When Roger and I were young, we had no trouble getting rides or having our parents take us short distances we had to go in the small cities and towns where we couldn't go by bicycle or walking. In high school when we gave up our bikes, friends always had cars or we walked. In the early years, Dad always had two cars, a new one, usually a Ford, and a used one to go to work. By the time we got to Marshfield in 1954 with a single car garage and a short distance to work, we had only one new car. A 1954 stick shift Ford Crestline four-door sedan. In the summer of 1956, Dad rolled it end for end and ordered a brand-new 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 to replace it.

1950 Studebaker Convertible

Giving rides for free was just a part of the culture in the 1950s. Cars were cheap so there were few hitchhikers. But Mom didn't want us walking to high school in cold weather in the morning so she paid the parents of a neighbor classmate with a red convertible 1950 Studebaker to take us every morning to school. His father was a mechanic and service station owner, so that car was always toasty warm and running well even when it was well below zero. One day, they had the classmate's grandfather's Model A at the house. We got to ride in that in cool style to school that morning.

Most evenings, after sports, we walked the two and one half miles along the railroad tracks to home. Once there, we would raid the cookie jar, old glass coffee jars from the 1930s with metal screw tops, kept full of chocolate chip, gingersnap, orange frosted, date bar, or one of another of her many cookie recipes. We would grab a handful and then go off to do whatever we were doing before Mom would come home from work and have our evening meal ready in about 15 minutes so that we would be through eating by the time the evening news came on.

We learned to be on time, follow the schedule, and plan ahead. Hitchhiking was impromptu and generally not in our busy, planning for college, lives. However, we were never too busy when it came to helping others in need. Something that I guess we got from our Dad. He was always helping one friend or neighbor or another with his strong arms and friendly approach. And he often enlisted us to help with the work, always free.

When we moved 9 miles southwest out of town into the country to the farmhouse in our senior year, we rode the bus in the morning. After sports, we were delivered home in small buses. Don't recall ever having trouble getting a ride if the buses weren't going our way.

When we went off to college in Menomonie Wisconsin, 100 miles due west on Highway 10 from our home, fortunately, a guy from a nearby farm had a Pontiac and was a junior there. For one dollar each, or a penny a mile, he gave us a lift both to school and then again, home for weekends and holidays when he was coming home. That worked out great. I recall our grandmother gave us big denim laundry bags with rope drawstrings. They may have been from the Navy, because my uncle was in the Navy and stayed with her.

We did our own laundry in the dormitory, but when going home, always took it with us because Mom got our clothes a lot cleaner than the machines in the dormitory and laundromats cost money. On those weekends we also ate a lot of food because our meager budgets didn't allow much by way of restaurant food during weekdays in the dormitory where there was no food service. The women's dorm across the street had a food service, but we couldn't eat there.

We usually ate for a dollar a day. Twenty-five cents for breakfast… A cup of coffee and two fresh-baked rolls or donuts. We would start class early at 7:30 am and finish classes by mid-afternoon, 2:30 or 3:30 pm. On the way back to the dorm, we would stop at the Anchor Café and order the Hamburger Special consisting of a hamburger, lettuce salad, French fries and a Coke or other soft drink. All for 65¢. Back at the dorm we would do our homework quickly while snacking on cookies, dried fruit, and other snacks that our mother would send with us until about 6 or 7 pm when we would go out to evening student clubs and often stop off after at a local basement beer bar called the Rendezvous where Roger would buy a beer from the tap and I would buy an orange pop or 7-Up, both for 10¢, each.

Black Oldsmobile Sedan

One cold night, in January of our freshman year, we set out to watch our team play a rival college at the local high school while our new Athletic Center was being built. It was a long walk, probably over 3 miles to the other side of town. We were up to it and dressed for it, when a big black Oldsmobile pulled up, and a guy ran down the power window and yelled at us, "You kids going to the game?" We recognized that it was the president of the university! We hopped in gladly. I don't remember how we got home. Probably rode with some of the students that had cars from the dorm.

College Girls

By contrast, in late February of the same year, we got a call that our grandfather had died and we needed to get home for the funeral that Saturday. No one on campus was going that way, so we left class early on Friday afternoon and walked out to the east side of town to hitchhike the 100 miles home. As we waited by the road, one by one, university administrators passed us going to a meeting in another city for that weekend, but unlike the generous president, even though they knew us because we were standout students and twins, ignored our thumbs out.

We finally got a ride from a local who could only take us to where Highway 10 and 12 crossed. We were there a long chilly time until a rather new Oldsmobile station wagon pulled up with two girls in it. We hopped in. They told us they were going to Green Bay and were on 12 headed for Madison. We were to take 10 home, but decided to show them how to get back onto 29 since they were totally lost. They were college girls from Minneapolis and I believe they were seniors, older than us, but didn't know their highways very well.

With us giving the driver directions, we quickly got the girls back on 29. When we got to Withee where the funeral would be the next morning, we had the girls drop us off at our aunt and uncle's place right on the highway. If they stayed on 29 they would make it home to Green Bay that night. We called our parents and they brought our clothes the next morning for the funeral.

California Car

This time it was warm and I was on 10/12 just before where 10 would leave it, and 12 would become I-94 again. I don't remember how I got there. Maybe a ride from school got me that far. I was alone and it was a nice day so I didn't mind hitchhiking. A jacked up cherry black 1956 two door hardtop Ford pulled over and a young guy in his twenties gave me a ride home. The car was clean inside and out and had a hopped up engine by the way it sounded as we rolled down the road. He told me that he was from California and going to see relatives in Michigan. I had to believe him. The car had California plates and was clearly modified. He was a free spirit, took me all the way home, even though it was out of his way to Chicago.

1957 Ford Fairlane 500

In the spring of 1962, I got word that the 1957 black four-door sedan that Dad bought new had come on the market again. He had traded it in the year before on a used 1960 Oldsmobile Super 88 four-door hardtop. I was proud of him for buying used, in good condition, and saving a lot of money for our family. He finally had taken my advice. The Ford had been bought from the dealer by a schoolteacher and she had traded it in on a new car within a year. I got the car for $250. It was using oil at about 65,000 miles, so I got a neighbor, my sister's future brother-in-law, to overhaul the top of the engine with a valve job and new piston rings.

We had used Dad's second car, a 1954 Buick Special with a stick shift to go to work until the Ford was ready. After that, we had reliable transportation to go back to school in the fall. I started giving rides for a dollar one way like we had paid for our rides. Many trips, I covered both my gas and insurance, making a profit from riders. We took an apartment in an old house with a friend and parked our cars on the street. Don't recall ever having to lock them, but we did hide the key under the mat.

That Ford looked great in black with a gold anodized aluminum accent on the side. In high school, I had won drag races with it, but as the car aged, I still drove fast, but didn't challenge other cars anymore. It was basic transportation, especially for dates. In the spring of 1963, I took out a local girl and she asked me to marry her on the first date. I declined, not interested in marriage until I finished college and had a good income to support a family. But she stayed with me all summer and into the fall, when she went to her cousin's wedding and met a submariner who probably promised to marry her. My car and I were lonely after that.

It was only a month later that I was scheduled for exploratory spinal surgery over the Thanksgiving holiday. We usually left at midday on Wednesday, but I drove home alone that weekend before to going to the hospital on Monday morning so I could return to school sooner after the surgery. I had a cold, common for me because of chronic sinusitis, so my surgeon postponed the operation until my sinuses and the cold cleared up. Finally, on December 9, they operated, very low blood pressure required stopping the surgery without completing it, and I was paralyzed in the arms and hands.

I returned home in mid-January and stayed there until I returned to college in the fall of 1964. In February, Roger contracted cellulitis on a weekend retreat from a cut in his hip. My parents went to Menomonie to see him in the hospital and they diagnosed it as polio and sent him to the University Hospital in Madison. On their way home, my parents lost the transmission in the Oldsmobile 20 miles from home. While the Olds was being repaired, they used my 57 Ford to make trips to Madison while he recovered from the cellulitis with antibiotics over four weeks, setting him back in college a bit that he recovered by going to summer school.

I could no longer drive my Ford. Dad didn't trust power steering when he bought it, but got power brakes. It sat in the yard until spring when I let Roger take it back to school. He got a Fuller Brush job that summer and drove the Ford over many country roads.

Always looking for car deals, Dad located a very nice all blue 57 Buick sedan for Roger from a local haberdasher with low mileage at a good price. Once again, my 57 Ford was in the yard. Only this time, we put it out front with a for sale sign on it. Eventually, I took it to town to a used car dealer. He sold the car to a neighbor of ours who could have got it for less by buying it direct from me. When the car dealer offered me less than our 30/70 consignment, Dad came along and threatened the guy with the Sheriff. He paid up according to our agreement.

Copyright 2020 © Ronald W. Hull

3/22/20