You are not getting off so easy Chris!
Ernest Hemingway had a favorite expression: il faut d'abord durer. He used the saying in his private letters and on occasion inscribed the words in books he signed for friends.
The French saying translates to "first, one must last."
Chris’s Carrera fits that description- built for the express purpose of being the best of the best on one short section of road. The Carrera’s early life spawned its own legend amongst a group of young men long ago. Then one day it just disappeared.
Chris is one of those people who holds on to things for dear life. It is an admirable trait few understand. Whether it is old toys, cars parts, collectables or memories. If you can understand this you can see why he could never part with the Carrera and was hidden away from the world.
Time passed.
A book then Derek opened up that old attic door to stir up the dust and see what treasure’s were up there. A thread emerged people came and the rest was history –sort of. The story didn’t end. In a funny way the Carrera and Mulholland Racing would be like Geology. A study of pressure and time. That's all it took. Pressure and time. Like a lava flow slowly cooling and solidifying into a rock form. Finally emerging from the dust with a little patina and its old battle scars. A chapter within a chapter of time in a long running story of Los Angeles car culture.
The long chapter on Mulholland Racing is an interesting one. It is a legend unto itself. We have learned about Mulholland Drive, Mulholland the Man and its so many tangents that lead off into automotive history. Many thought the racing chapter didn’t survive but we have come to know it just went to the back of the bookshelf for a while. For the past eighteen months on this thread the legend of Mulholland Drive has been reborn, not just Chris’s Carrera but the story itself. The drivers, the cars, those moments in time that make the story it what it is- timeless.
So what has changed? For Chris’s chapter I think his smile is a little bigger now. (il faut d'abord durer)
