Beachcombing

The last of Cal Worthington’s car dealerships on Bellflower Boulevard at Spring Street has been sold and “BP Ford” is the new name, after Feb. 28. The Nouri/Shaver Automobile Group is the new owner, which plans to keep all Worthington Ford employees after they reapply for their jobs.

Worthington made a rare public appearance before the Rotary Club of Long Beach on Sept. 29, 2010 and I reported how he regaled the audience with his rags to riches story about growing up in Oklahoma during the depression in a family of nine children and eventually having 29 dealerships in several western states as well as selling in excess of one million cars.

Worthington was a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot in the Army Air Corps during World War II and flew 29 missions in Germany, once surviving a mortar shell that came perilously close to his body. He eventually discovered that making $350 per month in the miliary did not compare with selling three cars in one week and making $500.

He began his Long Beach Ford dealership on Bellflower Boulevard in 1954 and described it as “a deal made in heaven that made a ton of money at a really good store.”

Worthington remarked about getting the idea for his famous “My Dog Spot” commercials from competitor Ralph Williams Ford, but Worthington’s “Spot” was usually a gorilla, lion, tiger, bear, goose, seal, elephant and even Shamu the whale. His commercials included the musical slogan “Go See Cal.”

In his later years Calvin Coolidge Worthington spent most of his time at multiple ranches he owned in California and Nevada, when not flying his Lear Jet to the Alaska dealership.

He died in 2012 and his grandson, Nick, has been running the business in recent years.

Do you ever wonder:

• Why you don’t see the headline ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’?
• Why is ‘abbreviated’ such a long word?
• If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
• Why is it that doctors call what they do ‘practice’?
• Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?
• Why the time of day with the slowest traffic is called rush hour?
• Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?
• Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes?
• Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?
• You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff?
• If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?

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