Years ago I had this neighbor, Marge, who was seriously into opera. She had several three foot wide closets with four shelves each filled with LP albums. A small bedroom served as her sound enclosure. There were two five-foot high speakers, an old Macintosh tube amp with no cover, and the best turntable you could get. She would go in there, crank it up, and get involved. The bedroom was next to my driveway. When she was in the zone, her house shook. You could hear her weeping over the music. She also had twelve cats and a house full of antique furniture. There were frequent feline/furniture finish issues. One of the cats was nearly always in the doghouse, so to speak.

Cars were important to Marge. I remember she bought a new 1975 Pontiac LeMans equipped with interlocking seatbelts. The car wouldn’t start unless the seatbelts were fastened. Problem was, Marge didn’t wear seatbelts and wasn’t going to start anytime soon. So she took matters into her own hands and reverse engineered the system. Scissors made short work of the shoulder strap. That made the lap belt portion of the system easy to solve. Latch it together and stuff it between the seat cushions. The circuit was now permanently closed.

She came over to me one day with this 45 rpm Chevrolet promotional record called “The Sounds of a 1961 Corvette.” It featured Gene Staley, General Manager of Chevrolet, and a narration by Zora Arkus Duntov including the sounds of riding in a 1961 Corvette. I had the presence of mind to tape the recording, and recently found it after many years. Be sure to listen to Zora’s explanation as to why they gave the car more legroom. I shook Duntov’s hand on a visit he made through Pontiac Studio in 1973.

Enjoy the soundtrack. It’s a bit over six minutes long.
61Corvette.mp3