t on the inside of the garage and its contents as there was on the car. Lucky for me it wasn't may garage. The car looked great, kind of! IT WAS ORANGE. It didn't look anything like the paint sample. Oh, well. I used it to drive to work at the Acme Supermarket, to school, to church, on dates (maybe once) actually everywhere. Then one night.........I remember it well. I had parked the car in front of my house on North Queen St. right next to one of the few trees on the block. You think you know what happened next, but I bet you don't. About 3 AM my parents woke me and told me that someone had hit my car. Boy, did he hit it! He hit the car on the driver's door and pushed it into the tree. The driver's side door was only about 2 feet from the passenger's side door. The driver had taken off, but my dad saw the car and reported it. They later caught the culprit and arrested him for DUI. Well, my car needed some work. I got a large jack and pushed the doors back into a usable shape. I had no rear window anymore and the side windows wouldn't go up and down anymore (probably were in a thousand pieces), but the windshield was intact. You had to enter the "Dukes of Hazard" way, but it still ran. Used it for work a few days later. Close to the end of my shift they called me into the Acme office. Seems the police needed to talk to me about the piece of junk I had parked out front. I explained what had happened and they sympathised with me, but told me never to drive it again. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The "First Car" Story
It was an ordinary day. It was the fall of 1960 and I had just bought a '53 Henry J. For those of you who have no idea what that is, it is a car made by the Kaiser-Fraiser Automobile Co. A company way ahead of their time, but not too far ahead for Ldub. It was a 4 cylinder, 3 speed, 2 door which was Burgundy in color. I loved that car! I purchased it from my mother's cousin who lived in Annapolis, MD. It had to be towed to Lancaster, since it did not run. Hey, I only paid $50 for it. Money I earned selling guinea pigs. How many guinea pigs do you have to sell to buy a 7 year old Henry J that doesn't work you might ask. Well, that's another story! My dad knew a mechanic who examined the car and decreed a new generator would do the trick. After a trip to Angellini and Groff junk yard I was on the road. My second trip to the junk yard was for a radio which I mounted under the dash and added a few extra speakers so I could hear the radio with the windows down. For Christmas that year my parents bought me spun aluminum moon hubcaps. Really neat if you know what they are. In the spring my uncle helped me paint the car in his garage in Strasburg, PA. After taping all the chrome (real chrome) and windows and closing all the doors to the garage, he got out the spray gun and went to work. The next day we discovered there was as much pain
t on the inside of the garage and its contents as there was on the car. Lucky for me it wasn't may garage. The car looked great, kind of! IT WAS ORANGE. It didn't look anything like the paint sample. Oh, well. I used it to drive to work at the Acme Supermarket, to school, to church, on dates (maybe once) actually everywhere. Then one night.........I remember it well. I had parked the car in front of my house on North Queen St. right next to one of the few trees on the block. You think you know what happened next, but I bet you don't. About 3 AM my parents woke me and told me that someone had hit my car. Boy, did he hit it! He hit the car on the driver's door and pushed it into the tree. The driver's side door was only about 2 feet from the passenger's side door. The driver had taken off, but my dad saw the car and reported it. They later caught the culprit and arrested him for DUI. Well, my car needed some work. I got a large jack and pushed the doors back into a usable shape. I had no rear window anymore and the side windows wouldn't go up and down anymore (probably were in a thousand pieces), but the windshield was intact. You had to enter the "Dukes of Hazard" way, but it still ran. Used it for work a few days later. Close to the end of my shift they called me into the Acme office. Seems the police needed to talk to me about the piece of junk I had parked out front. I explained what had happened and they sympathised with me, but told me never to drive it again. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
t on the inside of the garage and its contents as there was on the car. Lucky for me it wasn't may garage. The car looked great, kind of! IT WAS ORANGE. It didn't look anything like the paint sample. Oh, well. I used it to drive to work at the Acme Supermarket, to school, to church, on dates (maybe once) actually everywhere. Then one night.........I remember it well. I had parked the car in front of my house on North Queen St. right next to one of the few trees on the block. You think you know what happened next, but I bet you don't. About 3 AM my parents woke me and told me that someone had hit my car. Boy, did he hit it! He hit the car on the driver's door and pushed it into the tree. The driver's side door was only about 2 feet from the passenger's side door. The driver had taken off, but my dad saw the car and reported it. They later caught the culprit and arrested him for DUI. Well, my car needed some work. I got a large jack and pushed the doors back into a usable shape. I had no rear window anymore and the side windows wouldn't go up and down anymore (probably were in a thousand pieces), but the windshield was intact. You had to enter the "Dukes of Hazard" way, but it still ran. Used it for work a few days later. Close to the end of my shift they called me into the Acme office. Seems the police needed to talk to me about the piece of junk I had parked out front. I explained what had happened and they sympathised with me, but told me never to drive it again. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment