AMERICAN HOUSES: Berkeley Street, Cambridge, Mass.

Of course domestic architecture in Cambridge is much more varied than one early morning, early September bike ride just west of the Common can suggest. But you have to start somewhere.

The Pipes are Calling (from Saskatchewan):1946 Dodge Truck

From Alex Emond in Mossback, Saskatchewan, on the Canadian Prairies: 'I sent pictures of this truck a couple of years ago. It's a little further along now. Maybe it just needs a front bumper , or maybe it don't need no stinking bumpers.
"Oh Danny Boy , the "pipes " , the "pipes " are callin'". You can hear this thing coming. I like it. Gets about 2 miles to the gallon, frightens small children and even the cops leave this guy alone. All it's missing is a Gatlin Gun and some "angry woodpecker" mudflaps. I'd have to give it a 7.3 for style and an 8 for patina. Your thoughts? Cheers--"AE

1959 Morris Minor

Jim Rowland, mostly a Volvo guy,  is restoring the car at Auto Colony in Ellsworth, Maine. The frame was rusty and some of it had been sistered with...2x4s. Always pays to check underneath. Jim is also doing a Lotus Elan, circa 1967.

Roadster on the Run--Maine Turnpike

1971 Chrysler Newport, Maine Turnpike

We drove from Maine to Cambridge on Labor Day. Temps in the 90s, and beaucoup traffic on the road--not all of it as interesting, fleet, and handsome as this Newport. We, and about a million other people, wasted an hour in the thickened slog through the Maine and New Hampshire tolls. The real toll paid by citizens/drivers/taxpayers is not the bucks handed over but the time wasted in the slow-down  tolls necessarily create, even in this era of EZ-Pass. Over one year there must be millions of people/hours wasted in toll-jams. And when you reckon the environmental and economic cost of excess fuel burnt--not to mention the wear on brakes rotors--tollbooths are something no semi-urban landscape can afford.

"Forward Look"; Virgil Exner's 1956 Chrysler Windsor

Front end looks like a (big) Studebaker. Which is a compliment. Did you see the 1955 Chrysler 300 we found in West Texas?  The Windsor was at Motorland, in Arundel, Maine. A very bourgeois car of the era. An Exner, I think.

1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser

 Sub-45K miles, original and unrestored. Posted on Secret Society of the Simulated Woodie's Facebook page.