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my first car
I often think back 55 years to the day when I bought my first car. While my dad bought a new Ford station wagon every year and I could use it most any time he wasn't using it, I couldn't wait until I got my own car. I still shake my head at the thought process I must have used to choose the car I did. Most 17 year old guys buy the coolest car they can come up with, so why did I end up with a 1938 Buick 4 door sedan. You would think this would be the last car in the world a young guy would buy. This was in 1953 and the car was only 15 years old with a price tag of $38.00. Did the car salesman see me coming, Oh Yeah! The car looked pretty good but as the saying goes it had been ridden hard and put away wet. Truth be told, mechanically it was a piece of junk. I bought it in Ventura, CA and drove it home to Oakview, CA a distance of roughly 10 miles. That was the longest trip I ever made in it. After a few more trips around Oakview it gave up the ghost. To show you how smart I was, instead of working on the motor to get it running again I decided to make it into a convertible. Up to this point this was the dumbest idea I had been able to come up with. Having no idea of what I was doing I got a hacksaw and started sawing away on the doors. As I'm writing this I'm still shaking my head at how naive I was, thinking it was just a matter of cutting off the roof and I'd have a 4 door convertible. I gave no thought to what was going to happen when the support the roof and door frames gave the body was removed. After sawing away for a few hours and going through a large number of saw blades I decided it would be easier and faster to get a cutting torch. I figured I could knock this out in a matter of minutes with a torch instead of the days it was going to take with the hacksaw. Once I decided on the the cutting torch I was able to recruit some helpers that thought a torch would be fun and not work like a hacksaw. I went down and rented the torch and proceeded to try to learn how to use it. After several hours and another trip to get more gas for the torch I finally had things going pretty good and was able to get the top cut off. Like I mentioned before the support for the body was now gone and the doors wouldn't open by themselves. When we did get them pried open of course they wouldn't shut. All the time the whole body was swaying and threatening to collapse. Finally my Dad came out to see what was going on. Right away he could see that this wasn't going to ever be a road worthy car again. After some discussion and having the facts pointed out to me I could see he was right. Luckily he knew a guy that would come and haul it off at no charge. To tell the truth I was happy to see it go instead of sitting there like a monument to my stupidity. Most people remember their first car with pleasure and good feelings but I just remember mine with a sense of wonder at how I could have been that stupid to buy it and then compound it with trying to customize it. Of course the cost of all this was very small compared to the razzing and jokes I endured from all my buddies and everyone they told about the episode. |
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May, 2012
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