JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

This installment of my "Ghost City" column for The Grid was originally published on April 1, 2013. Toronto Star , February 25, 1915. Employees of the Ford Motor Company likely smiled as 1915 dawned. During a January banquet at the automaker’s recently opened plant at the northwest corner of Dupont and Christie, employees learned they were receiving an across-the-board raise and would soon be joined by a fresh batch of co-workers. There aren’t any reports, however, as to whether workers celebrated by taking extra spins in freshly-built Model Ts on the rooftop test track.

When watching late-night reruns of SCTV on Windsor’s CBC outlet during our teens, Amy and I expected that most of our laughs would come from the fake ads on the Canadian comedy classic, not the real ones during commercial breaks. One exception was Woody Pontiac, located across the border in Hamtramck (a suburb of Detroit surrounded on all but one side by the city of Detroit). Their pitchman was dealer Woodrow W. Woody (1908-2002), an elderly gentleman whose on-air demeanour came from an earlier era. Mr. Woody wasn’t a hard sell salesman, nor did he use gimmicks like flying around in a cape (hi Mel Farr!). No, Mr. Woody reached out to potential customers by stressing his long involvement in the car business as a genial, slightly doddering old man whose eyes were fixed on a teleprompter might do. We imitated his exit lines for years afterward. The cheerful reassurance we’d like his dealership. The quaintness of seeing any TV pitchman from the late 1980s/early 1990s say to viewers “s...

It survived roadtrips to Alabama, Alberta and New Mexico. It saw its front end go flying in Guelph, felt the crunch of two vehicles behind it in Burlington, and an unknown assailant give it a good bump in a parking lot in Boston. It survived a tree crushing its hood as a Halloween trick in North Toronto, a wrong way trek down a steep hill in Montreal, and a cow giving it the evil eye in Pennsylvania Dutch country. It crossed the mighty Mississippi, observed the skyline of Manhattan, took in the beauty of Banff, and dodged dangerous drivers in Scarborough. It even served as a bed when every motel in Montana seemed to be full. But after a decade of service and almost 245,000 km of travelling, it’s time to say goodbye to my ’01 Chevrolet Cavalier. For a vehicle I think the National Post once said any proud male should be embarrassed to drive, it gave me little reason to shudder. Sporty and stylin’ it wasn’t; dependable survivor it was.

I guess I should have waited a little longer to post the last installment of my stroll along Broadway Avenue . Almost two weeks ago, I noticed that the lot of Brennan Pontiac Buick GMC was emptier than usual. Upon closer inspection, office equipment was piled up in the showroom. Sell-off sale announcements were posted on all of the windows. In short: sixty years of car dealerships at the corner of Bayview and Broadway have drawn to a close.

Oops... Question: has the hapless mechanic fallen back far enough to avoid receiving an injection of grease in his leg? Source: The Motor , March 1936 

I'm not sure what Tom's intending to do with that iron...too much damage from smoothing out the wrinkles in his morning paper? Threatening to connect the iron with the head of the poor schlump who won't take his advice to learn more about appliance repair training? Holding it up to protect himself from goons sent by car manufacturers who disagreed with his latest automobile review? Wikipedia has an extensive article on McCahill , an automotive journalist credited with inventing the "0 to 60" speed measurement and was one of the first to regularly write about test drives of new vehicles. McCahill began writing for Mechanix Illustrated in the mid-1940s and was considered such a key element of the magazine that his death in 1975 went unacknowledged in its pages—his grandson ghost-wrote his column for several years. From the height of James Bond mania, check out McCahill's test of a 1965 Aston Martin . Source: Mechanix Illustrated , September 1967 ***...

Adventurous start to the holidays... After battling everyone else who left the city early, I drove to Guelph to meet up with old university chum Dayna to exchange gifts. We made a quick trip out to Conestogo to grab some goodies at a Mennonite bakery. We were almost back at her place when another driver decided it would be a great idea to run a red light and shave off my front bumper. Results: a night in Guelph enjoying the goodies from Conestogo, a call to the insurance company, my first stop at the Guelph Farmers Market in years (where I found Mennonite cookies for Mom that the other bakery had run out of) and a drive home in a 2005 Toyota Corolla. Before anyone asks, physically I am OK. My car should be OK too, as it appears the only damage was in the bumper area. The only side effect will be a few more trips to Guelph than I intended this season...which isn't a bad thing. - JB