BoomerZoo Almanac for January 7-13, 2007: Cars
The Washington Post reported a 22% increase in motor vehicle traffic in January of 1947 versus the same month in 1941. Interesting how that WWII (double-you double-you eye eye as Dick Martin would say) surely didn’t end our love affair with cars.
I still have a thing for the ’55 Chevys. My brother had a cherry yellow ’55 Chev. He converted it to a four-on-the-floor and polished it regularly. Then he lost his driving privileges for about six months, so when he wanted to take it out for a spin, I got to be the driver. Hot damn! Except I usually got to take along his girlfriend, and I have to admit that limited my enjoyment of the driving experience.
My own personal first automobile was a 1952 Dodge panel truck, purchased for $50 from a laundry and dry cleaners that finally decided to move on to a newer model for its deliveries. The same brother who had the Chevy actually purchased the panel truck, but it was mine. I put the $50 in new used tires on it, and I put the gas (at about 30¢ per gallon) and oil in it. The only things attached to the inside of this vehicle were the steering wheel, the gear shift and the driver’s seat, so I added a short piece from a sectional sofa in the back and a wicker chair for the passenger. Note the change in requirements for safety features on vehicles in the past 40 years.
Another change is in dress codes for high school students. When I was in high school, girls were required to wear dresses or skirts. No pants-wearing allowed, unless the snow was more than a foot deep or some such foolishness. This did sometimes, however, work to my advantage when driving my panel truck. The gearing on that truck was amazingly low. First gear wouldn’t get you going much faster than if you were outside giving the vehicle a push. So, when I had an unsuspecting passenger, I’d graciously offer her the “passenger seat,” and as soon as we got to the local drive-in where about half the teen drivers of the local town hung out, I’d pop the clutch, causing that wicker passenger seat to slide back about three feet, and then tip over backward. There would be my friend, legs in the air, skirt flying up toward her head (miniskirts, remember?) and everyone in the parking lot watching in fascination. I admit that I was more likely to do this to the girls I didn’t like so much. My real friends got a warning—or I would take care to not pop the clutch with them in the hot seat.
It’s amazing how many fond memories I have of that stupid van, which got high-centered on an old logging road where I shouldn’t have been at a time I shouldn’t have been there, and finally broke down only about four months after I bought it on the highway to the mountain retreat—after promising my father I wouldn’t take it out of town ever again. I think I paid more to have it towed back to town—only to discover it had thrown a rod and was unfixable—than I paid to buy it. Dang it, I hated it when my dad was right!
You take care now. Bye-bye!
