My first car was a 1936 Chevrolet Master Deluxe. I grew up in a different day and a different time. My folks had a rule with us as children. “If you can buy it, you can have it.” I mowed lawns, sold seeds, raked, gardened and fed chickens and ducks for cash. And when I was about 13 years old, I wanted a car. (Well, I wanted everything long before that! I wanted or had mopeds, go karts, new bikes and more. So a car was just on the list.)

I was in a Cub Scout den with a couple of friends. One day one of them told me they had an old car in the garage and they wanted $50. (Folks-gas was bouncing around 29¢!) “Fifty dollars? That is nothing!” I was working after school and weekends in a garage, pumping gas, changing oil and tires. It was just around the corner.

A 1936 Chevy Master Deluxe.

The day came. Cash exchanged, I had the keys to a 1936 Chevy! It was huge. I asked my dad if we would tow it home. “It didn’t run” I had been told. So, he agreed to tow it with a chain.I would ride in the car and “steer”. The day before we had put kerosene in the cylinders to get a head of the game. We went down a fairly steep hill and it handled like a tank. But I was excited. As we came up to a stop sign I put it in 3rd and eased out on the clutch. The motor engaged! I played with the clutch and fluttered the gas. But I could not stop the car from running up against the step bumper of my dad’s pickup! The car began to push him through the stop sign. Fortunately there was no cars and we safely got across the road.

The car finally in my back yard, I crawled all over that car. It was huge! I spent the next few years working on it and getting it ready for the day I got my license. Each day I worked on it and drove it around the back yard or down in the dirt pit. The back seat was so big. The front was even bigger. I removed the paneling and restored things as I had money.

I drove it for a while. One day I was offered a decent amount of money. I was getting a 1965 Mustang.