[Doug Houston]

Now, there's a prewar Maggie Belvedere for sale nearby. I'd like to see about buying it, but right now, i have no way to get it home. I have a '96 Buick Roadmaster wagon, and the transmission is blown. I'd have had it to a guy to rebuild it, but this snow siege put everything to a stop.

The transmission will take a week, easily. the cause of the trans trouble was a blown-open transmission cooler tube. It dumped the fluid, just as I was approaching an exit on I-75, going 60 MPH. By the time I could get it off of the interstate, the third gear clutches were toast. There's new fluid in the thing now, and I can get first and second, but the clutches are gone for third.

I think that Ron has the same car. The cooler tubes are no longer available from GM. The car is actually a Chevy, with a Buick nameplate. There is an outfit here nearby, named Inline Tube. They will make new cooler tubes for me, when I take the old ones to them. Turnaround time is about a week There might be some way to buy the Magnaox and pick it up in a week or two. If I buy the set, I have no idea where I'd put it. I have a soft spot in my head for those prewar Magnavox sets. I alredy have a Regency-Symphony and Chairside, all from about 1941. Cabinets are similar, but the chassis are different. Re-capped, they are excellent performers, and comparable to the post war models. There was even a prewar Windsor, too, but I've never seen one in the flesh. My Windsor is around a '48 model. Those fine radios get to be a disease for a body.

Now, back to Inline Tube. They make brake line kits for many older model cars, both in galvanized and stainless steel. A couple of years ago, I bought a stainless kit for one of my '41 Cadillacs. It's on the car now, and the mechanic who installed it said that it could have come right from Cadillac parts. I have three more '41 Cadillac kits ordered, for the other three '41 Cadillacs that I have. In my life, I've had four brake lines get a pinhole from rust, and lost brakes. Never again, if I have any say in it!

If I do get the Belvedere, it'll be the second console for me in 6 months. The other one was the 37-650XP Philco.

So, with any luck, I might have another early Maggie. Call me nuts; I am.