Cars I have known (because everyone can use a good laugh)

In his Netflix series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” Jerry Seinfeld drives some classic car to pick up a famous comedian and they go to a diner to talk. Every time I watch an episode, I’m reminded of cars I have known in my lifetime.

Let me say right off the top that early on, the cars I drove would never be confused with good cars…but they did produce some good stories which I have been re-living recently with a friend we’ll call Mitch (not his real name, except when it is). This has inspired me to share a few of these stories here on the shieldWALL.

The 1955 Buick

Ours never looked this good.

When I turned 16 in 1966, my parents owned a two-tone, baby blue and white 1955 Buick Special. As I recall, almost nothing about the car was actually special. It was a rust bucket with bald tires and some other curious features. Once, I pulled up beside another car to talk to some friends and when I rolled down the window, it started down an inch or two and then broke loose, crashing down with great flourish into the driver’s side door. WHOOSH! And there it stayed.

Another time, I tried to make “loops” by burning rubber off the tires and leaving j-shaped tracks on the pavement, the way guys with hot cars did. So I drove halfway up a steep hill, stopped, let the car drift backward in neutral until it got going pretty fast and then jammed the transmission into drive. The car started to shake, the tires started to smoke and burn and then BOOM! BOOM! I blew out both rear tires. Hard to explain that to your dad after walking home at 2 in the morning.

I never took my driver’s test in that car because it was too rusty to pass inspection. My dad tried to fix that problem by slapping some kind of epoxy on the rust holes in the quarter panels over the wheels. He bought this stuff that came in two tubes which he mixed together and then applied to the car with a spatula. [It is important to note at this point that he had not read the directions for this product before using it.] After he got it plastered on the car, my mother called him for dinner. Afterward, he went back out to sand off the excess epoxy, only to find it had petrified while he was away. Nothing short of dynamite could have blasted that goop off the car, so he just left it that way. It looked like a relief map of Tibet.

I was driving the Buick once in downtown Fairmont when the transmission went out. It would only go in reverse. My dad came to get me and drove the car home from the Low-Level Bridge all the way up Everest Drive, down through Coal Run Hollow, up Fifth Street and around the old junior high to our house on Oakwood Road. He did this with the car in reverse and his head stuck out the window, looking back over his shoulder. To this day, I get a stiff neck just thinking about that.

Years later, my dad tried to trade that car for a used 1974 Pontiac Grand Prix. They offered him $50 for it and said they’d sell it back to him for $35. I think he just gave it to them to bury.

The 1954 Packard Clipper

I think ours was a little bluer.

One of my aunts died in the mid-1960s and left my mother a 1954 Packard Clipper. It was robin’s egg blue with a black roof. In its day, it might have been a real gem, but by the time we got it, it had lived its life and was ready to retire. It showed its disdain for any continued use by emitting a smoke screen that would put James Bond to shame. I was driving it along Fairmont Avenue one time and stopped to pick up a friend who was walking. She looked at the smoke engulfing the car and said, “No thanks. I’d rather walk.”

The Packard had very comfortable bench seats and a spacious interior, but it didn’t have a radio or any electronics, so I bought an 8-track tape player and tried to install it, but the tape player wouldn’t work. That’s when I discovered that the car had a six-volt battery instead of the standard 12-volt models. Six volts was not enough to operate a tape player, so there was no music to be had. Hell, six volts barely operated the motor. Top speed was about 45 mph.

The 1959 Chrysler Imperial

Push button transmission

My dad was a mailman. An old lady on his mail route owned a 1959 Chrysler Imperial that sat under a tree in front of her house. She got too old to drive but kept the car until my dad offered to buy it from her and she agreed. My dad was so proud when he drove home in a car that once had been top-of-the-line (emphasis on the word “once”). The Imperial had a very classy roof that was part black vinyl and part stainless steel. It was also part bird shit after several years parked under a tree. It took us days to clean it all off.

The strangest thing to me was the push button transmission. I could never quite understand how pushing the “D” or “R” buttons on the dashboard could do the same thing as maneuvering a stick mounted on the steering column…but they did. But the coolest feature was the floor-mounted foot pedal that changed the radio stations remotely. I could press on the pedal and the radio would scan up or down until it found a signal and then stop until I pressed it again. Nobody knew about this feature, so I used to tell people I could change the station with my mind. Other times I’d point at the radio and pretend to slide the dial up with my finger. It kinda freaked people out. I loved that.

Imagine a vinyl, stainless steel and bird shit roof.

I’d also like to say something about the large, comfortable back seat that car had, but it would probably get me into trouble today, so I won’t dwell on that. (Wink wink.)

The 1948 Buick

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the 1948 Buick my parents owned until it rusted out so badly that my dad took it to a welder and had the entire body cut off. All that was left was the motor, the hood, the windshield, the dashboard, the steering wheel, the front seat, the chassis and the tires. There were no doors, no fenders, no roof, nothing. The rest of it was, for all practical purposes, a flat-bed truck. You should have seen the people looking at us when my dad and I took it out for a drive on Fairmont Avenue. I would cut off a few toes if I could show you a photograph of this car, but sadly, there are none. My dad eventually sold it to a farmer who used it to haul bales of hay.

The 1955 Buick 2.0

Pretend the roof is white. And mine was a two-door.

Finally, I offer up the irony that the first car I owned myself was also a 1955 Buick Special – black with a white roof and red interior – that I bought around 1970 or ’71 for $300. This car had been owned by a mechanic at the Buick garage and had been beautifully and meticulously maintained. I considered it a steal for the price and I loved it like it was new. I took off the hub caps, painted the wheels flat black and installed chrome lug nuts. A friend once said it was the best looking set of wheels he had ever seen on such a shitty old car.

There are a lot of stories that go with this vehicle, too, as well as cars I owned later in life, but they’ll have to wait for another day. Meanwhile, regarding my big black beautiful Buick, I’ll leave you with a couple of hints: Fairmont State basketball, Kansas City, Missouri and yellow speaker wire. Does that arouse your curiosity?