August 3, 2026
Chapter 6
Gentle reader,
I last wrote to you in February, 2026. Almost four YEARS after posting the previous chapter! I likened it to a lapsed Catholic returning to the Church and Confessing to the Priest. You can read that chapter here:
Those are all the previous chapters in case this is the first time that you have seen this blog. Feel free to click on each one, read them, if you wish and come back here.
That's the five of us Robb kids in the early 1970's in the South side of Denver, Colorado. Top, left to right: Yours Truly, Marcia (older than I) middle row: Judy, the "middle child" and Jim. In front: Rebecca, then called Becky. We are outside our ranch style house in Southside Denver.
Dad, formerly known as, The Reverend Doctor Thomas B. Robb, he's been dead since 2011, as you can tell by his titles, he was a Pastor, more specifically, a Presbyterian Minister. Which makes the five of us "P K's" Preacher's Kids. A unique breed of children who often are far from Saints or setting a positive example.
Literally the day after I graduated from Denver's South High School in June, 1974, the family all piled into the our blue 1973 AMC Matador station wagon and it was "Wagon Ho!" but Eastward, not towards the West.
It looked like this one, which is a 1972, except ours had a nice medium blue metallic paint. I left my faithful 1964 Chevrolet Impala two-door hardtop stored outside the Mobil Station with a promise from the boss to start the engine and drive it every couple of weeks.
It looked very much like this one. I paid $300 for it in September, 1973 in Denver, CO. Ah, Freedom! There is no joy like driving your very first car!
Dad had made arrangements for me to take a job at a local Chevrolet Dealership in Richmond as their Lube Technician. The pay was $100 a week and I worked 50 hours for that fortune, which was Minimum Wage at the time. I rode my trusty 3-speed JCPenney bicycle to and from work since my car was 1,500 miles away.
I'm almost 70 and just managed to pull the name of Denver's airport out of my memory with no effort whatsoever! I landed at Stapleton International Airport far outside of Denver and Susan's family must have picked me up. I have NO memory of getting back to the City, to my car or where I lived those first few weeks back in Denver, all those years ago.
You met Susan in the last chapter. The only known photo of my her. I missed her so much! We wrote to each other (real paper letters sent through the USPS) faithfully and occasionally my parents let me make a brief long-distance phone call to her. She came to visit during her Spring Break and it was wonderful to see her! Finally, in June of 1975, I quit my job at the Chevy dealership and boarded an airplane at Richmond International Airport to fly back home to Denver. All I had was my clothes and pillow and all the money I had saved up. The Virginia Air National Guard had Fighter jets back from Vietnam. One was taking off ahead of us. I watched it zoom off and then our airplane lumbered down the runway. "This isn't a jet!" I thought.
In case you don't know what this is, it is called a Post Card. Look it up if you want to learn more about them. Before there was anything digital, people would buy them when on vacation and send them to friends and relatives by mail.
This is the side one wrote on, telling all the folks back home about this stop/place on your vacation trip. They were very common back then. No Internet, no digital anything.
I got my old job back at the Mobil Station on Colorado Boulevard although I think my hair was a bit shorter than in this picture. True to his word, the boss did take care of my car and it started right up!
A little while later, the boss hired someone new, a real hippie looking guy with dark shades. He never said his name and I never gave him mine. One evening he came in after dark and had his regular glasses on. "You look familiar to me." I said. He replied, "I should, we were best friends in 9th grade." "Kerry?" I asked. "I thought you recognized me, so I didn't say anything." "You look NOTHING like you did four years ago!"
One day, the boss of that Mobil Station asked me if I could stay to closing which was 9:00PM, then lock up and set the alarm. I agreed. Well, I set the alarm like he showed me, but I what I didn't know was that I forgot to lock the door! When I came into work the next afternoon, the boss told me what I forgotten to do. "So, I have to let you go." he said. "Go?" "I'm firing you. We could have been robbed." Not to be deterred, I got a job next door at a tire store. 
This wasn't it. This too is a Post Card of a tire store in Ohio in 1970.
Kerry, his girlfriend and I all got along well, I was making better money at the tire store. I sold my '64 Impala and bought a '67 Impala SS convertible. It was only $300, the same price I had paid for my first car in 1973. 
It looked exactly like this one. The same size engine, 327 cubic inches or 5.3 liters, as the engine I had put into my '64 Impala to replace the oil-burning 283 it came with. It too had Chevrolet's Powerglide 2-speed automatic transmission that my '64 came with. I would have preferred a four-speed manual transmission. But, they were rare.
You might be thinking, (well I would be thinking) anyway, "Wait a minute, where did you get another engine and what was wrong with the first one?" 
A Chevy 327 V8 engine nearly identical to the one I had swapped into my '64 Impala.
That '64 Impala came with the smallest V8 engine Chevrolet made then, a 283 cubic inch or 4.6 liter unit. It burned oil so badly that I just had to replace it. A friend of mine had a beater* 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu Super Sport convertible (above the engine picture) which he sold to me for $250.
*A car which is not in very good condition.
The car's body was three different colors, the soft top's back window was missing. The brake lights didn't work and the clutch slipped. I'm sure it had more wrong with it than those few things. It had a 4-speed manual transmission, which was awesome! I should have fixed that car up and then sold my Impala, but, I was young and had no idea how much money that car would be worth someday.
This was the color of the interior. Anyway, we took the smoker 283 V8 engine out of my '64 Impala, then pulled the good running 327 V8 out of the '64 Malibu and sold the rest of the car. The Impala ran so much better and was way quicker too. Anyway, I sold the '64 Impala to a man who said, "Wow, buying a car from a mechanic! I'm so lucky!" Or so he thought.
Some months later, I noticed what looked like my old '64 parked behind an apartment building. I recognized it by the wheels I had put on it.
I told Tom, my less-than-law-abiding-friend, about seeing it. He pulled out a large key ring with what looked like fifty car keys on it. "Let's go take a look at it tonight."
I attempted to made a replica of my first car with a 1/24th scale diecast model. It was a similar color to mine. Those wheels are actually for a Cub Scout Pinewood Derby car. They were the closest I could find to the mag wheels I had put on the '64 Impala.
I told Tom, my less-than-law-abiding-friend, about seeing it. He pulled out a large key ring with what looked like fifty car keys on it. "Let's go take a look at it tonight."
So, I picked him up that evening, and we drove to where the car was. He unlocked the door with one of his keys, started the engine up, put the transmission in gear and said, "Transmission's slipping. Let's go get something to eat." I won't tell you what happened later, but Tom "acquired" that old Impala, took what was once his 327 V8 engine out of it and had the rest of the car towed to a scrap yard.
That Summer, I was reclining on a Chaise Lounge by the apartment complex's pool reading a book. It was an indoor/outdoor pool and was fully fenced outside so that no one could see the pool or the people using it. I'd never seen one of those pools before. Two girls were swimming and giggling in the pool. I heard one say, "Oops." I looked over my book and her bikini top had "fallen off" and there were her perky little boobs! Both girls were grinning and looking at me. I was still somewhat shy then and covered my eyes with embarrassment with my book rather than join them in the pool. Idiot! Or, maybe not. They did not teach teens about STDs* back then. *Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Months later, it was then 1975 by then and three things had happened, I don't remember the order: 1, Susan broke up with me. 2, Kerry moved out to live with his girlfriend instead of me. And, 3, I got fired from the tire store.
I knew that my family was driving the 1500 miles back to Denver because my older sister, Marcia was getting married, she had stayed in Denver when the rest of us moved to Richmond, VA.
I went to the rental office, told the young lady my tale of woe, she took pity on me and let me stay in the apartment until they arrived in June, rent free. I think she liked me, but was too I was too thick headed to notice that.
This was Linda, thanks to social media, we are friends again, fifty years after last seeing each other. I first spied her at the Presbyterian Church picnic in Richmond. She was kneeling in the grass next to the lawn chair my dad was sitting in, talking to him. I was mesmerized. I asked my brother, "Who's that talking to Dad?" He didn't know. I mentioned her to my parents and the too did not realize who I was talking about. They set me up with another girl they thought I was talking about. She was a knockout, but I was too shy to try and get to know her. Then, they set me up with another girl her name was Emily. I did go out with her. She was 4'11" tall. I was 6'3". Her 4'10" sister also wanted to go out with me. I took her out too. Then their not-height-challenged older sister said that she too wanted to go out with me. "Sorry, two sisters is my limit." She was cute, though.
Well, to my surprise, my family, in my absence, had learned to Folk Dance. The Seminary where Dad taught, every Friday night, had Folk Dance classes. For Free. They said, "Come on, Scott, join us. It's lots of fun!"
I was hesitant. I didn't go to any dances during high school. I didn't know how to dance. Oh, by the way, that's me above, on the right. We were Exhibition Clog Dancing in Willow Lawn Mall in Richmond. So, I had gone to the Folk Dances, and I learned a number of dances (even the Hustle) and got talked into joining the Exhibition Clog Dancing Group. We went around to places in the City dancing. I had a pair of black patent leather Capezio tap shoes. The dance teacher nailed staccato taps to them. They make more noise than one-piece taps do.
Linda turned out to be far more sophisticated than I was. And worldly too. Over time, I think she grew tired of me. One day, she told me she wanted to break up. I later learned that she had taken up with Ed. I don't blame her, Ed was definitely more her speed and far more interesting then I was at the time. The one positive from that breakup was Jerri. Ed's former girlfriend. She was my "older woman" 25 to my 20. We didn't last, but while we dated, she bought me clothes I never would have bought. She liked showing me off. Ah, the memories...
These were my friends back then, in Richmond. That's Philip S. Adam's big brother, on the far right. He and the rest of the brothers liked to buy and fix up foreign cars in their parents back yard. Something I imagine did not please the neighbors. They were great people. Joe K. is in the middle, his legs are crossed, between his older brother on his left and his sister, Maria, on his right. "Bunch a dang hippies!" some likely said when seeing us together. But, they were all good people and I have many fond memories to this day of those halcyon days of innocence lost.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this continuing saga. Feel free to comment below or on Facebook.
Scott Robb
August 3, 2026
