When I first arrived in California in '89 the only people I knew took me to a place they were sure I'd love called Harbin Hot Springs.
It was a restored Victorian era clothing-optional natural hot springs resort in Lake County that, since the early '70s, had been an intentional residential community - some would call it a "hippy commune".
It's "parent company" was The Heart Consciousness Church.
I was a philosophy and religion minor in college and had been on something of a "New Age" spiritual path since high school, so I was interested in alternative "churches" and when I got to Harbin's front gate for the first time and was told I'd have to join The Heart Consciousness Church, I thought, that's cool, I like that name, sign me up!
But then, walking up to the spring fed pools I had second thoughts.
Wait, now, this is California, home of cults and kooks!
What if there's some dogma I can't get behind?
What if there's some cult leader who wants to have sex with me or wants me to drink some Kool-Aid?!?
What if the "church" is just a tax-dodge?
I was hoping it was just all about the healing waters bubbling up out of the hillside and the freedom to enjoy them skinnydipping-style.
When I found myself in Harbin's amazing hot pool water (113,5 degrees) that very first time, I thought, oh, wow, this is it, liquid God!
My visits became more and more frequent, not unlike pilgrimages, and on August 26, 1996 I became a Harbin resident/employee.
At first, I pitched a tent by Harbin creek with Elsie parked nearby.
The main, warm, meditation Pool at Harbin.
When I moved to Harbin, I was pretty certain that I was done with the car repair business, but I soon found out that Harbin had a hodge-podge small fleet of mostly small trucks that they used to care for the place which was on several thousand acres and included many old buildings. And I was surprised to learn that they had their own rather well-equipped, on-property auto shop with a lift and everything needed to perform in-house maintenance and repairs on their vehicles.
The manager of the auto shop at Harbin was something of a scoundrel and not ever particularly sober so they were looking for his replacement.
So, I thought, oh, well, I can do that, it might be fun, and it'll be pretty easy to look good to the management after the guy they had... and I took the job.
And there was an unused bay in the shop where I could store Elsie! That was before the time when Harbin's explosive expansion of the early 21st century would prohibit it, so she had a garage again!
I sheet rocked, painted, decorated and reorganized the Harbin Autoshop and began upgrading the fleet, standardizing to mostly Fords.
The shop had plenty of tools, and the mechanics that worked for me brought in their own (sometimes quite literally) TON of tools. The lift was outside which was okay most of the time. There was a big compressor, a pneumatic bulk oil dispenser, floor jacks and jack stands, a brake lathe, a press and a drill press, a complete Dorman nut and bolt selection in both metric and SAE and a stock of oil filters, air filters, fuel filters belts and hoses. The local NAPA Auto Parts store delivered almost daily and the Snap-On truck visited.
The shop was so clean that my sannyasin friend Nirakar suggested that I paint the floor white like the autoshop at Osho's ashram in Puna. ...Never got around to that...
The shop truck and loaner became the Fordebaker with a '49 Studebaker hood ornament and little painting I did on the tailgate.
My personal company car, a '93 Camry wagon became the Toyotabaker, with some extra chrome trim, a honeycomb grille mesh out of an '01 Ford Ranger with a late '30s Studebaker "Red Ball" cloisonne medallion, and another '49 Stude hood ornament.
In my Harbin Autoshop office.
Elsie was running great again but her mostly all original paint, though still shiny, was wearing thin and showed lots of flaws, some dings and even a few rust bubbles in the common places - the bottom of the trunk lid and the leading edge of the back fenders. That, and my love for Harbin, is why, for the annual "Middletown Days" parade downtown, I decided to make Elsie into the Harbin parade car, and I applied graphics to the car.
Elsie in full Harbin Mobile regalia in the Middletown Days parade.
The main, warm, spring water pool at Harbin Hot Springs has a distinctive railing around it that was incorporated into Harbin's logo.
A beloved big fig tree spread its branches out over the pool providing shade.
So, using automotive stripe tape to depict the trademark railing, green contact paper for the fig leaves, a Harbin logo like I put on all the fleet vehicles on her doors and glow-in-the-dark stars on the roof, Elsie became "The Harbin Mobile".
I applied for and, much to my surprise, got California to issue me "HARBIN" vanity plates. I couldn't believe no one had already had them.
Over the next many years Elsie brought home trophies from the parade as Best Decorated Vehicle and the graphics very effectively disguised the fact that she really needed a paint job.
Elsie had a good long run as The Harbin Mobile alongside the 1959 Chevrolet fire truck Harbin had and which I slowly began restoring!
The '59 Chevy Viking 3100 fire truck originally served the town of Middletown, then as fire protection at Harbin in the late '70s before enough water was plumbed around the property. Then it was fitted with a back bumper sprinkler system for dust abatement on the dirt roads. Eventually the roads were paved, and she became strictly a parade vehicle that the Harbin community kids loved to ride on for the parade. It only had 23,000 total miles, but undoubtedly over thousands of short trips, by that time.
For the parade each year, the Harbin "flower girls", those resident/employees tasked with making the flower arrangements that decorated Harbin, made two huge arrangements that were set in oasis in four cut-down gallon milk jugs and nestled in the rear bumper overriders.
On Elsie's front bumper overriders for the parade, I mounted flags of all the many countries from which my fellow Harbin residents hailed. The flowers and flags came off after the parade, but the graphics stayed on - she remained the Harbin mobile all year long and for about 15 years.
My Bay Area Studebaker friends were very polite about it and didn't say what they were no doubt thinking: "What the heck did you do to that poor car?!?" If you didn't know Harbin, the graphics were no doubt puzzling...
Ready for the parade with flags mounted.
A fellow named Bhagavan Das, the guy who told Dr. Richard Alpert to Be Here Now in India in 1967 and who brought the good doctor to his guru to become Ram Dass, was living at Harbin when I moved there.
He became my mentor in the ways of kirtan - Hindu-style call-and-response chanting, which I fell in love with.
Bhagavan Das was very car savvy himself, having at one time done a stint as a Marin County car salesman, and he loved Elsie.
Six foot four, with another three-inch top knot, he had plenty of headroom in Elsie and I took a picture of him giving a blessing from her doorway.
Bhagavan Das.
While I was the fleet and auto shop manager for Harbin, several other Studebakers followed me home, some towed behind the Fordebaker, including a very nice '60 Lark VIII 4-door sedan, a '59 Lark VI 2-door sedan, a '59 Lark VIII Regal hardtop in its original "Tahiti Coral", a sharp '64 Commander fixed-roof Wagonaire, my second 4-speed '62 GT Hawk, two 4-door 1950 Champions, a '51 Land Cruiser and several parts cars.
By 2014 I was really wishing Elsie could lose the graphics but pulling them off was not an option. By then they'd been on for 15 years and even if removing them might not have taken a bunch of paint off with them (it would have) you'd still see where they were and the car would still, and even more so, need paint.
You know the bumper sticker that says "HIT ME I NEED THE MONEY"?
Well, in the summer of 2014 I was at a big Sacramento car show with the Harbin Mobile.
It was really hot as the show concluded around 2PM and participants were leaving.
An elderly gentleman in a row of show cars opposite me may have had a moment of heat stroke as he was leaving and his Dodge Charger rolled into Elsie's right front, the same place where I'd wrecked the fender in '75 and where the lady in the Anchorage gym parking lot had hit it in '87. The bumper, bumper guard, right front fender, the right grille end cap and the upper grille bar were damaged. At the time I also had a presentable, good running '50 Champion sedan (the blue one - photo above) and my first thought when the accident occurred wasn't "Oh, no!!", it was, "Oh boy!! I can sell the '50 and put that with the insurance settlement and maybe even afford to paint all of Elsie!!" I did, thereby achieving the beautiful $15,000 body and paint job I thought I'd never be able to afford.
I hunted up a decent, used replacement upper grille bar and end cap and a new auxiliary front bumper guard kit and started taking the car apart for paint. I removed the bumpers, all the chrome and stainless trim and the rear fenders and brought Elsie to the local body shop that I'd been using for Harbin fleet trucks. The painter was kind of old-school, like me, and he appreciated the car and did some fine bodywork and applied plenty of single-stage enamel paint like she was originally painted with and that I had insisted on.
I didn't want the car to ever suffer from peeling clearcoat disease.
He did a great job, probably spending more time on the car than his boss would have liked. In 2014, he may have actually been braking California law by using old-school paint on my car.
I told him I could live with a certain amount of orange peel in the paint, but he cut and buffed it anyway.
When he was done and I put the car back together I couldn't believe that such a sharp-looking car was mine. She was finished off with a set of new reproduction wheel covers.
Elsie's makeover begins, 2014.
In the next installment, fire destroys Harbin Hot Springs, Elsie becomes my firestorm escape vehicle and we move to southern Oregon.
No comments:
Post a Comment