Our Life Story Told By Our Cars #4-7

Continued from cars 1-3

I

I got a summer job at a soda factory on Thompson Road, East Syracuse.   I needed transportation to get to work.  My dad helped my find this 52 Chevy.  It was stick shift from 1st to 2nd but automatic 2nd to third.   It was a horrible unsafe car.   The brakes didn't stop it well.  The steering was so bad that I had trouble staying on the right side of the road.

On the last day of summer, the car died while waiting for a red light at the busy corner of Rt 5 and Rt 92 in Fayetteville.  I did something bad.  I got out, took off the license plate, and abandoned that car in the middle of traffic.  Tsk tsk.

William Lowber, Libby's father owned a series of Pontiac Bonnevilles.   Those were hot cars, and very sexy.  Libby got a ticket for speeding on Erie Boulevard in Syracuse in that car.

The following year I needed summer transportation once again.   My dad again helped me to find this 58 Chevy, 3 speed stick on the column.  It was basic, but a pretty good car.  I remember driving it in winter once on a snowy day.  I was passing a truck that was throwing up a big cloud of snow.  Suddenly, headlights appeared right in front of me.  I jerked the wheel.  The car did a 360.  Then it straightened out in the middle of my lane with the truck and the other car behind me.  Whew.

Helen Mills, my mother, got this 61 Valiant. 

I used to borrow it to go see Libby.  It was a pretty boring car with a cheesy floor stick shift.