Hi Folks. Today we’re beginning a brand new series that we hope will keep us going for some time to come.
We’re calling it REMEMBER WHEN and each week we will focus on something commonplace in most of our lives.
This week’s Remember When is about my first car.
They say you never forget your first love, but for many of us, that “first love” had four wheels, a tailpipe, and the distinct smell of gasoline and old vinyl.
My obsession with anything that moved started well before I could even reach the pedals. At five years old, I was already “steering” an Allis Chalmers Model B tractor while perched on my father’s lap. To a five-year-old, that orange machine felt like a titan, and the vibration of the engine through the seat hooked me for life. By thirteen, I decided I’d had enough of the “lap-steering” phase. I marched into the local library, checked out a book titled How to Drive, and read it from cover to cover until I could recite the rules of the road by heart.
I walked up to my father, book in hand, and announced that I had officially studied up and was ready to practice with the car in the driveway. He didn’t give me a lecture or a list of reasons why I was too young; he simply reached into his pocket, threw me the keys to our 1951 Pontiac sedan, and said, “Don’t hit anything.”
The Pontiac was a stately car, but it had a hidden “personality trait” that nearly ended my driving career before it started: a broken motor mount. I soon discovered that if you stepped on the gas even a fraction too hard, the torque would cause the entire engine to rock violently to one side. This movement would actually pull the accelerator pedal down toward the floor, pinning it there.
The first time it happened, the engine roared, and I tore several deep, unintended strips of sod out of the front lawn. It was a baptism by fire in throttle control. My father watched from the porch, probably wondering if the lawn would survive the afternoon, but I eventually mastered the “gentle touch” required to keep that motor in its cradle. From then on, I bugged Dad at every opportunity. Living in the country had its perks; he usually gave in, which never failed to tick off my sister if she was stuck in the backseat while her kid brother “practiced.”
By fourteen, I graduated from student to owner. I bought a 1956 Ford Custom from my dad for the princely sum of $75, which I dutifully paid off in instalments. It was a beautiful Robin’s Egg Blue, a four-door sedan with a 6-cylinder engine and a “three-on-the-tree” manual shifter. To a teenager in the 50s, that car wasn’t just metal and glass; it was a ticket to the rest of the world.
My brother and I didn’t have much pocket change, but we had a strategy. We’d scrape together enough for exactly one gallon of gas and drive until the needle hovered dangerously over the “E.” When we inevitably sputtered to a halt, we’d pull into the nearest farmyard. In those days, folks were neighbourly, and we’d “bum” another gallon from a friendly farmer to get us back home.
I didn’t know it then, but those dusty country roads were the beginning of a journey that would span 8 million kilometres and 43 years of long-haul trucking. It turns out that $75 Ford was the best investment I ever made.
What about you? What was the first vehicle that gave you a taste of the open road? Was it a “three-on-the-tree” or a modern automatic? Drop a comment below and let’s take a trip down memory lane together. Or visit our new Gathering Place and leave your story in the new Remember When Space.