Hello Sunbeamers:
I was visiting my old hometown, Palm Springs, California, a few days ago
and picked up the Sunday, Dec. 18 local paper, the Desert Sun. On the
front page was a story headlined "Meth lurks everywhere". What does this
have to do with Sunbeams, you ask?
The color picture accompanying the article shows two people in hazardous
materials protection suits cleaning up an illegal (I don't know if there
are legal versions of this!) meth lab site near Indio, California in
2004. Right behind them is the lower front quarter of a powder blue car
of some sort. It has a distinctive orange front turn signal lens. I
thought that looked a bit familiar. Sure enough, you can just see half
of the Alpine script at the top edge of the picture. Looking at it more
closely, you can see the front tire is flat and the stock wheel shows
considerable rust along the edges where it meets the flat tire. The
paint on the body is very faded and blotchy. I think the turn signal
lens style indicates this is a 64 or 65 year Sunbeam.
Nothing is mentioned about the car in the picture or the article but
I'll bet it belonged to someone who was going to fix it up if their
illegal drug carreer hadn't taken a bad (or good, depending on your
point of view) turn.
The Desert Sun web site does have the article archived, but
unfortunately there was not a link to the picture, for those morbidly
curious (like I was!).
Steve Sage
|