Cars, the way we were Wednesday
My paternal grandfather loved cars, he worked for Ford for about 30 years, he told amazing stories of Model As, Model Ts, and other early cars. With a young family in the 1930's he would buy junkers, make them run, fix them along the side of the road, and run them until they wouldn't run any longer. Just before World War II, he bought his first new Ford. After the war he bought a new car every two or three years until he quit driving in his late 60's. He owned a lot of good cars, but he loved telling stories about the early junkers that he somehow made run to get him and his family from place to place. I miss those stories.
When my mother and my aunt cleaned out my grandmother's house, they found her file with the bill of sale, for every new car they had ever bought. My mother said, "what a load of rubbish" and tossed them all out. If I had been there, I would have kept them, every one of them.
What is your earliest car story?
1972 - my "parents" bought me a ford pinto to go to college (my high school grad present). in reality, they wanted me to die.
ReplyDeleteHow Ford thought the Pinto would compete with a Toyota Corolla defies logic.
DeleteGoing down a steep bush track in my new, second hand, car and not being able to get back up. I did eventually.
ReplyDeleteSteep hills, and old cars, I forget how much of a challenge that could be. The one on the farm had a stop sign at the top of it.
DeleteProbaly being in the back of our Ford Granfe Torrino station wagon, eating something.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what you would eat in the back of a station wagon today?
DeleteAs an adult, probably BH, before he was balder or half, trying to teach me to drive in his automatic clutch VW bug. Too many things to think of at the same time, not to mention fear of machinery. I managed to land us in a shallow ditch near my grandmother's house. We were seventeen. I learned after we were married with two kids and had a brand new Impala station wagon that he and his best buddy brought home after a few drinks. Somebody had to drive the thing, so I was able to be taught.
ReplyDeleteI drove one of the VW automatic stick shifts once, a beetle convertible, I failed to talk my way into buying it. Almost 40 years later I finally own a VW convertible.
DeleteI didn't understand the concept of the car, myself. Then again BH's father was the mechanic, mine was a mailman. VW convertibles are so cute!
DeleteIn the VW automatic stick shift, the clutch was electronically operated, when you touched the shift knob and let up on the gas. 30 years later Porsche used the same system in early paddle shift models and charged an extra $10,000 for it.
DeleteI remember curling up in my pajamas in the back window of our 1954 DeSoto when we went to the drive-in movie.
ReplyDeleteoops.... not actually curling up. Stretching out!
ReplyDelete