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There are some things in life that hover just on the edge of attainability. For me, while driving a 1968 hearse for the last decade of the last century, the shimmering dream car was always the 1959 hearse. And then, thanks to all the lovely people who came to get tattooed by me, I was able to buy one.  I took this epic photo of it in front of the Sahlberg Masonic pyramid mausoleum in the Montecito Graveyard. The Cadillac was transformed into a hearse by the Miller-Meteor company, and came with a 3-way platform so it has suicide doors. It is considered a limousine not a landau, because it has wrap-around glass on the sides instead of solid metal panels. As the story goes, this particular coach was owned by a funeral home in Oklahoma that bought it new in 1959 and had it in service only until 1962. By then the 50's were over, and this most extreme example of the fin had begun to look like an extravagant dinosaur. So it was retired after 20,000 miles and 3 years of service, and mothballed. Until the owners apparently decided to clean out the garage and sold it to someone who brought it to California. It lived an exciting year being rented out for movies by an eccentric gay embalmer in Hollywood, and then I convinced him to sell it to me. So I got it with 23,000 original miles on a 41 year old car, and proceeded to replace all the rubber bits, the seals, hoses, etc. so that I could drive it into the future. It became the ultimate car to ferry Irish Wolfhounds in, and even simple events turned into Hearse Excursions! Many's the tattoo artist who passed through Santa Barbara from other states or Europe and had the pleasure of a round of tourism. And several TV shows and magazine articles in which I was featured included the marvelous hearse. But then, my life changed. I bought a mule. And instead of wanting to drive around manifesting a vision in Goth black velvet I wanted to mount up and ride trails in CowGirl leather chaps. And soon it wasn't enough to go riding on the trails that I can walk to from the ranch where my mule lives, I wanted to trailer to the mountains. And something had to give. And that something, sad to say, was the hearse. I decided that I needed to sell it, and get a tow vehicle and a trailer. And in one of those lovely manifestations of The Secret that life provides, I put it up for sale on a couple of hearse websites and then got an email from someone who hadn't seen the ads, but had done a web search that brought him to this web page and was writing to ask if I might possibly want to sell it. The buyer is a hotel owner in Texas who had never owned a car before, whose dream car growing up had always been a 1959 Cadillac hearse, and who watched The Secret and decided that this was his year to attain his vehicular dream. Simultaneously I was ready to let it move on. He flew out from Texas, I drove him over to see this pyramid and manifest it in aspect, and then he drove it around Santa Barbara and we agreed on the sale. Then next it went to Puyallup, Washington for a full restoration. It deserved to be brought to perfection and live on! I am nostalgic for it, so I am leaving this page up, even though now if you'd see me sailing by it would be in an entirely different vehicle, heading for the trails! | |||
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