At the time Dad bought the 1960 Olds he must have traded in or sold separately the 1954 Buick Special along with the 1957 Ford Fairlane. Of course, he needed a second car, "to go to work in." Mom worked in a shoe factory at different hours and we lived 9 miles out of town. So two cars became a necessity. Just like we needed a car to get to work during the summers in those years while in college.
Dad got a line on a good deal in Milwaukee. He asked Roger and I if we would like to go along to get the car. We had to leave very early that Saturday morning because it was about a three or four hour drive. I believe it was midmorning when we arrived at a small garage. There was only one car there and it was a freshly repainted blue-green metal flake 1960 Dodge Polara station wagon. Two or three old guys were smiling. The car was cheap and probably had been in a wreck, but it looked good in that new paint and color, so we took it home anyway. The seats were Spartan dark tan Naugahyde.
The Dodge turned out to be a sleeper. It had the very nice lines of the, "Forward Look," was very light compared to the Buick and Olds; even the Ford that we had been used to. And, for a station wagon, it was very fast. I recall we won a couple of drag races with it, completely surprising the guys who we raced from stoplights. But it wouldn't stop. Apparently had "glazed" brake pads and drums. I recall we ran through a couple of stop signs with it, unable to stop.
Dad, unwilling or unable to get the Dodge brakes fixed, learned of a cherry 1957 Buick Century Estate wagon that a businessman and friend owned. By the end of that summer, 1962, the Buick had replaced the Dodge as our second car station wagon. The very car that I towed the Hot Rod to school with in the fall of 1963.
During the spring of 1964 when I was recuperating and rehabbing at home, no longer able to drive my 1957 Ford Fairlane 500, I was offered a job by the owner of the farm to drag the plowed fields in his new powerful Oliver 6 cylinder tractor. I believe it had power steering. I couldn't operate the throttle, so he set it and I drove by using the clutch, brake and shifting between two gears. It was a wild ride when the front end would come off the ground and I would speed across the field again breaking up sod. I was eager to drive again after that jolting experience with my neck brace on.
I was able to drive my grandmother's 1956 Buick Super. When told by my neurosurgeon that he would, "Take your driver's license away," I rebelled and took a driving test in town with my grandmother's Buick to prove him wrong. It was a very hot day and my sweaty paralyzed hands were slipping on the steering wheel plastic. But the examiner just talked about converting a furnace to cooling while directing me on the route, and said nothing more than I passed the test well when the drive was over.
Dad was always looking out for me. Shortly after I got my license renewed, requiring glasses, power steering and power brakes, he lined up a date for me with the daughter of one of his coworkers at the trucking company. I certainly wanted to get out and date again, so I took him up on the offer. I wasn't meeting any girls except the Martin girls on the neighboring farm. They were not attractive. While their brother, Tom, became my buddy and a way to get to town occasionally in his dad's 1950 Ford two door sedan. We watched the girls but dated none. Both kind of fish out of water in our situations.
I arranged to take the rather homely girl to the drive-in movie. I was to take the 57 Buick wagon. But, Dad told me that I would have to have her drive the car, even though it was 9 miles to town and back that I would have to drive the car to get to and from the date. It didn't make any sense to me, but I agreed. When I picked her up, she drove the Buick to the drive-in movie located on the intersection of Highways 10 and 13 halfway back to our house.
After the movie was over, she put the speaker properly back in its holder, but when she drove out she cut the corner too short to the left and drove into the speaker post, putting a large dent in the front driver's side door. I immediately took over, backed the car away from the post, and drove her home. Of course, the date didn't go well. The girl actually wondered why I, a junior college student, would even want to date her. Not a good idea for fathers to arrange blind dates. Or mothers, for that matter.
During the summer, Dad got another great deal and bought a gold metal flake 1960 Lincoln Continental convertible with a new white top. The car stunk because the gold carpeting had been soaked and mildewed from the previous leaking top. He didn't keep that car very long either and I will not go into all the other cars he bought after that--many.
I was determined to buy few cars, and succeeded, somewhat. The 1957 DeSoto Firedome, after my initial episode of sliding into the ditch, with it, became my transportation to and from college during that 1965 spring and summer when I went to summer school. The massive trunk easily accepted my sister's derelict midsized bicycle I commandeered for getting around campus. Leaving the DeSoto parked where I roomed on the street most of the time, saving gas and money.
The car had no air cleaner or choke. The gas gauge didn't work. So, I would have to let it warm up a bit before driving away. Never thought of fixing it. For a large car, the DeSoto was light like the Dodge and got nearly 20 miles to the gallon with that 368 CID 2 barrel carb engine. Powerful and smooth. The torsion bar suspension was also very good so the car cornered and handled well even on the cheap used tires I bought for it. At the end of that summer, I took my grandmother and younger twin brothers with me on a trip north to the Michigan Upper Peninsula, touring it from end to end.
Roger graduated on time in the spring of 1965. He got many job offers and took one with a company in Waukegan on Lake Michigan. He planned to marry his fiancée just after the summer session ended. I had an enjoyable summer session catching up with my classes. Going home, I had spent all my money, and thought that I had enough gasoline to make it. My rule of thumb estimation was sometimes wrong, except when it came to arriving at places where I calculated time and distance fairly well in my head.
Halfway home while going through a little town, the DeSoto started to buck telling me that gasoline was running out. Fortunately, there was a filling station just ahead and I actually coasted into it and to a pump without having to push the car. With no money, I told the guy my plight, and he took my two dollar electric clock as collateral for two dollars worth of gasoline. On the way back for Roger's wedding the following weekend, I paid the man the two dollars back and picked up my clock.
I grew accustomed to taking other students out to a local hangout on a lake north of town that had been boycotted when I was a freshman for not accepting our black football players. When the resort/bar/dancehall was back in favor, I recall taking six, 6 foot tall Ethiopian students out there. That DeSoto was big enough to accommodate them easily. In early January, 1966, my cousin, Terry and I went out to the hangout alone to dance and, hopefully, meet some girls. It was snowing.
By the time we left the place, Terry had lined up six girls to ride back with us to the dormitory. It was so tight in the front seat that my elbow kept hitting him sitting next to me in the middle. On a curve, the elbow problem prevented me from turning and we slid off the road into a snow bank. The girls got out and were picked up by other cars coming by. We waited until about two in the morning when a wrecker, pulling out many cars, pulled me out, too. I got to bed about 3 am.
I had my graduate record exam that morning at another college 30 miles away. At 6 am, I got up and took off. The car was unnaturally heavy in the front end and didn't warm up, but I made my way to a drafty old classroom where the test was held without incident. It took me about an hour to warm up while taking the test. It was about three in the afternoon that I finished the engineering part after completing the general part in the morning.
When I got back to my room, I looked at the front end of the Desoto and it was packed solid with ice. My radiator had been plugged with ice the whole trip! That hemi was so tough that it made the trip both ways in below zero weather without the benefit of radiator cooling. I assumed that the very cold weather made it possible without overheating.
I graduated in January, 1966, with an assistantship at the University of Wisconsin, studying for my master's degree in engineering starting immediately. I secured a room in the YMCA, right in the center of campus. But when I arrived in Madison that Sunday night, I ran out of gas again in the parking lot of a drugstore, about three blocks short of my destination. Fortunately, I knew a guy who lived there. I called him and he came over with his Model A. He siphoned the gas from the front of the cowl tank into my tank. Saved again. It wouldn't be the last time.
And then, in the spring, I got a fellowship to Stanford. As I finished my summer session at UW, the call of sunny California loomed big on my mind. With my grandmother as a willing companion, in early September, I set out from Wisconsin with her on an odyssey across the West. On the first day, in the middle of nowhere on the newly built I 90, we ran out of gas. Two fellows came by in a car with "square" tires and drove me about 5 miles to the nearest town.
Seeing I was a greenhorn, the station owner insisted I buy a bug screen. I declined. His helper took me and a can of gas out to the car where my grandmother waited. Back at the station, I filled up and we made it to friends in Morehead that night. Later, I discovered he charged me an extra five dollars on my credit card for "service." We stayed in cabins, cheap motels, and sometimes, slept in the car. We took our time and Grandma was always looking at the map finding interesting places for us to stop and see.
We drove to Spearfish in the Black Hills and I drove on a badly damaged road along a river that had taken out half of the pavement for several miles. We went to Mount Rushmore and saw the start of the Crazy Horse monument nearby. Devils Tower was very interesting to see after remembering a movie using it about the Civil War.
At Custer State Park we came upon very friendly wild burros. We stopped briefly at Little Big Horn where there wasn't much to see, and then, on to Cody where there was a fabulous museum devoted to Wild Bill. When I first saw the Big Horn Mountains looming like a wall ahead, I wondered how we would possibly drive over them. But the hemi was made for mountains and soon I was climbing, snaking, zigzag on switchbacks, up and over that steep wall, thankful for the road builders that made it possible. And then, into Shell Canyon where we were slowed by a huge flock of sheep in the road.
Yellowstone was fabulous. We saw many bear along the road that had come down from higher altitudes to winter and feed on whatever unwary travelers would feed them. We stopped for lunch where there was a bear, but it didn't bother us, only the gray jays and ground squirrels that were constantly after our sandwiches.
Leaving the park, I wanted to get a close-up picture of a bear. We drove up to one and I held crackers up to the vent window that was cracked open about 2 inches. Grandma got out the other side with the camera. Hearing, the bear started around the front, stopped, and stood up and leaned over the hood with both paws out. Grandma snapped a picture. And then, he came around on her side. She snapped another shot of him just before jumping back in the car. It turned out to be a double exposure! She was too scared and excited to advance the film.
We drove to Jackson and saw the town center park/square that was fenced on all sides with cast off elk horn. Quite a sight, there were so many with great arches of horn on all four corners. And then, up over the Grand Tetons into Idaho potato country.
Beyond Boise, we drove to Craters of the Moon. Climbing a small lava hill, I experienced my first feeling of altitude fatigue as I tired unexpectedly. Up ahead as the land flattened out again I saw a brown wall coming toward us. It was a dust storm! I was able to drive through it and that night we stayed in an old rooming house in a small town that probably had housed cowboys, gamblers and speculators in its heyday.
When we got to the Cascades, going up I ran over two squirrels that couldn't dodge my wheels. I felt badly about it, never having had that happen before, or since. At the top there was a lava tower with a view both of the Oregon Trail wagon wheel worn grooves in the lava flow below and holes with views of Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, and others in the distance.
After visiting relatives in the beautiful, bountiful Willamette Valley, we drove to the coast and experienced a ride on the dunes in a very large dune buggy. From there we drove south on 101 through the Avenue of the Giants redwoods to San Francisco. We toured the sights there and then moved on to Stanford. I put Grandma on a bus home the next morning and began finding a place to stay.
A second 1957 Desoto loomed in the distance…
Copyright 2020 © Ronald W. Hull
5/13/20
