Re: mainframe career advice
- From: "Chuck Stevens" <charles.stevens@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:07:57 -0700
<howard.brazee@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:fvqij1dthdkkuqvig75014sik7q4ejr8hl@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Tue, 27 Sep 2005 08:41:22 -0700, "Chuck Stevens"
> I just was looking in the parking lot at a 1955 Jaguar. I was
> drooling. But there's not much future in them.
The first foreign car my family owned was a '52 Mark VII. My dad bought it
in October 1955 for I think $1800 and traded it in in February 1958 on a
brand-new Renault Dauphine. I think the Dauphine cost around $1500 and we
got $600 in trade for the Jaguar.
I went through the repairs that I personally could remember having been done
on that car some years later, and deduced that there was not a single
assembly on that car, from front bumper to rear inclusive (and specifically
including both gas tanks, all four doors, the sunroof, the trafficator arms,
the seats and every single instrument on the panel) that did *not* suffer a
mechanical or electrical failure of some sort requiring expert mechanical
intervention (not to include collision damage, mind!). I do remember that
we spent $3600 in those twenty-eight months on mechanical repairs. That was
a chunk of change back then.
This was also the era when my father's cataracts had progressed
significantly, and he was still using the Jaguar to commute some thirty
miles to work. By the time we traded it in the Jaguar's bodywork was, shall
we say, rather compromised. It languished on the lot for quite a while
before someone actually bought it, and we saw it on the street a couple of
times, but it was no more than a year before I spotted it in a local
junkyard (the body having suffered no further damage than it had when we
traded it in).
The Dauphine, though not as reliable as the 4CV we also owned by that point,
held up much better than the Jaguar despite the Dauphine's abysmal
reputation in that regard. The Dauphine was replaced a couple of years
later by a used '59 Beetle that lasted nearly a decade.
It was the memory of that experience with the Jaguar and my father's
attempts to use it as a Transportation Conveyance, coupled with my own later
experience with a MGTD and a Morgan in the same role, that led me to believe
that English cars are actually Motorcars, and when you use them for Motoring
they are truly wonderful. They are not, however, particularly good
Automobiles, because the expectation that the "mobile" part have some degree
of "auto" to it is not well met. They want to be actively Enjoyed as a
Pastime, not used as transportation.
-Chuck Stevens
.
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