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Cow Man Legacy
"They used to call me Cow Man, and some still do!"
Do not attempt to adjust the color of your screen. My car really was that color!
A 1968 Poniac LeMans
It all began back in the mid to early 1980's when my dad purchased a 1968 Pontiac LeMans from our neighbors for $500, and it was destined to become the Cowmobile. My dad proceeded to make some modifications to the car shortly after he took possession of it. My grandfather gave him an old bullhorn from the farm (an effective tool for calling the cows home), and my dad decided that it needed to be placed in the LeMans. He also added a CB radio with a loudspeaker feature. Most CB owners rarely hook up the loudspeaker feature, but not my dad. He even mounted the antenna for the CB radio right in the middle of the hood (see pictures, above).
The Bullhorn & Loudspeaker
My sister began to drive the car when she turned sixteen in 1984 and stopped driving it after graduating from high school in 1986. She really didn't have the creative spirit that I did, because she drove the car "as is" (how boring). I began to drive the LeMans when I turned sixteen, and shortly thereafter, I began to use its exciting features. Not every car is able to moo, and the loudspeaker feature was an added bonus for talking to bystanders outside. Because of the mooing horn, the LeMans soon became known as the Cowmobile, and just as Bat Man was the driver of the Batmobile, I became known as Cow Man, the driver of the Cowmobile. Shortly after obtaining this prestigious title, I decided to customize the Cowmobile with my own creative flare.
The Paint
Our old neighbors, who owned the car before my family, parked the car in their garage and rarely took it out. As a result, the car had absolutely no rust on it when my dad purchased it. However, the leaded paint was dry and cracked. Unfortunately, dad did not park the car in the garage (the garage was for the newer car), so the cracks in the paint soaked up all of the water when it rained. Needless to say, the car soon turned into a huge rust bucket. Shortly after I started to drive the car, I asked my parents if I could put a coat of paint on the car to slow down the rusting process. They agreed, and some friends and I were off to Shopko (a discount store like Wal-Mart) to buy some spray paint. My parents said I could paint the car, but they didn't specify the color! Later that night in my parents garage, the image of the Cowmobile you see in the above pictures was born!
The Backfiring
Shortly after the Cowmobile got its new colors, a friend of mine was riding in the car with me and pointed out that it had a two-speed power-glide transmission. I won't go into all of the technical jargon about how a power-glide transmission works, but I will tell you what it did for the image of the Cowmobile. With a power-glide transmission, all you have to do to make the car backfire is gain some speed, turn the key off for a few seconds, and then turn the key back on. The first time I tried this I blew up the muffler! I took the car home and told my dad that the muffler exploded! He told me that old cars are known for backfiring, so he bought me a seamless glass-pack muffler that wouldn't explode when the car backfired. Thank-you dad! Being able to make the Cowmobile backfire at will wrote a whole new chapter in the Cow Man Legacy.
The Cow Man Lives!
After I graduated from high school in 1989, my dad traded in the Cowmobile for a new Ford Ranger Pickup. For more than twelve years vital organs from the Cowmobile still live on under the hood of my dad's truck: the bullhorn and the loudspeaker. I thought for sure that the reign of the Cow Man was over, but it was far from over.
I went away to school to York College in York, Nebraska after I graduated from Northeast High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. I vaguely remembered taking the Cowmobile to York College's High School Days the year before, but several of the returning students and a few of the faculty remembered, and the Cow Man Legacy continued. It wasn't long until I became known as the Cow Man on campus. It was also ironic that the Japanese students on campus struggled to pronounce my name (because the "R" sound is not in the Japanese alphabet), so they just called me Cow Man since it was easier for them to say than Aaron.
Ever since then, the Cow Man Legacy has continued in my life. Because of my status as the Cow Man, people have bought me a lot of cow stuff over the years (especially for Christmas and birthdays), and I now have a ton of cow paraphernalia. People always ask me why I have so much cow stuff, and I tell them the story about how I was (and still am) the Cow Man, and the Legacy continues...
(Updated 3/18/2004)