Cars, the 50's

I thought I would comment on the various cars I've been acquainted with since I've been driving.

My first driving experience was in Driver's Ed at Olympus High School. I think it was a 1960 Pontiac. I had a hard time at first with the right side. My depth perception must have been bad, because I kept turning away from the cars on the right, and across the center line. The instructor had to grab the steering wheel to straighten me out, several times. I eventually got it right.

Practicing at home, I used Mom's '52 Buick. Dad insisted that we always back into the parking space in the carport. In practicing that maneuver, I managed to wipe out the front of the storage sheds that I had built the year before. So I got more practice at repairing the carpentry work.

I passed my driving test for my first license in that Buick. I used that car in my first job at the Holladay Neighbor newspaper. I had failed the driving test the first two times I took it. Those times I was driving Dad's '54 Chrysler Imperial. He had the idle set quite high. So when I tried to make a 'soft' stop at the stop signs, it would take off and not make a complete stop. (In Driver's Ed we were taught to ease up on the brake as we came to a stop, so as not to jerk the car. In Dad's car, it would just take off instead of easing to a stop.)

Within a week after I got my license, I helped Mom drive the Buick from Salt Lake to Camarillo, California, to see Oma and Opa at their new house. I was thrilled to actually drive on freeways. I had seen them in drivers training movies, but we didn't have any in Utah.

That Chrysler Imperial was a true luxury car. It had a big "Hemi" engine, all leather seats, power windows and seat. It had a two-speed automatic transmission. It had enough room in the front seat, that I was able to carry eight teen-age kids in it, all the way from Salt Lake to Bear Lake and back and no one felt crowded.

Speaking of the Bear Lake trip; as we were returning to Salt Lake, we went through Evanston, Wyoming. As we came out of the winding canyon between Coalville and Kimball Junction, the engine died. The gas gauge said we had 1/4 of a tank left. But when I turned the ignition off, and then back on, the gauge read below empty. It had been stuck. Within a couple of minutes after we stopped, a Utah Highway Patrol car pulled up behind us. He was nice enough to give me a ride to Kimball Junction to get some gas. He then had to continue on, so he couldn't give me a ride back.

I didn't have a can, and I asked one of the attendants if I could borrow one. He picked up a can they used as a loaner and discovered it was already more than half full of fuel. He told me just to take it, and then I could buy gas when I returned. I asked an elderly couple who looked like they were headed toward where we'd broken down, and they were happy to give me a ride.

I poured the contents of the can into the gas tank and tried to start it. I was pumping the accelerator to get the fuel into the engine, and when it finally started, there was a big cloud of smoke that billowed from the back of the car. And, as soon as I stopped pumping the accelerator, the engine quit. I found that I had to continually pump it to keep the engine running. Even then, it would only go about 30 miles per hour, and there was a lot of smoke. Whenever we would go up a hill, it would shift into low gear, and a big cloud of smoke would come out the back. We almost asphyxiated several people whose cars pulled up behind us.

When we finally got to the gas station, another attendant looked at the can and said we'd been given diesel fuel. To make up for it he filled our tank with gas at no charge. I don't think any other gasoline engine would have run on diesel fuel; only the hemi. We were also being looked after by angels as a result of all the prayers that were offered for us on our journey.

When Dad had purchased that car, he got it at a great price, because there was something wrong with the engine and it wouldn't go over 50 miles per hour. No one had been able to figure out why. He was checking the carburetor function, with me operating the gas pedal, when he discovered that only 2 barrels of the 4 barrel carburetor were working. The jets for the back two barrels had never been drilled out. He ordered a new carburetor from the J.C.Whitney catalog. After installing it, the car would then go over 100 mph easily. That hemi engine was amazing. I once had it up to 90 mph going up hill on 33rd South in first gear. Dad said he had it up to 140 mph on an open road in Nevada, where there were no speed limits. Thinking back, though, the tires were not rated for such speeds. We were fortunate they didn't come apart on us.

The next family cars were a '59 Chrysler Saratoga, and a '59 Chrysler New Yorker station wagon. Both of those cars had big engines. The New Yorker had a 413 cubic inch engine that could accelerate very fast. I once had a friend, Dave Powers, pull up beside me at a light in his dad's brand new Ford Thunderbird. He challenged me to a race. When the light turned green, he was amazed that the station wagon just walked away from the T-Bird; it left him in the dust.

One time Dad asked me to take the Saratoga out for a drive. He had just replaced the generator (this was before alternators) and wanted the battery to get a good charge. I drove with Georgia to Heber City and back. A couple of times I floored the accelerator to see how fast it could go and got up near 120 mph, and the car rode very smoothly at that speed. Georgia even encouraged me to do it. We were both much younger then.

Then I bought my first car, my '57 Chevy, for $500 dollars. Dad's friend Don Cramer was a car dealer. He found an elderly lady who had this car for sale. We went to pick it up at her house. The sides were all dented and scraped. Her garage was very difficult to get into and out of, and she had run into the sides of the garage door opening, and a tree beside the driveway several times. Don got one of his body shop friends to fix it up.  It was blue and white, with the white on the top. It was a Chevrolet 150, with a standard transmission and a good old reliable straight-six engine. That engine had been used in Chevrolet's since back in the 1930's.

The '57 Chevy lasted until I went into the Air Force. I had one crash in it. I was on my way to class at the U, when the traffic backed up suddenly on 5th South. I managed to stop, but a new '65 Mustang following me couldn't. The Mustang forced me into the '58 Chevy which had stopped in front of me. A guy named Clark, whom I had worked with as a caddy at Willow Creek Country Club, was driving the '58 Chevy. The Mustang was totaled. I had a small dent where it hit me in the rear, and the grill was all scrunched from where I hit the car in front. The metal on those '50's cars was much thicker than what was used later, and they held up much better in a crash.

I traded the Chevy in on a 1964 Chrysler, and got $100 for the trade. Four years later, when I got out of the Air Force, and bought our first house on Lenora Circle, a neighborhood teenager had my old Chevy. The '57 Chevy's had become a classic, and they were in high demand. The price for one had gone up to near $2,000 at that time. They're now worth over $5,000.