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Publisher: The Crittenden Automotive Library Byline: Bill Crittenden Date: 4 August 2025 Barry Sanders |
I'd been looking forward to this July since last fall, and it was quite disappointing. The weather was either pouring rain or like a steam room from the humidity the storms left behind. But I pushed forward anyway, clearing out enough garage space to at least bring one vehicle inside. Building this Library has been the greatest exercise in turning my mental health quirks into strengths, and now that extends into the garage. There are now wire racks stacked with sorted and labeled $1.25 Sterilite shoeboxes full of parts and tools, and I've saved quite a few trips to Menards by keeping odds & ends and knowing where to find them. I have a real toolbox, actually two of them with the one inherited from John, but some tools are spares or so infrequently used that they just go in a plastic box on a shelf. Since 2005 our family has lived in an asymmetrical duplex in Woodstock, Illinois. Heidi's parents lived in the larger side, and we lived in the smaller side. The smaller side had a one car garage and a single lane of driveway. The parents had a two car garage, which had a Dale Earnhardt Monte Carlo in one side in the early years. Heidi and I never had enough space for our own “fun car,” but I had an ~900 square foot basement which just encouraged my book-and-information collecting background. Having resolved the radon issue mentioned last month, and replaced a dehumidifier that died from sucking in that awful hot & humid air, and hired a professional for some landscaping work, and facing a strong storm warning for further motivation, my next task was to make space in the two-car garage. The Subaru is parked safe and cool for the rest of the summer. The second space should open up sometime before the end of the year. I just don't know what's going to end up in it. A 2017-2019ish Ford Taurus SHO would be fun for some long-distance driving, powerful and comfortable, with air conditioning and a seat my wife would appreciate. My favorite car to look at is a 1964-1965 Rambler American, and a convertible would be wonderful for local car shows, but how far and how often would I be willing and able to drive it? A Chevrolet SSR is a great in-between, both a convertible and modern enough to easily find parts should something break on a road trip, but they're way too expensive. I've been slowly realizing that I'll never actually pick the car that I'll end up preserving. It will come to me like one of my books: something that us weird car nerds will appreciate being saved from the recycler, but unloved enough that nobody else wants to spend money on it or store it. It'll be something that would be perfect for the Festival of the Unexceptional, if it were on these shores. Maybe Radwood, if it's from the right years. A Hyundai Excel would have a bit of history now that the marque has grown so much, my parents owned one, I learned to drive stick in it, and there's an entire generation of Hyundai owners that have never seen one in person. I'm hoping to go to the Pontiac Transportation Museum's Phase 3 opening next year, so maybe someone will have an 80s/90s Le Mans that needs a home? Perhaps it'll be something I'd never expected, something that I don't have a connection to but is too interesting to pass up, and I'll dive into the history of a manufacturer I haven't really explored yet. However it happens, it's one of those things that I'll just know it when I see it. | ||||
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History Beyond the Bumpers
The Crittenden Automotive Library includes information from all aspects of automotive transportation and competition. This section highlights topics related to automobiles other than vehicles themselves. I don't like horror movies. It's not that I can't stomach violence, I can watch war documentaries where the blood and deaths are real. Something about being stabbed or slowly sliced open just gives me that uncomfortable skin crawling feeling. So I've apparently missed the millenial generational trauma of driving behind a log truck. Final Destination 2 (2003) has an infamous scene with a massive highway pileup that involves logs falling off a logging transport. The new Final Destination movie released earlier this year with marketing referencing this scene: it was a fake logging truck with banners over the logs advertising the new film. I also recall one of the films involving a short track speedway crash with a tire flying into the pits that was shown in the trailer. So that had me thinking, how many deaths in the Final Destination series involved cars? Of course someone had to have created a list, and Fandom delivers: Final Destination(2000) Final Destination 2 (2003) Final Destination 3 (2006) Between Final Destination 3 and The Final Destination (referenced, not shown) The Final Destination (2009) Final Destination 5 (2011) Final Destination Bloodlines (2025) | ||||
The Dewey Decimal System's designation for automobiles falls within the 629.2 range. This section is about the printed materials in The Crittenden-Walczak Collection. “Taxi, Mister?” is a weird record that I found at Half Price Books in July. Published in 1959, from its description and including “not for sale or broadcast” on the bottom it appears to be an advertisement for RCA hi-fi tubes. It features a New York cabbie driving around Manhattan talking to audiophiles about RCA tubes. Or at least, that's what the description says is on the vinyl. No idea if it's canned studio noises or if it was recorded out on the street...I don't have a record player, let alone one that can record to digital. But seeing as I can't even find a reference to this anywhere else on the internet, I'd be interested in meeting someone local that has the capability. Based on the idea that you wouldn't sell RCA tubes very well by giving this away to be played on a potential customer's old record player at home, I'm guessing that this was played in retail stores on the RCA tubes they were trying to sell. That would explain its rarity and obscurity. Thanks to HPB not having any pricing reference, this was the best six bucks I've spent in a long time. | ||||
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Telemetry CarsAndRacingStuff.com site statistics.
The five most popular pages for the month of July (not counting basic index pages) were...
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About The Crittenden Automotive Library The Crittenden Automotive Library @ CarsAndRacingStuff.com, based in Woodstock, Illinois, is a free online collection of information relating to not only cars, trucks, and motorcycles, but also the roads they drive on, the races they compete in, cultural works based on them, government regulation of them, and the people who design, build, and drive them. We are dedicated to the preservation and free distribution of information relating to all types of cars and road-going vehicles for those seeking the greater understanding of these very important elements of modern society, how automobiles have affected how people live around the world, or for the general study of automotive history and anthropology. In addition to the historical knowledge, we preserve current events for future generations. The Library currently consists of over 900,700 pages of books, periodicals, and documents, over 58,200 individual articles, more than 18 days of video & 24 days of audio, more than 36,100 photographs & other images. About The Crittenden-Walczak Collection The combined personal collections of John Walczak & Bill Crittenden provide reference materials for The Crittenden Automotive Library. The collection currently includes 1,594 unique books, 3,500+ periodical & catalog issues, as well as booklets, brochures, comic books, hero cards, event programs, and 382 hours of video. |
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