My Little Mazda Mizer 808

I believe I had a mullet in the first half of the 1980s.

Up until when the Coast Guard shaved my head. But then they sent me home for being a Canadian. They actually accused me of trying to fool them.

I had as bare a scalp as I ever did. And I learned that I am not a man who looks good with a shaved head. I truly look like a pin head. The head of a pin. It took six months for my hair to grow back to even a punker cut.

But I digress.

Passing into adulthood in the Southeastern states of the U.S.; well, I was assimilated.

I had long hair halfway down my back. But it was cut over top of my ears. I pushed the hair on my forehead straight back.

I’m pretty sure that is what they call a mullet.

But we didn’t call it that back then.

I don’t think we called it anything?

I had a Mazda Mizer – an 808 – it was a four-cylinder two-door Datsun look-alike – it was the first Mazda sold in North America. It was a four-on-the-floor standard.

And it was a great little car.

I got it in high school, my Dad did help me buy it from a nurse. It had an AM Radio and 8-Track cassette player.

It was silver – and the hot Georgia sun had oxidized the paint so bad that I took it to Earl Schrieb’s and had them paint it metallic powder blue. They didn’t even take the old decal pinstripes off – they just painted right over them. So I repainted the pinstripes myself.

And you could tell.

The interior was black vinyl seats – splitting from the sun. and black rubber floor. The dash was all black. And when I would climb in that car in the summer – after lifeguarding – those seats burned. So the seats were usually covered by beach towels. And a trip to a carpet store for black remnants let me carpet my little car in black shag.

I took off my old gas pedal and put a chrome bare foot pedal down there.

My 8-track cassette case held the following jewels

• Styx – Grand Illusion
• Queen – News to the World
• SuperTramp – Breakfast in America
• Steve Miller – Fly like an eagle.
• Johnny Cash Live at San Quinton
  
• The Best of Hank Williams (not Jr.)
• Lynard Skynards Greatest Hits
• Frampton Comes Alive
• And a bootleg copy I got in Windsor on a summer vacation of the Best of The Beatles.

Pretty eclectic, eh?

I had no air-conditioning in that car. You wanted air conditioning? You drove a little faster with the windows rolled down.

And the faster you drove with the windows down, the louder you had to turn up the stereo.

That AM radio was quickly replaced with a Pioneer AM/FM radio. Cassettes had just come out – but had not yet caught on. We had no boom-boxes – no super-woofers. But we had four good speakers. And 96 Rock in Atlanta sounded great.

I drove that car through the remainder of my time in Georgia – through University – while we lived in Baton Rouge Louisiana.

For a brief time – one semester – I would drive into New Orleans from Baton Rouge everyday to attend courses. This meant driving on I-10 over all the bayou. On one day – coming home from New Orleans – my engine seized up.

I didn’t take care of that great little car. I didn’t bother to check the oil. And so it gave up on me.

I got out of my little car – lifted the smoking hood, and started walking the 20 mile bridge over the bayou. There were four lanes of expressway. Shortly along came two Coast Guard officers who stopped to help me; a man and a woman.

They were extremely kind, generous, and persons a mullet headed clod like me could look up to. They left an impression.

I wound up selling my Mazda Mizer 808 to the garage that towed it away for me. I couldn’t afford to fix it.

And that next February, in 1983, I joined the United States Coast Guard myself.

And that was the last I ever saw of my mullet.

But the next car I bought was a Mazda 626. That car I drove to Canada.

A True Tigers Autograph

When I was a boy, the Detroit Tigers were a very important part of my childhood.

Wherever we drove, Tiger baseball was on the radio, Ernie Harwell calling the play by play. There was no need for color commentators back then, because the announcers were talented enough to keep you interested in the game.

As you would drive out of Detroit on I-94 heading for Jackson, there was a Mobile Oil refinery that had one of its containers painted to be a baseball with the “Go Tigers” cheer painted on it.

When we would come home to Windsor to visit my Grandfather – Papa – we would often find him sitting in front of the radio – listening to the game – with every finger and toe crossed as the Tigers tried to comeback to win or close out a game.

It was magic to hear the game through the tiny speakers of the day – with the buzzes and whistles of AM radio. You could paint the whole game in your brain.

I still remember vividly sitting in old Tiger stadium with my Dad and Papa – eating hot dogs and watching my heros – Al Kaline and Willie Horton, Norm Cash, Bill Freehan and Mickey Lolich.

They won the World Series in 1968. I was 6 years old.
The next year, Neal Armstrong walked on the moon.

It has been amazing since I have been back in Windsor these last 6 years, how some of those memories come flooding back. It has been amazing also how Darlene and I have made new memories at Comerica Park – the successor to Tiger Stadium.

We still listen to the games on AM Radio. Dan Dickerson and Jim Price are almost as special to me now as Ernie was way back then.

“Maglio Ordonez – touch them all!” as the Tigers finished off the A’s with a walk-off home run to advance to the 2006 World Series.

But the other day, the most miraculous Tigers event occurred. Willie Horton signed my daughters T-ball baseball card.

While talking with my wife, she said as any proud mother would do: “Let me show you my little baseball player” and retrieved Alannah’s baseball card from her desk. He admired the card, and her stats on the back. He liked that her favorite team was the Tigers and chuckled that Brandon Inge (it really says “Brian” by mistake on the card) is her favorite player.

And then he signed it.

When Darlene showed me the card that night, I literally held it up to the sky to show my Dad, and Papa. “Look guys! Look who signed Alannah’s baseball card!”

A little bird should be by soon to get a peek for them.