First Car - Midwestern Ohio Memories

This is a guest blog by an anonymous Fish Report reader as part of a series of periodic posts that will focus on fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s.


First Car

Attended the Woodward Dream Cruise this summer in Detroit and discovered the logo for this year’s event was a blue and white 1959 Chevy, just like my first ride at age 16 that was a hand-me-down from my Dad after he bought a new car. First step to transform the old car was to add white walls, but without having to buy new tires by using an insert over the tire that looked just like the real thing and at a fraction of the cost. Next were some moon hubcaps, a thrush muffler, a floor shifter (3 speed but with a 4 speed knob!) and a wax job that made the car a real classic-to-be great for cruising. Those horizontal tail fins were special!

This early love of automobiles lead to an engineering degree from General Motors Institute, 6 years working for GM in Dayton, followed by 27 years with Ford in Dearborn before retiring in 2000. Over those years working on and driving cars became a passion that still exists today. After the ’59 Chevy, I drove a red ’62 Chevy, a gold ’69 Nova SS, a white ’63 split window Corvette, a blue ’68 Corvette, a yellow ’68 Mustang, a ’65 brown Corvette convertible, a white ’77 Thunderbird (remember driving it to Loramie’s basketball state championship win that spring), a maroon ’59 Jaguar, a red ’84 turbo Tbird and a merlot ’04 Tbird, just to name a few! My favorite was the ’65 Corvette. This vehicle came into my hands after my brother-in-law married my wife’s sister and she wanted new furniture. So the Vette had to go, but on the condition that he could someday buy it back from me at the going rate. Whenever my brother-in-law and his family visited, he always gave his kids rides in the Corvette, but when it came time to give his wife a ride, for some reason the car wouldn’t start! Somehow it knew!  Fast forward about 20 years, after babying that car for all that time, I received a call from my brother-in-law about a week before the Dream Cruise that he was ready to buy back the ‘65. Sad day for me; happy day for him! He still has the Vette and cruises around Russia, OH, but now with his grandkids. And the tables have turned, as I now check it out when visiting him, and it always starts!