Last updated: March 23. 2007 2:51PM Writer Dan Headrick
Last fall, at the age of 50, Dan Headrick, who wrote about classic cars in our April-May 2007 issue, bought his first new car – a 2007 Honda Odyssey. Nice ride, but a bit uneventful for his taste. Dan, a former Star-News reporter and editor who owns a pet boutique in Raleigh with his wife, Pam, is admittedly not a gifted mechanic, but fickle jalopies and rattling deathtraps have provided life skills new cars just don’t offer. Old, hobbling vehicles teach important lessons about faith, the value of improvisation, and appreciation of good stories, especially comforting when you’re stranded on the side of the road. “Like the ’65 Falcon I bought when I was 16,” he says. “It routinely burst into flames when the slant six engine got hot. It was just the standing oil on the engine block, so I kept a burlap sack in the trunk to beat out the flames, no problem.” Dan and friends once disassembled a footbridge in the middle of the night to salvage timbers to construct a ramp so they could push a disabled Comet into the back of a moving van – and then rebuilt the bridge when they finally got the car loaded. “We saved the bridge,” he says. “I can’t say the same for the Comet.”
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Lost in the Valley We weren’t lost. We just weren’t where we were supposed to be. And it didn’t seem like a good idea to turn back. It was one winding mountain road back to the interstate, miles of highway, then more...
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