My first car was a '51 Chevy

When you’re 72, you’ve owned a lot of cars in your life. I bought my first car when only 14, a 1951 green six cylinder Chevy two-door sedan. I thought it was wonderful. I was almost 15 and sure that the day of my birthday I’d get a driver’s license, so the minor impediment of my age would be quickly removed. And it would have been had it not been for a blankety-blank clerk at the Wyoming Highway Department office. I confidently appeared at the highway department and the clerk threw down a short written test. But then he took a look at me and asked: “Didn’t you just take a test a few months ago for a motor scooter?”

“Well, yes,” I said.

“OK,” he replied. “I’ve got to give you another test, a little harder.” And he did. And I failed it.

So, after the obligatory three-month delay (an eternity for an impatient 15-year-old anxiously waiting to drive his car legally), I returned to the Highway Department office. This time I studied the applicable pamphlet, so hard I could quote passages like a preacher could quote the bible, and got a 100 percent score. Finally, I could drive my car legally. I had actually been driving it earlier, sneaking it out in the early morning to get my papers at the Daily News.

But I didn’t drive my car long, because my mom and I traded in our green 1951 Chevys (she had a four-door model) so that mom could buy a 1959 Chevrolet. Those of you of a certain age will remember the 1959 General Motors cars, capped by the Cadillac, with its outrageous tail fins. Our Chevy had pretty outrageous tail fins, too, and I loved that pretty, sky blue car.

Shortly after I started college, I was able to buy my own car again, another two-door sedan, but this one a 1955 Pontiac, with a V-8. I owned that car for the next five years and what a remarkable time it was. I drove the Pontiac while attending Casper College, and then, in 1962, drove it to Laramie to the University of Wyoming. In general, it performed pretty well, although I had to take severe and odd measures to keep the motor running at all times, because it might not re-start after dying. What I needed was a new battery, but I couldn’t afford a new battery.

Then, in 1964, when I got a job in New Hampshire, I drove my Pontiac all the way to the east coast and then north to New Hampshire. It was a rough trip for the car. Outside of Denison, Iowa, the car blew a U-joint, which caused the drive shaft to whip around under the car, taking out big chunks of the frame. It was a thrill I could have done without. But I got the U-joint fixed and headed east again. And then, when driving along the New Jersey Turnpike, my hood misbehaved. For some time when driving on the highway, the first latch on the hood would give way. I would have to pull over and push the hood all the way down. This time in New Jersey the hood latches gave way entirely. The hood rose up into the wind and was torn off. I remember watching my hood through the rearview mirror fluttering back there like a wounded kite. And then, by the time I arrived in New Hampshire, I needed a lot of engine work. I got all this fixed, however, although the new hood was green, not blue like the rest of the car.

The Pontiac took me through the next year and back to Wyoming, where I started law school. I nursed the car along, while knowing that the engine was getting bad again. But I was able to drive it for another fifteen months before I finally approached a Casper junkyard where I was offered $20 for the old gal. I accepted it immediately – a couple of other junkyards declined to buy it at any price. When I left that old Pontiac, its engine was about gone. As I recall, two of the cylinders had no compression and one was about five pounds (I think the normal level was eighty pounds). But still I felt bad about leaving my faithful old car to her fate.

NEXT WEEK: The rest of my cars, starting with the Hundred Dollar Radio.

John Davis was raised in Worland, graduating from W. H. S. in 1961. John began practicing law here in 1973 and is mostly retired. He is the author of several books.