The Original Exhaust Notes

The year was 1968, I was a 17-year-old pup, and Churchill Clark approached me with an idea for the Viking Press.   We were the Vikings (no one is quite sure how we got that name, as there were very few Scandinavians in South Brunswick), and the Viking Press, you see, was our high school newspaper.  Mr. Clark was an English teacher (a great one), and he was the Viking Press faculty advisor.

A bit more background:  There were several cliques in our high school (there were, are, and always will be in any high school, I guess), and I belonged to the greasers.  You know, the gearheads.  We lived and breathed GTOs, Camaros, Hemis, motorcycles, street racing, and anything that ingested fossil fuel.  We were in the middle of the muscle car era, maybe one of the best times ever to be a teenager in America.  Old Mr. Clark wanted to get our crowd reading the high school newspaper (he was a bit of a greaser himself), and as I was one of the more literate greasers, he asked me to write a column about cars.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked.

“Whatever you want,” Mr. Clark answered.

So I did, and I have to admit, it was a heady experience seeing something I wrote appear in print for the first time.   My idea was to have a little fun with the war stories and poke at the ridiculousness of it all.  Mr. Clark titled the column Exhaust Notes and he drew the little car that appeared at the top of every article.  I liked both, and the Exhaust Notes name stuck.  When Joe Gresh and I started the blog, there was no question about what it was going to be called.

A few months ago my high school class, South Brunswick’s Class of 1969, held its 50th reunion.  My good buddy and friend since kindergarten, Kathy Leary, told me she had saved a few of the old Viking Press newspapers, and she scanned a couple of the articles for me.

Those were great times, folks, and great memories.  I’m glad Kathy had the foresight to hang on to those old papers, and I’m grateful she scanned and sent a couple of the articles to me.  And I’m glad old Mr. Clark trusted me to run with the idea.

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