Everyone Remembers Their Very Own First Car
I suppose everyone remembers their very own first car. The first car I ever had I bought as a teenager — with my own money mind you. It was an old one, twenty years old at the time I got it. I was a sophomore in high school and had watched a senior driving this cool rig around our little town that summer. He was a cool guy with a cool car and I greatly admired both. The owner had removed the front fenders and painted gaudy red and yellow flames around the front end of the hood. And when he drove by in the rain, spectacular twin plums of water would fly high into the air behind those front tires without their fenders. Very, very cool indeed, and the wet swimming trunks hung on the radio aerial was simply the fitting final touch of perfection!
To a high school kid anyway. Maybe some explanation is needed.
Coastal Maine kids in Maine in those days headed out to swim in the nearby lakes as soon as we could tolerate the cold water in early summer. Most never swam in the sea because the water was far too cold. It was the custom for boys to hang their wet swimming trunks over their car’s radio aerials to dry out in the slipstream after swimming. No one saw any reason to take them off the aerials after drying, so that’s where they generally lived until the swimming season was past. At least for those of us fortunate enough to own their own car. It was sort of a flag for cool people and teenagers only.
Back then only about one high school kid out of maybe ten could get together enough money to own a car, almost always an old jalopy of one kind or another. Parents just did not buy their kids cars like today, where high school kids often drive cars nicer than their parents — gotta stay ahead of those Joneses, ya know. But no sir, we had to earn our cars if we had any, at least where I lived in economically depressed Rockport, Maine in the ‘fifties.
That senior’s car just looked like one hella fine automobile to me. When it came time for the owner to head off to college that fall of 1957, he asked me if I wanted to buy it. Price was $30! The car was a twenty-year-old 1937 Chevrolet Master Deluxe ‘Drop-Axle’ Two-Door Business Coupe, and not coincidentally, my favorite car in town. It also happened to be not running particularly well at the time, little matter to me though.
I told Steve, the owner, “Hell Yes! Did I ever want to buy it!” I gave him the money and he helped me push it off to get it started. For some reason, the trunk lid was off and shoved in the open trunk space. The car barely ran at all. And popping, skipping and backfiring I finally got it home at a top speed of maybe twenty miles an hour, which happily for me was only a mile or so away. I hadn’t told my folks about my car deal so they were astonished when I backed it off to one side of our driveway. My dad came out to see what was going on. Did I mention the backfiring ?
“What the Hell is all this?” he demanded to know.
“It’s my new car.” I said, and shut up. I was an independent kid with a full-time job in summer, and a part-time job during school months. I bought my own school clothes, and even paid my folks $10 per week room and board after the age of fourteen. I guess I didn’t mention my folks were sort of flinty, hard kind of people, but, as a chip off the old block as you might say, I was plenty flinty myself. I had a legal driver’s license, and had already arranged for insurance all on my own so I figured he wouldn’t have any reason to complain. And, he didn’t.
He simply turned on his heel and walked back in the house without another word. He never even mentioned my car again unless he saw me working on it, and would ask me what I was doing and the reason why. And, I worked on that car a lot, especially at first. But I didn’t particularly mind much, after all I now had my own car!
At my age then, 16, I kind of figured cars were pretty much forever. After all, they were made of everlasting steel and glass and rubber, weren’t they? Of course they are! So in my heedless innocence, I basically ignored doing anything to the car costing money, except to put in gas when needed, and even that I skimped on as much as I could. Even though gas was only 25 cents a gallon, you must remember that my wages back then were only 50 cents an hour, less withholding taxes.
For a while things were fine. An older mechanic friend who my father suggested I talk to, gave me friendly hints about this and that which solved one major, and quite a few smaller shortcomings and did not cost me any money. In particular, the biggest help he gave me was to help sort out the cylinder firing order mess Steve had created with his own prior fiddling. My friend rerouted the spark plug cables properly to the distributor which completely solved the popping and backfiring issue. I figured how to get the trunk lid back on myself and man, I thought I was home free!
I breezed around town and country in a parsimoniously heedless fashion for a while. Then one fine day, the car began getting harder and harder to start until finally the car would not start at all. I took the battery out and trudged to the station to get it charged. The cost was 50 cents — this was many years ago remember, but the half-mile trip lugging a forty pound battery two ways was strenuous. With the re-charged battery the car once again started and I was back on the road again — for a while. Trouble is, the problem reoccurred and slowly over a period of days the battery went flat again. Again I made that awful trip to station to get a recharge. The problem repeated, and I repeated my odyssey — again and again several times, until one day the recharged battery failed to start my car at all.
I was forced then to buy a brand-new battery at the station — ten bucks — one-third the entire original cost of my car! OK, swallowing my agony I paid for the battery and once again I was back on the road again, but only for a short while. Almost immediately, I had the exact same problem with the brand-new battery getting weaker and weaker, exactly as the old one had. I sought out my mechanic friend again, who suggested I check my ‘voltage regulator’ — a term I had never heard before in my life. That turned out to be the issue and for the cost of a new voltage regulator I was back in business — $4.50 at the time - I told you this was a long, long time ago.
I put the new voltage regulator in myself and then had my friend take a look to make sure things were done right. He gave his approval and I was back on the road once more.
Things went smoothly then for a while, with me being able to deal with — more or less — a few problems mostly electrical — which cropped up along the way without spending much of my hard earned dollars. The windshield wipers worked fine until it rained, and then only intermittently. If it rained I could sometimes reach around the windshield with my left arm, and work the wiper with my fingers. I even resorted to putting a string on the wiper blade for the driver’s side which helped at the times it was out of reach. Sometimes the headlights would go completely dark at night — at fifty miles an hour on a curvy road! The first time that happened I almost crashed before I got the car stopped in the ditch. I learned that sometimes I could jiggle the switch and get them on again for a while, and sometimes not at all. Once, I was forced to drive about five miles at ten miles an hour using only the moonlight. If I met an oncoming car, I would pull off on the shoulder of the road and shield my eyes against the glare until they passed by.
Then came one fine day when the transmission locked up after making some horrible grinding noises. I had a friend help tow the car home where I parked it off to one side of our driveway — again. Back I went to consult my mechanic friend who seemed to have infinite patience with me. He was one of the kindest, nicest people I’ve ever known, and his kindness to me then always inclined me afterwards to pay it forward, and help those younger and less experienced than me who need help or advice.
My friend suggested I try a local junkyard. So, a day or so later after removing the transmission myself from the junked car in the junkyard, I was the proud owner of a used three-speed stick-shift transmission out of a 1937 Chevrolet Master Deluxe ‘Drop-Axle’ Two-Door Business Coupe! Price, $15. Now I had as much invested in car repair parts than I originally paid for the car, but who was counting?
I spent the better part of a week on my back under my car removing the bad transmission and shoe-horning the replacement into its place. After lots of quiet swearing, skinned knuckles, sweat, banging, hammering, slamming and maybe a bit of praying, I finally got everything all back together and running again. And, didn’t that car run just as sweet as you please too? My goodness, I had a lot of fun with my friends and girlfriends being mobile in that old car! Those are all sweet memories to this very day too.
And so it went. I often had to fiddle with things to keep them working, and over the course of the next year or so over time, I became a fairly adept amateur mechanic myself and began to accumulate a little mechanical knowledge, along with an assortment of mechanic’s tools, some of which I still have to this very day.
One occasion which sticks most in my mind concerning that old car though, is the day my best friend and I were out tooling around in the countryside and acrid smoke began billowing out from under the hood. There was a very electrical smell like burning insulation. When I lifted the hood there were several wires glowing hotly on the firewall behind the motor — an obvious dead short. I thought the car would catch fire and burn up right there and then since we had nothing to fight the fire with at all, no fire extinguisher, or bottled water nor bottles of soda pop at all. So, in desperation, we each hoped up on the bumper and began pissing on those glowing hot wires.
It worked too! Good thing we had full bladders I guess. We somehow even patched up the wires and made it home again too.
Long story short, in my turn I passed that old car on to another underclassman when I left home, and sold it for $75, so I actually made a couple bucks in the end, if you don’t count the gas burned, and continued a tradition too. Sometimes today I still wonder about the ultimate fate of that old *1937 Chevrolet Master Deluxe ‘Drop-Axle’ Two-Door Business Coupe. What do you suppose it would be worth today?
I suppose everyone will always remember their very own first car.
*My mechanic friend knew exactly the identifying nomenclature for that automobile!
This story is 100% true as best as I can recall now 62 years later, including “Steve’s” name. Those who remember Rockport, Maine in the 'fifties will know who I'm referring to.
To a high school kid anyway. Maybe some explanation is needed.
Coastal Maine kids in Maine in those days headed out to swim in the nearby lakes as soon as we could tolerate the cold water in early summer. Most never swam in the sea because the water was far too cold. It was the custom for boys to hang their wet swimming trunks over their car’s radio aerials to dry out in the slipstream after swimming. No one saw any reason to take them off the aerials after drying, so that’s where they generally lived until the swimming season was past. At least for those of us fortunate enough to own their own car. It was sort of a flag for cool people and teenagers only.
Back then only about one high school kid out of maybe ten could get together enough money to own a car, almost always an old jalopy of one kind or another. Parents just did not buy their kids cars like today, where high school kids often drive cars nicer than their parents — gotta stay ahead of those Joneses, ya know. But no sir, we had to earn our cars if we had any, at least where I lived in economically depressed Rockport, Maine in the ‘fifties.
That senior’s car just looked like one hella fine automobile to me. When it came time for the owner to head off to college that fall of 1957, he asked me if I wanted to buy it. Price was $30! The car was a twenty-year-old 1937 Chevrolet Master Deluxe ‘Drop-Axle’ Two-Door Business Coupe, and not coincidentally, my favorite car in town. It also happened to be not running particularly well at the time, little matter to me though.
I told Steve, the owner, “Hell Yes! Did I ever want to buy it!” I gave him the money and he helped me push it off to get it started. For some reason, the trunk lid was off and shoved in the open trunk space. The car barely ran at all. And popping, skipping and backfiring I finally got it home at a top speed of maybe twenty miles an hour, which happily for me was only a mile or so away. I hadn’t told my folks about my car deal so they were astonished when I backed it off to one side of our driveway. My dad came out to see what was going on. Did I mention the backfiring ?
“What the Hell is all this?” he demanded to know.
“It’s my new car.” I said, and shut up. I was an independent kid with a full-time job in summer, and a part-time job during school months. I bought my own school clothes, and even paid my folks $10 per week room and board after the age of fourteen. I guess I didn’t mention my folks were sort of flinty, hard kind of people, but, as a chip off the old block as you might say, I was plenty flinty myself. I had a legal driver’s license, and had already arranged for insurance all on my own so I figured he wouldn’t have any reason to complain. And, he didn’t.
He simply turned on his heel and walked back in the house without another word. He never even mentioned my car again unless he saw me working on it, and would ask me what I was doing and the reason why. And, I worked on that car a lot, especially at first. But I didn’t particularly mind much, after all I now had my own car!
At my age then, 16, I kind of figured cars were pretty much forever. After all, they were made of everlasting steel and glass and rubber, weren’t they? Of course they are! So in my heedless innocence, I basically ignored doing anything to the car costing money, except to put in gas when needed, and even that I skimped on as much as I could. Even though gas was only 25 cents a gallon, you must remember that my wages back then were only 50 cents an hour, less withholding taxes.
For a while things were fine. An older mechanic friend who my father suggested I talk to, gave me friendly hints about this and that which solved one major, and quite a few smaller shortcomings and did not cost me any money. In particular, the biggest help he gave me was to help sort out the cylinder firing order mess Steve had created with his own prior fiddling. My friend rerouted the spark plug cables properly to the distributor which completely solved the popping and backfiring issue. I figured how to get the trunk lid back on myself and man, I thought I was home free!
I breezed around town and country in a parsimoniously heedless fashion for a while. Then one fine day, the car began getting harder and harder to start until finally the car would not start at all. I took the battery out and trudged to the station to get it charged. The cost was 50 cents — this was many years ago remember, but the half-mile trip lugging a forty pound battery two ways was strenuous. With the re-charged battery the car once again started and I was back on the road again — for a while. Trouble is, the problem reoccurred and slowly over a period of days the battery went flat again. Again I made that awful trip to station to get a recharge. The problem repeated, and I repeated my odyssey — again and again several times, until one day the recharged battery failed to start my car at all.
I was forced then to buy a brand-new battery at the station — ten bucks — one-third the entire original cost of my car! OK, swallowing my agony I paid for the battery and once again I was back on the road again, but only for a short while. Almost immediately, I had the exact same problem with the brand-new battery getting weaker and weaker, exactly as the old one had. I sought out my mechanic friend again, who suggested I check my ‘voltage regulator’ — a term I had never heard before in my life. That turned out to be the issue and for the cost of a new voltage regulator I was back in business — $4.50 at the time - I told you this was a long, long time ago.
I put the new voltage regulator in myself and then had my friend take a look to make sure things were done right. He gave his approval and I was back on the road once more.
Things went smoothly then for a while, with me being able to deal with — more or less — a few problems mostly electrical — which cropped up along the way without spending much of my hard earned dollars. The windshield wipers worked fine until it rained, and then only intermittently. If it rained I could sometimes reach around the windshield with my left arm, and work the wiper with my fingers. I even resorted to putting a string on the wiper blade for the driver’s side which helped at the times it was out of reach. Sometimes the headlights would go completely dark at night — at fifty miles an hour on a curvy road! The first time that happened I almost crashed before I got the car stopped in the ditch. I learned that sometimes I could jiggle the switch and get them on again for a while, and sometimes not at all. Once, I was forced to drive about five miles at ten miles an hour using only the moonlight. If I met an oncoming car, I would pull off on the shoulder of the road and shield my eyes against the glare until they passed by.
Then came one fine day when the transmission locked up after making some horrible grinding noises. I had a friend help tow the car home where I parked it off to one side of our driveway — again. Back I went to consult my mechanic friend who seemed to have infinite patience with me. He was one of the kindest, nicest people I’ve ever known, and his kindness to me then always inclined me afterwards to pay it forward, and help those younger and less experienced than me who need help or advice.
My friend suggested I try a local junkyard. So, a day or so later after removing the transmission myself from the junked car in the junkyard, I was the proud owner of a used three-speed stick-shift transmission out of a 1937 Chevrolet Master Deluxe ‘Drop-Axle’ Two-Door Business Coupe! Price, $15. Now I had as much invested in car repair parts than I originally paid for the car, but who was counting?
I spent the better part of a week on my back under my car removing the bad transmission and shoe-horning the replacement into its place. After lots of quiet swearing, skinned knuckles, sweat, banging, hammering, slamming and maybe a bit of praying, I finally got everything all back together and running again. And, didn’t that car run just as sweet as you please too? My goodness, I had a lot of fun with my friends and girlfriends being mobile in that old car! Those are all sweet memories to this very day too.
And so it went. I often had to fiddle with things to keep them working, and over the course of the next year or so over time, I became a fairly adept amateur mechanic myself and began to accumulate a little mechanical knowledge, along with an assortment of mechanic’s tools, some of which I still have to this very day.
One occasion which sticks most in my mind concerning that old car though, is the day my best friend and I were out tooling around in the countryside and acrid smoke began billowing out from under the hood. There was a very electrical smell like burning insulation. When I lifted the hood there were several wires glowing hotly on the firewall behind the motor — an obvious dead short. I thought the car would catch fire and burn up right there and then since we had nothing to fight the fire with at all, no fire extinguisher, or bottled water nor bottles of soda pop at all. So, in desperation, we each hoped up on the bumper and began pissing on those glowing hot wires.
It worked too! Good thing we had full bladders I guess. We somehow even patched up the wires and made it home again too.
Long story short, in my turn I passed that old car on to another underclassman when I left home, and sold it for $75, so I actually made a couple bucks in the end, if you don’t count the gas burned, and continued a tradition too. Sometimes today I still wonder about the ultimate fate of that old *1937 Chevrolet Master Deluxe ‘Drop-Axle’ Two-Door Business Coupe. What do you suppose it would be worth today?
I suppose everyone will always remember their very own first car.
*My mechanic friend knew exactly the identifying nomenclature for that automobile!
This story is 100% true as best as I can recall now 62 years later, including “Steve’s” name. Those who remember Rockport, Maine in the 'fifties will know who I'm referring to.
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