Horn Obsession

When I was little, there were few things more thrilling than riding with my grandpa in his 1927 Pontiac. He’d let us climb in for parades, and I remember how the crowd would light up when he hit the horn—that horn. You didn’t just hear it, you felt it.

"Ahooga!"

It was loud, joyful—and unmistakably vintage. The kind of sound that made people smile before they even knew why. I didn’t understand mechanics back then, but I understood the magic. That silly, squawking horn somehow became the soundtrack of those sun-soaked, flag-waving summer memories.

Fast forward a few decades: last summer I finally bought a 1930 Pontiac of my own. It was a dream realized—classic lines, wood spoke wheels, the whole package. But the horn? Just a regular one. Traditional. Respectable. And totally wrong.

It didn't bring grins. It didn’t even get a wave. It certainly didn’t make kids cheer on the sidewalk.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. So I started hunting. After some digging, and a lot of scrolling, I found exactly what I was looking for on eBay: a rebuilt ahooga horn. I pleaded my case to my wife, and after some gentle lobbying, she agreed to make it my Father's Day present. (Thank you, dear.)

The day it arrived, I wasted no time. I installed it immediately, and the first time it let out that glorious, mechanical yowl, I was ten years old again. It wasn’t just the sound—it was the memory, the emotion, the echo of my grandfather waving to a sea of parade-goers as kids on the curb clapped their hands and laughed.

That night, as I lay in bed, still basking in ahooga-horn euphoria, my mind started turning—probably louder than the horn itself. I kept wondering:

"How does that horn even make that sound? Mechanically? Physically? Phonetically?"

That’s when inspiration struck.

Like many people my age, I’ve seen a particular meme format a hundred times: a couple in bed, the woman scowling, “I bet he’s thinking about other women,” and the guy, in his own world, pondering something absurd.

I knew exactly what I had to do.

I fired up a meme generator, dropped in the image, and added:

Wife: “I bet he’s thinking about other women.”
Husband: “How does a horn go ‘Ahooga?’”

I shared it on my car club’s Facebook page for a laugh, never expecting anything beyond a few likes and maybe a knowing chuckle from the other vintage geeks.

Then it took on a little life of its own.

A couple weeks later, my uncle emailed me the meme—completely unaware that I had made it. His Model T club had picked it up, passed it around, and gotten a good laugh out of it. And just this past Memorial Day, at our first official parade with my fully functional ahooga horn, the grandfather of my son’s girlfriend came up to me and asked, “Hey—have you seen that meme with the couple in bed, and the guy’s wondering how the horn goes ‘Ahooga?’”

I couldn’t help but laugh. That was my meme. My little moment of digital glory.

Apparently, I had gone vintage viral.

In the end, it’s not just about the horn or the meme. It’s about the things we carry with us—memories of our grandparents, the soundtracks of our childhoods, and the joy of being able to share something silly and sentimental with a community that gets it.

Turns out, some legacies don’t need words. Sometimes, all it takes is an Ahooga.