auntblabby wrote:
ZenDen wrote:
When I was 17 my family decided I should buy a car (there was no other way to get to my new school). It was decided I would buy a '52 Chevy from a lot on the West Side of Chicago (after about a total of 4 to 6 hours of practice). We got the car and I was following my Mom and driving toward home east on Lake Street (with the elevated train overhead and steel pylons alongside your passenger window). It was late afternoon and getting dark.
As it got darker I found my headlights getting dimmer and dimmer (turned out to be a defective voltage regulator) and by the time we got to the Expressway it was almost totally dark with me depending on the oncoming headlights in my eyes to see where I was going. All this time I was sneaking past the adjoining pylons by inches. I don't remember much about the ride home on the Expressway. But I think what happened, from this incident, was I gained a new "from 1 to 10 how hard/terrifying was it" level of terror. The upshot was I never came close to that level of terror, while driving cars, for many, many years and so found I could operate a vehicle more calmly than when I first was learning to drive. A "lucky" incident but not one I'd recommend anyone try.
am very curious- outside of the defective regulator, what is it like to drive a '52 chevy compared, say, to a later model car? have always wanted to hop in an oldster and drive down the road to see what it was like, but never got the chance.
(Oops! I meant '53...sorry.)
What was it like???
It was like heaven. At least I thought so at the time. Imagine a lonely loner, finally free from high school and the bullying "that" entailed (can you imagine a "physical" bully, surviving, unchanged, right out of the '40s and '50s right up to and through his senior year of high school? It was "nuts.")
But I digress. It was still high school loneliness I escaped from, but into a softer, and much more enjoyable type of loneliness at college. But when I was in my car I was "King of the Road." My Chevy had a 6 cyl. engine and 2 speed "Powermatic" transmission so was slow and relatively) safe. And I could go anywhere...anywhere...and, when I drove
I had the same rights, privilege, right-of-way as any other person. This was important to my growing-up as this was the first situation I actually felt "equal."
But as for driving it was a hoot
! It was slow, leaked (and burned) lots of oil; it got terrible gas mileage but gas was only about $.25 a gallon and it was like heaven on wheels. It had big soft tires and floated along. And the AM radio had lots of great '60s music to listen to (graduated in 1960).
And I met my wife (coming up on 54 years now
) while "showing off" my car to someone; and SHE, was there.