My first car was a 1958 Fiat 600. I had a newspaper route since I was eleven. Every once in a while, at the end of the month, my parents would borrow a few dollars from me for milk or eggs or bread. Five years later, my parents had borrowed more than $100 from me. A hundred dollars in 1965 was enough to purchase an older used car. I remember looking through the newspaper want ads for cars. I began putting pressure on my parents about their debt to me.
We had a piano that my parents bought for our upbringing. Unfortunately, they couldn’t afford lessons for each of us, so my younger sister was the only one that received formal lessons. That didn’t last long, and we mostly played chop sticks on it. My dad knew a fellow employee in the school district who had a commute car he didn’t need anymore. He just so happened to be looking for a piano for his daughter. They swapped, and I was now the proud owner of a 1958 Fiat 600.
This Italian-made car was a little unusual. It was shaped like a bug, but the doors opened from the front. They called them suicide doors for a reason. There was an engine in the back, and just a very small “trunk” in the front. It had a small four-cylinder water-cooled engine. I should say that it had a “fluid-cooled” engine. I kept water in the radiator; however, we learned later that you were supposed to put pure anti-freeze in the radiator. It had an aluminum block and head. The head would warp if the engine over-heated. I don’t think the summers in Italy are any where near the heat of a Stockton, California summer. Unfortunately, the engine over-heated regularly, being cooled with just water, and I was working on it as much as I was driving it.
I don’t know if it was by my dad’s design or not, but we had some great father-son bonding moments in finding parts and figuring out how to fix the Fiat. My dad was a busy guy, but he taught me how to go to the wrecking yard and pull parts from old wrecks. He bought me Chilton Repair Guides for my cars and helped me understand their directions. I did most of the work (and learning), but he would take me to the wrecking yard for the first time, or look at a problem and offer advise on how to fix it.
I had a lot of fun in that Fiat. There were two bucket seats in the front, and a bench seat in the back. If you wanted to be ridiculous, you could squeeze five into the cab. My best friend had a 1957 Plymouth. It was almost the complete opposite of my car. It had a push-button automatic transmission and a very large V-8 engine. You could lay down a nice piece of track by just slamming down on the accelerator pedal. We played cat and mouse on the suburban neighborhood streets, something I shudder at now. My car was so small that it fit in between the poles that are meant to keep cars out. I don’t know what my dad would have done if he knew I was driving down the walkways of one of his schools, but how else was I going to escape that big ’57 Plymouth.
When it was time for me to go off to college, it was apparent that I shouldn’t take the Fiat. It was barely reliable enough for around-town driving. It wasn’t ready for a 350 mile trek from Stockton, California to Ashland, Oregon. My dad took me to a Rotary Club friend’s car dealership and we picked out and bought a white 1961 Chevy Bel Air. It was eventually named the White Wizard.
My last memory of the Fiat is kept in a special place in my brain. After I left for college, my dad re-inherited the Fiat. My sister and her soon-to-be husband drove it some, and I know we shared it the last summer we owned it. My sister reminds me how I had a knack of leaving just enough gasoline in the car to get home, but not enough to get to a gas station. She and John ran out of gas just blocks from our house several times. It finally broke down one last time, for us. We were tired of rebuilding the engine and having the head resurfaced. I don’t know the details, but someone from the University of Pacific that Dad knew gladly towed the fiat away to fix it. The engine was in the back seat in a cardboard box. That is when we learned that you are supposed to put anti-freeze in the radiator. I cherish my memory of his car driving off with the Fiat attached to its bumper. It seemed ready for the next stage of its life.
Brian
I didn’t own a car in high school. I was able to borrow my parent’s car on the weekends in high school to go places. I also was able to borrow their car to get to my summer jobs. I didn’t really think about having my own car. Whatever money I made I tried to save for college. I went to college in Ashland, Oregon and lived on campus. I moved off-campus to downtown Ashland my junior year. I enjoyed the 2 mile walk to school. It never seemed to be a problem to me to not have a car. The first time I owned a car was when I got married, my husband came with a car! Unfortunately it wasn’t always working. We borrowed my parent’s car for our honeymoon down the Oregon and California coasts.
Brian, my husband, decided to buy a motorcycle a few months before we were married because his car wasn’t running. It was a Honda 350 bored out to 450cc’s and it had been used for racing…just what a 21 year-old college student needs! He made a down payment with his student loan and figured he’d make the monthly payments with the $50.00 stipend his parents sent him each month for college. That didn’t work out too well, once his parents learned he’d purchased a motorcycle they stopped the monthly stipend. This was our only means of transportation for a while. There was no place to put your feet if you were the passenger on the back…me. I had to just hold my feet up in the air. One time Brian decided to see how the motorcycle would do going up a steep dirt hillside with me on the back. It got about half of the way up and fell over with the hot muffler on my leg. That hurt and left a scar for a long time. Another time, being mature 21 year olds, we decided we needed to get a cat. The Humane Society was about 15 miles away in Medford, Oregon. We rode the motorcycle to the Humane Society and picked out the kitty we wanted. I had brought along a big burlap type purse. I still have the purse. It has a zipper on top so I could close it up, which I did most of the way home. I put the kitty in the purse, got on the back of the motorcycle with the purse on my lap, and away we went with my legs in the air. This was also while I was pregnant with our first child. The kitty survived the trip home and was a great cat, we named her Kippy.
The motorcycle had mechanical problems after awhile and we ended up with a blue 56 Ford sedan that had been an army surplus vehicle. It was named the “Blue Bomb” and had been in Brian’s family for awhile. I really liked that car but it didn’t last long either. Its engine blew up when Brian was driving to student teaching in Medford.
My first experiences with cars was not very good. The cars never seemed to work for long. They were old and inexpensive—just what two college students with a baby could afford. Over the years we had a ’55 Willys Jeep Wagon, a ’65 Jeep Wagoneer, a ’59 Chevy pickup, and a Volkswagen bus from the ’60’s. They all had to be roll started sometimes. I remember sitting in parking lots being so envious of everyone who got in their car and turned the key and their car started.
Once when I was shopping at a grocery store in Redding, CA. The Volkswagen bus wouldn’t start. I was 9 months pregnant and had Todd with me. He was five years old. The parking lot didn’t have much of a slope. I was outside the car pushing and then would try to jump in to start it. I ended up pushing it out towards the street because that’s where the down hill slope went. The bus ended up on Court street. Todd was behind the wheel steering and I was trying to push it back up into the parking lot. Thank goodness some men across the street at the donut shop saw my predicament and came running to help.
We always struggled with old dilapidated cars, until my Dad became a car salesman and we were able to buy good used cars from him. It is such a good feeling to drive a car that you are confident will get you to where you need to go and that starts up when you turn the key. I’m sure these days to have towing insurance. I still get stuck with car breakdowns, but at least I know help will eventually be on its way.
Mary Lou
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 