The Cars of My Life

The 1950s

My dad was a paint salesman who traveled around most of Kentucky and parts of Tennessee and Indiana.  The first car I remember was his classic black and yellow ‘56 Chevy Bel Air.

Me with the car.

A better view of that model.

My dad was friends with a car dealer out near the golf club and the next car my parents bought, for my mother, was the even more beautiful ‘58 Impala.

My dad learned from his friend that you can buy the car featured on the showroom floor at a discount. They always display a particularly flashy car with all the extras -- don’t drive it -- but still have to sell it as slightly used.

This Impala was the “hardtop convertible” model (no post between the side windows) in red. On one of our cross country trips returning to Louisville from Colorado, my dad and I were napping and woke up to find my mother had that baby up to 90 mph on a flat and wide toll road in Kansas.

The Early 1960s

One of the few things I remember from living in Denver is the car wreck my mother got us into. This was in the days before car-seats for kids or even seat belts. I was sitting in the front passenger seat with the dog, Herrmann the dachshund. My mother drove in front of a speeding car (according to the court) which hit us right at my door. 

In the garage.

The dog and I were knocked to the floor but were uninjured. My mother flew across the bench seat (technically, I suppose, the car was knocked sideways and hit her) and she was injured by the window hardware that in those, pre-Ralph Nader, days protruded into car interiors like weapons.My mother healed and they managed to put the Chevy back together and we got years more service out of it.
While we were in Colorado seat-belts became required on all cars so we had to retrofit the Impala. You would take your car to a garage and they would bolt a crude seat-belt -- like what they still use on planes -- to the floor. They were only lap belts and the joke was that it was just because the police were tired of having to hunt for the bodies after accidents, but at least it was a start.

The Oldsmobile

At  the end of  6th grade I learned my dad was accepting a new job in Southern California. I was not happy. Before leaving Boulder my parents finally sold off the red Impala and got a new car for my mother. This time we got an Oldsmobile Cutlass straight off the dealer showroom floor.

The Oldsmobile in front of the Calhoun house.

My dad had company cars from the time we moved to Colorado. The first one was a butt ugly Ford Galaxie 500...

...but after that they were almost always plain Chevy Impalas or Bel Airs he replaced every year or two. Unfortunately, 1960s Impalas never looked as good as the ones from the ‘50s.

The Late 1960s

By 1969 I now had my own wheels, though they were tiny ones. I had spent all my savings on a cream and green Fiat 500. (Technically this was an Autobianchi Bianchina Cabriolet)

My car in front of the Scottsdale house.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8h6PN7Cyp0

Tell me that isn’t a cute little car.

The Toyota Corolla

Some time around 1970, my parents replaced the battered Cutlass with a brand new, red, Toyota Corolla. As I recall it cost around $2,000.

This was a fun and practical little car. The front seats folded flat for car camping and the car's powerful first gear (it was a four-speed stick) proved to be wonderful on unpaved mountain roads. It was ideal for car camping around Prescott (see Sky-Y Summer 1 and Sky-Y Summer 2 ) and I sometimes took it up there on school breaks or just when I needed to get away for a weekend. The last time was probably in 1974 when I couldn't stop reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and went up for a weekend so I could finish and move on to preparing for my finals. I still knew the area around the camp so well (I was at a campground a few miles away) that I would walk around aimlessly trying to get lost, but I always would run into something I recognized. That countryside was then like most of San Francisco is to me now. At one point I was sitting on a random boulder in the forest reading Rand when a doe walked up behind me. Deer, like bears, have weak eyesight so unless you move they are unlikely to notice you. Once I was aware of her I let her approach to within a few feet before slowly turning my head to look at her. She became aware of me but I still hadn't registered as a threat so she just played it cool and slowly wandered off. This may have been while I was attempting to read that deadly dull philosophical treatise late in the book (which I finally decided I could safely just skip), so the deer interruption was a pleasant distraction.

The Fiat X 1/9

Within a couple years of that trip, my parents decided to replace the Corolla and I went with them to shop. We looked at a really vile Ford Maverick and I was arguing for a nice little VW (possibly a Golf), but, against my advice, they ended up getting a Fiat X 1/9. 

Not that I didn't like the car, I just couldn't see them in it. This was a flashy and impractical little car. It was hard to get in and out of. There was hardly any space for luggage or anything. And it seemed to be happiest at the Fiat garage.

On the other hand, aside from being under-powered, it was a joy to drive. The engine was in the rear but in front of a small trunk so it was wonderfully balanced. If it had just had a few more horses it would have been perfect... provided you didn't need to carry anything. The last few years I was living in Arizona, and on several trips back after I left, I put quite a few miles on that car mostly driving down to visit my friend G__ who lived in Bisbee, near the border with Mexico.