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. You didn’t want to open the door if you were moving forward. 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 anywhere 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 a Chilton Repair Guide for my car and helped me understand its 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 track of rubber 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.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 