Saturday Memory for October 31, 2026
October
31
In 1953, my dad gave me his 1950 Buick as a present to start high school. Wasn’t long before I had a steady girl friend. She made dice for the front window. I wore white powdered shoes. I still remember this car as my favorite car which I drove though high school. Interesting how such memories are so preserved. I do know that car meant a lot to me.
Pretty sharp, Russ! The cat’s pajamas! Did you all actually put powder on your shoes?
Oh man! I inherited our 1958 Pontiac star, chief, burgundy and white. By the time I got it, my father had bought it used, my mother drove it, then my brother, and then finally to me. It probably had close to 200,000 miles on it. The tires were bald and my father used to warn me not to drive over Laurel Canyon in the rain, which I did anyway, and of course slid into the oncoming traffic because of it. I survived.
I don’t think we ever forget our first cars. They took us to freedom which we had never known before. That Pontiac was a beast. So although it had its issues, it was a tank and I had a lot of metal around me. And in the Southern California culture, we needed a car. We needed the freedom. We needed the way to contemplate as we drove places. I still have the brass logo from that car upstairs on my bookshelf. “Star Chief.”
Quite the rake, you were with those dice and powdered shoes. I bought my first car at 17, a faded pink Edsel! Paid $69 and it was every bit of a disaster they said it was. Caught on fire 3 months later as I was driving down the block where I hung out.