[ponyakr]

now here's an unforgetable goat tail for ya'll. in early 1970, i enrolled in an ironworker apprenticeship program. we'd go to 3 nite classes a week, taking welding classes as well as some book learnin. i was still also taking a nite class at college. they let us work on construction jobs along with the real ironworkers, so we could learn from them. sort of O.J.T.. i remember my 2nd job. the foreman of my crew said to me, "punkin(thats what they called all apprentices) get 1 of those small choakers & get on the back off that cherrypicker, & go get a piece of iron. the operator will show you where it is". well i only had 2 problems with that. i had no idea what a choaker was, nor what a cherrypicker was. so, i had a lot to learn. from then on i drove the goat to work every day on thru part of '72 to construction sites in n la, s ark, & e tex. so even if the day was hard, at least i could enjoy the ride to & from work. 1 day in march of '71 me & a punkin buddy were workin on a big job at our local papermill, less than 10 miles from home. just after we got to work, it started to snow really hard, & did so for several hours. now for you folks who live up north this is no biggy. but here in the land of rednecks & bayous, cajuns & crawfish, snow is a rare treat. & especialy in march, what little we get is usually in jan or feb. but this day it was just cold enuff to stick to everything it touched. there was soon a nice blanket of snow covering everything, including the trees. it was beautiful. so they shut the job down & told everybody to go home. most did. but me & my punkin buddy didn't go straight home. we popped a top on a brew, which was always handy in the ice chest on the back seat. now folks, i'm not suggesting that you do this, but this is just where i came from, part of my life B.C.(before Christ). we rode slowly out of town & down some of our favorite drinkin roads. it was the strangest & one of the most beautiful scenes i've ever witnessed. it seemed we were the only folks on the road. every road was absolutely smooth & white, with no tire tracks of any kind. we rode rite down the middle of the road. & when we made a pit stop, i'd turn the motor off & there was absolute quiet. no sound of any vehicle anywhere. it was almost like we were the only people left on earth. it was just 1 of those special moments, captured in my memory forever. as we drove on we came to a familar 4-way intersection. i did a couple of do-nuts there just for kicks, then we headed down 1 of the other roads. the ole goat never maid a slip or a bobble. i had a posi (which i think pontiac called a safe-t-track limited slip or something similiar) rear end, & sears steel belted radial tires, which were just beginning to replace bias ply tires. so we drove straight & smooth rite down the middle of the road. when we got to town, we turned around & went back to the intersection & went down 1 of the other roads to its end, then continued the same procedure on each of the 4 roads. still never a sign of any other vehicle. this day made a real special memory which i wish i had captured on film.

[ponyakr]

i'd heard about mardi gras all my life, so i decided i needed to go check it out. in feb of 1970 i loaded up all the boys & we drove in the ole goat to new orleans to hit mardi gras. let me say here, if you have been, you can probably relate, if not please don't go. well we checked into a hotel several miles from bourban street, then took a cab to the corner of bourbon & canal, where he let us out, each carrying a fifth of boones farm apple wine in each hand. anybody remember apple wine? then we strolled on down the street, takin in the sites. but there wasn't much to see. it looked like a slum section to me. there were carnival barkers outside the strip joints, trying to lure us in & occasionally 1 of the girls would come out to further entice us. but we kept walkin & suckin on our bottles til they were empty, then we'd stop by the way & buy some more which was iced down in tubs all around. we saw the big floats come thru with people throwing cheap beads off them to the drunks below. if a trinket was not caught, there would be a large pile-up of humanity scrappin to get the treasure. sometimes peoples hands would be bloody because they had gotten stepped on while reaching for the beads. there were cops on horseback patrolling the streets. when somebody got out of line or shouted obsenities at them, they would reach down, grab hold of them, & jerk them up over the iron railings & put them into paddywagons, which were parked on every corner. when the wagon got full they'd take 'em to jail, then bring 'em back empty, ready for another load. i could tell i was not in kansas any more. during the nite we got seperated & 1 guy got lost. when he finally found us you could tell he was extremely releived. me & 1 other guy decided we'd check out a strip joint, since we'd never had the pleasure(or whatever). it was'nt really a nude show, you know just little g-strings & such. i really felt sorry for the 1st few girls we saw. they were obviously on drugs & just doin it to get drug money. but then a beautiful, tall, dark eyed cajun girl came out. that got my attention. about that time i heard a thump. it was the sound of my friends head hitting the bar. he'd had all the wine he could stand. the bouncer quickly escourted us out & that was that. we survived the nite, then loaded back up into the ole goat & cruised back home, never to return to that h??? hole again!

[ponyakr]

how many of you have ever gone crawfishin in a new 4spd TA? i have! back about '74, T.J. & i were friends with 2 redheaded brothers & their families. so 1 day they decided we should have a big crawfish boil get together. now, for those of you who have never eaten crawfish, i feel i must give a little background info here. a crawfish looks just like a lobster, but is much smaller & lives in fresh water. when the cajun people of s La 1st settled there, they were very poor & didn't speak english. they spoke french, so many thought they were just poor ignorant people. but they had the good sense to use their new invironment to their advantage. the warm waters of the s La lakes, bayous & rivers were rich with fish & crawfish. so this became the staple of their diets. at the time, i assume most white folks didn't eat crawfish, at least not in public. they actually looked down on cajuns for doing so, saying they were just poor & ignorant & didn't know any better. so for years, cajuns got to enjoy these mudbugs(as they are called) without competition. things have really changed. now, most rednecks from the hill country of n La love mudbug boils. the crawfish industry is huge in La. in some years demand exceeds supply. but in '74 , if you wanted mudbugs, you couldn't just go out & buy a sackful like you can now. you had to go out & catch your own. this wasn't very hard, cause in La every body of water, including every mudhole on the side of the road has mudbugs in it. so in '74 me & the brothers started puttin out our crawfish nets in every mud hole along all our old drinkin roads. 1 brother, i'll call al, had a new '74 400, 4sp TA. when his brother was workin shift work at our local papermill, me & al would load up our ice chest & our nets, pop a top & head out down the old drinkin roads, lookin for a decent sized mudhole to put a net in. it was definately the most fun i ever had fishin. after a few days, we had plenty to have our boil. so out in the yard at al's mom's house, we got a big black iron washpot & filled it about 1/2 full of water. then we built a big fire under it using wood meant for al's mom's wood burning fireplace. we put in a pkg of shrimp & crawfish boil seasoning. then we cut up corn & potatoes & onions & thru it all in the pot. once this came to a boil, we added the bugs we'd caught & soon had a feast fit for a cajun king. so me & T.J. & al's family had a real s La style banquet, munchin on the bugs we'd caught in a '74 pontiac TA.

[ponyakr]

this story is about the strangest street scene i've ever witnessed & the events that surrounded it. i have a pic of me at about age 3 out playing in the snow beside a pitiful little snowman. but i was to young to remember it. the 1st snow i remember was in feb of either '61 or '62. it was on a friday afternoon. me & a helper were doing our afternoon milking, which i did everyday after school. as we looked out the window of the barn to the west we could see these tiny flakes of snow falling. but soon they turned to giant flakes. they were the only flakes i remember seeing up until this time. & at least in my mind, by far, the biggest i've seen til this very day. anyhow, it snowed long & hard (about 12"), definately the most i've seen til now. T.J. says thats the way she remembers it too. then it got really cold, maybe 12-14 degrees. now i know that may not seem cold to you folks in the north, but here, most winters, it never gets below 20 degrees & doesn't stay that way long enuff to freeze the ground. but that year it did. for several days it never got above freezing even in the daytime. all the ponds even froze over. most traffic ground to a halt (not our milk trucks tho, the milk must get thru). the vacuum lines in our milkin barn froze up & even the milking machines themselves froze. it was a nitemare. after 4 or 5 days of this my dad finally had all he could take. he sold the cows & a big 18 wheeler came & picked them up in a big cattle trailer & hauled them away. he was sad because he loved cows & farming. but i was glad. that meant i didn't have to get up at 3am to milk anymore & i didn't have to milk after school any more. i was free at last. our family had never taken a vacation. we were tied to the dairy farm every day. but now that we were free from that, my dad decided to treet us to a family vacation. he probably did it partly out of guilt, 'cause he was a homebody, who didn't even like to eat out. now this turned out to be our only vacation ever, but it was 1 to remember. dad had been stationed for a while during ww2 in colorada. so he knew how nice it was up there, especially in the summer. so we loaded up in our '61 ford, 6 cly, 3 on the tree & headed north. to save $ mom packed plenty of sandwich makin stuff, so when we got to the foothills of the rockies, we pulled over to a roadside picnic table & she started makin sandwiches. but before we could dig in the bread was crusty like toast. it was my 1st experience with low humidity. but , i'd soon see more of its effects.

[ponyakr]

we finally made it to denver & it was the strangest thing i'd ever seen. there was lots of traffic on the 4-lane main drag just like any big city, but this was different. instead of the normal mix of new & used cars, this looked like a scene from a hollywood movie set back in the 40's. all these old cars from the 30's & 40's were flying down the street just like the newer ones were. i'm sure there were some pontiacs in the mix. in La cars this old had long since rusted down & went to the crusher. the low humidity had preserved these old cars in col & there they were, in a nonstop parade down the main drag. its a scene i'll never forget. my dad was a cool dude. i talked him into going at least part way up pikes peak in our old ford. but the low oxygen content of the air soon made our ford barely able to move on flat ground, much less pull a hill, so we took it in for a tune up. we were able to see the rockies & me & my sister got to ride a ski lift & got some spectacular views of distant snowcapped peaks. in that crisp, dry air, just breathing was a pleasure. on our trip back home we began to see signs that said something like "litter barrel 3 miles". we weren't paying attention, we thought it said "little barrel", maybe a town with indian roots. but after we'd gone many miles we saw another sign & said "i thought we already passed little barrel". well, we finally figured it out & have had many laffs about it thru the years. my dad had 1 more treat in store for me on this trip. we circled thru kansas city to take in a pro baseball game. it just so happened my favorite team was in town, the NY yankees. & whats so special about this is that it was the year roger maris broke babe ruth's home run record. he hit 2 or 3 cheap line drives shots over the short rf fence at the game we saw. but let me describe the most awesome home run i've ever witnessed. micky mantle hit a ball farther than i thought was possible. cf was 421', then 30-40' passed that there was a tall lite pole. this ball cleared those lites by at least 20'. it must have traveled over 500' in the air. the image of that is still clear in my mind after 50+ years. it may be a record for the pre steroid era. i think maris hit 61 homers & mantle 54. they were called the M & M boys. we made it back home with a lifetime of memories stored up, & never had another family vacation.

[ponyakr]

if you've followed my story, you know i had to learn the hard way, by trial & lots of errors. i just thought of a couple of things that mite help some just getting started in the hobby. once i learned these things the hard way, it became basic set up 101 for every racer i rigged up. i'll start at the front with the radiator. back in the day most gm muscle came with a 4 core radiator. i found that anything less just would not keep a pontiac cool. today, most of the 4-cores are gone & the repros are hi $. but alum rads are cheap & plentiful. they claim that a 2-core alum cools better than a 4-core brass/copper. they're about $150 at summit, & even cheaper at circle track suppliers like speedway. they even have double pass jobs that cool even better for about $200. now the next item is very important & overlooked by many. i used to see sbc cars without a fan shroud & getting by just fine. but a pontiac is not a sbc. unless you run electric fans, you need a good shroud. & the fan should extend well up inside the shroud, so that the fan will pull air THRU the radiator, not from the sides. if you've ever seen the deep shrouds that came on '69-'77 gp, you can see the lengths pontiac engineers went to, in order to keep the motor cool. next is the fan itself. the factory flex fan on my '69 ra3 worked well. i also used big clutch type fans, 'cause i had so many laying around. you can buy all sorts of hd, extra cooling fans today. but avoid those little, small blade fiberglass jobs--they want cool a pontiac! now if your car is race only & you want all the power you can get, you can use an electric water pump($300+) & electric fans. a small electric fan is cheap. efficient, dual fans are not. now on back to the motor mounts. if you run only hard street tires, then good stock mounts may be o.k.. but if you ever bolt on slicks or sticky drag radials, you'll rip the drivers side mount apart. when the rotation of the motor meets the resistance of the sticky tires, the drivers side of the engine trys to raise up, which will pull the stock mount apart. there are several solutions to this problem. you can use the late '70's style mount. if you do, keep in mind a big car shell want work on a bird. it raises the motor too hi off the frame. i've noticed these old bird shells now sell for $25 up. you can just buy or make a solid mount. but this puts a lot of strain on the side of the block. & the vibration transmitted to the body is harsh to some folks. i used stock mounts, plus a small turnbuckle bolted to the front & back of the drivers side head. the other end can be secured with a small steel cable around the frame rail. or you can fabricate brackets welded to the frame rail if you prefer. turnbuckles are available at any hardware store. just use double nuts on the rite hand thread end, to lock them in place, after you've ajusted all the slack out. i've seen some use pieces of chain instead, but there always seems to be a little slack left, which will cause a shock load when the slack is jerked out of it. for race only a rear motor plate is better, but requires considerable fab skills. some also run a front motor plate, to eliminate all stress to the side of the block. this requires mods to the timing cover. if you want motor plates, i'd hire this done by someone with a lot of experience in this area. unless you want a busted tailhousing on your tranny, never use a solid tranny mount, enuff said? don't forget to run a driveshaft loop. & remember to tack weld your axle tubes to the center section BEFORE running slicks or drag radials. now get out there & have some fun with your pontiac!

[ponyakr]

T.J. just reminded me that during the 1st year i had the goat(3-69 thru 3-70), i lived beside the pizza inn in a small travel trailer. my boss ("uncle joe") liked me & probably for security reasons also, let me set up the trailer & plug in rite beside the pizza parlor. so for the 1st year of its life, my ole goat was parked almost every nite between that little trailer & the pizza house. & fittingly enuff, the brand name of the little trailer was Teepee. so there i was, living in a teepee, with my trusty tin indian parked rite outside. & on top of that, i could eat all the pizza i wanted every day. some seasons of life are just better than others. i know heaven is even a better place than this was, so it must be a really great place. T.J. has the camera card so i'll have to send the pics later.