PETER BUFFA -- COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES

You are what you eat. Or are you? That may be true in the other 49

states. But in this one, you are what you drive. Californians and their

cars. It’s very, well, complicated. “I drive, therefore I am.” That was

Rene Descartes’ cousin, by the way, Rene Descars.

Might as well face it. You’re as bad as the rest of us. “My car is

just fine,” you say. “I push the gas, it goes. I push the brake, it

stops. What more do you need?”

That confident air of self-delusion works until the next time you’re

standing in the valet parking line, and they bring up a glistening black

Mercedes CL500. Everyone tries to sneak a peek at who claims it,

including you. You can’t help it.

Worse yet, they pull your car up right behind it. Just the other day,

you were admiring it, congratulating yourself on how good it looked. Now,

you’d like to crawl in a hole. No matter how many times that kid waves

his arm, you’re not budging until that black rocket ship growls its way

out of the drive and into the night.

Don’t despair. For those of you who can’t separate your lives, your

dreams and your psyches from your wheels, there is hope. It’s called the

Automotive Road of Dreams, and it begins at the Orange County Fairgrounds

right here in the land of Newport-Mesa.

It’s a creation of Bob Teller, to borrow a line from Gilbert and

Sullivan, “the major majordomo of the Orange County Market Place.”

Five important things happened in 1969. 1) The Jets won the Super

Bowl. 2) I got married. 3) The Mets won the World Series. 4) Men dressed

in plastic helmets and puffy white suits went to the moon. 5) Bob and

Rita Teller started the Orange County Market Place.

For swap-meet fans, No. 5 is the only one worth remembering. The

Tellers made their way to the Big Orange from the Big Cactus, aka

Arizona. Like most of us who didn’t use to be here, many of the memories

of their odyssey to California are somehow linked to an automobile.

Bob has been always been gaga for cars, and has been quietly

collecting American automotive knockouts for years. He knew he wanted to

display them someday, but he wanted a setting where people could do more

than mill around and say, “Oooh, cool car.”

He had a vision of a place that depicted all the ways that automobiles

have touched our lives over the years, especially in Orange County.

E’voila -- that’s French -- the Automotive Road of Dreams Museum, which

opens its doors on April 21, at the Orange County Market Place.

This is a trip you have to take. Forget the cars. (Believe me, you

won’t.) The Museum is really a very clever series of sets and exhibits --

a lover’s lane, a vintage gas station, a speedway track, an orange

packing house and a drive-in theater running a loop of classic movies.

The place is a treasure trove of historical photographs of Orange

County over the years, plus billboards, ads, posters, citrus crate labels

and even those classics of American advertising -- Burma Shave signs.

For those annoyingly young people out there, Burma Shave is a shaving

cream and almost every roadway in America was dotted with Burma Shave

signs from the 1930s to the early 1960s. The gimmick was, split a

limerick into individual lines, one to a sign, then post the signs every

few miles along the road. The last sign, or line, was always “Burma

Shave!”

The rhymes were always unspeakably corny, but nobody cared. The

unrelenting, mind-numbing boredom of driving for hours on a two-lane road

left people desperate to find out the rest of the rhyme. It was a stroke

of advertising genius.

Here’s how it worked. Brace yourself. “In This World -- Of Toil & Sin

-- Your Head Grows Bald -- But Not Your Chin -- Burma Shave!” “Ben -- Met

Anna -- Made a Hit -- Neglected Beard -- Ben, Anna Split -- Burma Shave!”

Get it? “Ben, Anna Split.” It’s like a joke. Obviously, you had to be

there. Where were we?

Oh yeah, the Road of Dreams.

Cars? I’ll give you cars. These are national monuments, not cars. For

the Boomers, and we are legion, it’s automotive nirvana. A ’61 Bonneville

with a 421-cubic inch engine, the Incredible Hulk of muscle cars. A ’57

Thunderbird and a ’65 Thunderbird convertible. A 1904 Cadillac Touring

Car, an extraordinary 1976 “Bicentennial” El Dorado convertible, and the

car that brings tears to my eyes -- and Mario Lanza’s “Be My Love” to my

ears whenever I see it -- a 1937 Cadillac V12 Roadster Boat Tails

Convertible, one of only three ever made.

Good lord, what a car. You may recall that I had the extraordinary

good fortune to drive it not long ago. It was like a one-car presidential

motorcade. People on the street were either dumbstruck or broke into

whistles and cheers, and other drivers jockeyed for position to get a

better look. Every ounce of 1930s style, grace and glamour is embodied in

that car.

Truth be told, I’m hopelessly partial to Cadillacs. Can’t help it. My

very first car was a ’59 Caddy coupe. That length, those fins and, gasp,

those bullet taillights. I’m getting dizzy. Let’s move on.

There are some great specialty cars to be seen -- a 1928 Buick hearse,

a 1915 Los Angeles County Fire Chief’s parade car, and a custom

pie-wagon. There are even some “celebrity cars” -- one of Reggie

Jackson’s monster dragsters, a Rover Mark III that belonged to Telly

“Lollipop” Savalas, and a 1926 Stutz owned by railroad tycoon Cornelius

Vanderbilt. Something tells me he had more than one car.

So there you have it. Climb inside your memory and take the Automotive

Road of Dreams. It’s one trip you won’t forget. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays.

He may be reached via e-mail at [email protected].