An Almost Interesting Story!

Reality went one way...

...while the dream went another!

One of the odd coincidences about my friendship with Mat Max was the fact that when we hooked up in Ventura back in the 80's, it turned out that we were both obsessed with Fiat 128's.

When you consider how few people drove those cars, and almost nobody actually liked them...it was pretty funny. It turns out we both harbored delusions that some day we would win the lottery, turn our humble Eye-Talian tins cans into rally cars, and jet off the Europe to take on The Continent's creme de la creme on their own turf. (Next stop, an F1 ride.) Max, in fact, went so far as to collect aluminum cans off the beach in front of his house, then bought lottery tickets with the recycling money. There was so much karma flowing in his direction, I thought, how could he fail??? But somehow, he did. At least the beach was clean!

The coolest thing about having a fellow 128 enthusiast who also surfed was that, once or twice a year, we would spot each other coming the other way on the Coast Highway and start waving a half mile before we passed.

During our "128 Era," Max would conveniently forget to re-register his car with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. To circumvent any issues with the authorities, he'd peel off the old stickers on the rear licence plate until he got down to the same color sticker as the current year. To my knowledge, he never got booked for driving an unlicensed vehicle. (He can confirm or dispute this claim in the comments section.) I played it straight and did the whole DMV deal every year. Boy, do I feel like a fool in retrospect.

I had three Fiat 128's over a 6 or 7 year span. They made great mat surfari vehicles. Super stingy on gas, with plenty of room in the boot for a wetsuit, fins and a stack of mats. And I never bothered the lock the car when I left it to go in the water. Who was going to steal it? Everyone knew they were guaranteed to break down at least once a month.

I never found out how Max broke his addiction to 128's. My last one was hit by an "impaired" driver at 2 AM while parked on PCH in Malibu. Totalled. By then (1990?) the little Fiats were getting harder for me to justify driving. I was pushing 40, and wanted a bit more reliability. I got $400 from the drunk's insurance company. Add another zero, and I might have been happy.

Gloria and I lost contact with Max for a couple of years in the mid-90s. He was off mountain biking in Europe or something. One day, Gloria was driving home from work through Beverly Hills. Stopped at a light, she glanced over at the sidewalk and there was a guy in a t-shirt, boardshorts and 99 cent flip flops hitchhiking. There are over 3 million people in LA County, but only one who radiated enough confidence to be hitching on Rodeo Drive while rocking bottom end surf gear. Without even confirming that it was indeed Max, she picked him up.