The arrival of the Crowne family in Hampton was heralded by the then object of my father’s driving pleasure – an early 60’s Jaguar Mark IX Saloon. It was a regal looking carriage and most people – those who weren’t car nuts like my dad — thought it was a Rolls Royce or a Bentley. That wasn’t a good thing, really, because it made us seem a bit out of touch with Hampton’s practical persona.
For me, the new kid in town, it made it even harder to bridge the divide that coming from the big cities in the mid-West – Chicago and Columbus — already imposed so I did my best to downplay our circumstances by emphasizing that it was “just a Jaguar.”
The Jaguar was the first in a long parade of odd vehicles that we’d impose on Hampton’s gentle environs. The Mark IX was soon followed by another Jaguar, a Mark 10, that was a very modern and distinctive model that threw-off the formal post-war mantle of its predecessors. Then came a companion, the Jaguar XK-120, which was a remarkable 2-seat sports car that my brother David earnestly employed to terrorize the back roads of Hampton and beyond. There was David’s Peugeot that he used to run away to California in, with Don Inman in tow for a time. There’s my first car – a Morris Minor convertible that was a hand-me-down from my favorite teacher at PHHS, Mr. Ducharme — though I never got it to run because it had a fist-sized hole in the block. Our last vehicle was an Oldsmobile Toronado, a 2-door fashion statement of a car that my father thought was a plausible conveyance for a family of six kids. We made a cross-country trip in that car – five of us kids, the dog, my parents, and as many of our belongings as we could cram into the spaces not already consigned to flesh or function – in ’69 when my dad took a year-long position at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA.
Billy Pearl was my main ride once we started high school, the only one of my friends who had his own car – a Ford Fairlane with a 289 V8 — and we had many exciting (spelled “harrowing”) adventures together as we bombed around town. We once razzed Ray Gustofsen in his lust-worthy ’69, 427 Corvette and he chased us down a dirt road until he realized he was destroying his precious car. Billy and I raced my brother David in the Jaguar XK-120, passing him on Twin Hills at 130, with my brother eventually surrendering because he thought we were going to crash – and no doubt we likely were. And there was the night that Billy skidded off the road and into some trees in a dreadful snowstorm that we had no business being out in; amazingly, none of us were injured but the car was beyond salvage, though I’m quite certain that Billy’s dad wouldn’t have let him drive it again regardless.
Freedom for me arrived in the guise of my Honda 50 scooter, the first of a brace of motorcycles that I would own over the years. I can’t imagine that anyone who was there at the time can erase the image of me, ponytail streaming behind as I scrunched down low on the handlebars, trying desperately to keep up with the big kids – Scott Johnson with his Honda 350 or John Sornberger with his Yamaha 500 2-stroke. Still, it spelled liberation for me and I gleefully raced about town on whatever fool’s errand occupied my attention in the moment.
Whenever I ride through Hampton, and I do it as often as I can find the opportunity, the memories of the cars and motorcycles — those moments that were both exhilarating and terrifying — streak past my eyes and fill me with wonder at the fact that I survived. And if you look close enough, you’ll see the wisp of a smile blossoming, the sights and scents of those halcyon Hampton days filling me with wonder still.
Kit Crowne