right one, I walked down the dusty trail and into the close woods. There they were, four Ramblers, tucked between fallen trees and old corrugated steel panels from a water tower or something. I looked in the first car, no steering wheel. Looked in the second car, wrong steering wheel. Looked in the third car, the entire back seat was a gigantic bee hive. Looked in the fourth car, wrong steering wheel again.

Dang, the only good wheel was in the car with the bee hive, and this wasn’t some puny-assed wimpy hive, this thing was the size of the entire back seat of the old Rambler. I stood there, listening to the angry droning of the hive, the occasional bee scout buzzing around my head. I couldn’t open the door and beat the hive with a stick and chase them off. I didn’t have time to find a bee keeper. Maybe the junkyard owner could pick the car up with a backhoe and shake it? No, all bad ideas.

Only one thing to do….climb in.

Front door was jammed and the window was closed. I didn’t dare open the back door, but the window was open. I crawled through the window, one knee on the back of the front seat, the other in the window, and the bee hive just below my crotch. I was scared. It was late afternoon and the sweat was dripping off my nose and my hair and shirt were matted to my skin. I manged to get myself in the front seat without disturbing the hive, but noticed there was another hive in the front on the passenger floor. Arg.

I got my rolled-up towel “tool kit” and got the wheel off. I was so scared and focused on the wheel that I had managed not notice there were by now a few hundred bees buzzing and crawling around me, a lot on me actually. That’s when one stung me. Don’t scream, I told myself, stay calm. Another sting, this one right on my cheek. I was ready to go, but too big a cloud of bees in the back. No way i was going out the way I came in.

Remaining calm, I yanked up on the door handle, hard, and the latch popped, but still stuck. I started kicking the door and screaming. It flew open, and I was out of that car and running as fast as I could, a steering wheel in each hand and my tools still inside the car. Hey, the junk yard could have them.

I got stung about three more times before I made it up out of the woods and back to the front of the junk yard. “Whooee,” commented the owner, “You’ns gonna hurt good fer a week, an itch too, theres turkey lice all in there bad.”

I borrowed some tools from the owner and put the new steering wheel on and drove home. Wounded, but happy to have my car in top shape again.

As a finish to this story, it was soon after that I went to the feed store to get some hay for our garden. You can take the back seat out of a Rambler easily and that comes in handy when you need to haul stuff. I got my three bales of hay, two in the back seat and one in the trunk (with the trunk open), and headed home. On the radio was Mr. Foxworthy with his “You Might Be a Redneck” routine, and he said, “You might be a redneck if you know how many bales of hay you can git in yer Rambler with the back seat out.” No lie, I am not making this up. The car next to me, they must have had the same station on, because they were looking at my car and laughing their butts off. Oh, I wish I had had a pair of Billy Bob teeth just then. It would have been sweet.

And that is my junkyard story.