Cars - The 70's

One of the best family cars we had was a Buick station wagon. I had thought that it was a 1970, but in searching for images on the internet, I think it was more likely a '67 or '68. We took a lot of family trips in it, especially the summer of 1975, which we called our "Super Summer". We visited many historic sites around northern Utah. We went to the Golden Spike Memorial National Monument. We also visited ghost towns and other memory making places, just before Seth was born. (Some of you may correct me on the year, but that's what I remember.)

In 1976 we bought the first 'new' car we've ever had, a 1976 GMC Rally Van. It was red and white and looked like a miniature ambulance. I used it both as a business vehicle and as a family car. That was the car Holly used to knock over the mailbox across the street. Her first time driving was when she took Hillory and Seth for a very short ride down the driveway and across the street. That was the car I used when I started Mountain West Medical. I went to work at Henry Day Ford when Mountain West Medical closed down, and sold the Rally Van to someone who came in there looking for a similar van that the dealership didn't have.

A couple of years later I bought another new vehicle, a 1978 Ford Courier pickup. It was brown and got great gas mileage. It was made for Ford by Mazda. I smashed the front end by rear-ending another car in the middle of an intersection on 5600 South at 900 East. The light changed to green and the car in front of me started across the intersection and suddenly stopped when a car in the opposite left turn lane started to move. I had glanced to the left and was not able to stop in time. The other driver was from Taiwan and spoke no English. His daughter was with him and had to translate. We couldn't get any law enforcement to come investigate, because it was at the juncture of 3 different jurisdictions. We finally just exchanged insurance information and went on. When Mountain West Medical went under in 1981, I sold that truck to our Bishop Ron German to use in his construction business. One of his young workers rolled it soon after and totaled it.

We later got a 1978 Ford LTD station wagon, which we got after we moved to Redding, California. That was the car we moved back to Utah with in 1988. On that move, the alternator went out coming across the desert, and it ran on the battery, even with the headlamps on, until Georgia turned onto 1600 North in Orem, where it finally gave out. I had to go back with the moving truck to get everyone to our home on Crest Drive.