If nothing else, the car is DEFINITELY cool.

I've written before (here, here, and here) about seeing movies or reading books I fondly remembered from my childhood--stuff I thought was too cool for words when I was a kid and that happened to turn out to still be pretty cool when I revisited them as a grown-up.

Well, there's still a few things I remember liking a lot as a little one that I've never run across as a big 'un. One is a young adult novel about a couple of friends assigned to a PT Boat in the Pacific Theater during World War II. I don't remember any significant plot details or even the title, so I'm sadly unlikely to ever dig it up. (I only remember enjoying it enormously, plus a battle sequence in which the boat was fighting a bunch of Japanese barges trying to bring reinforcements in to an island. Oh, and I think the best friend of the point-of-view character was named Gary. But you can't find a book title with just that information. Trust me, I've tried.)

At least I remember the title of another fondly remembered item from my boyhood. It was a 1971 TV series called Bearcats. Boy, this show was cool.

At least I think it was cool. It only ran for thirteen episodes and I've never seen a re-run. It's never been posted online or released on DVD. And I can't remember the plot of a single episode.

It certainly had a cool premise. Two soldiers-of-fortune tool around the American Southwest in the years just before World War I. Their car? A beautiful-looking 1914 Stutz Bearcat. If you had a dangerous job that needed doing, you could hire these two guys.

The plot descriptions of the individual episodes available online make it all sound really good. They take on a bad guy who's using a stolen army tank to rob banks. Or they interfer with a German plot to start a war between the U.S. and Mexico. Or they rescue a band of archeologists from treasure-seeking thugs. All potentially great stuff if the writing is solid and if the characters are fun. It's a wonderful time period in which to set an adventure series. And that car really is cool.

But I have no idea if the show would hold up for me were I to see it as an adult. Well, I'm apparently not the only one with fond memories of the show. Maybe one day it'll be available to watch. Then I can find out for sure.