Cars I have Owned

I have always been a car guy, hence the name of this post. There will be gaps, because in 60 years, with a wife and 4 daughters, there have been many, many cars.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my first car was a 1957 Ford Fairlane. I had this car from 1963 until I left for the Navy.

Next, came a 1963 or 62 Plymouth Fury that got me a ticket in New London CT. 

Before I left the Navy, I got the Corvair Monza Spyder. I kept that car until I left New London. The reason I got rid of it was the steering. I had been driving back and forth from New London to Long Island a couple of times a month. Towards my End of Enlistment (getting out of the Navy) the car started to show the wear and tear of the long trips. Coming back to the ship, I noticed a decided drift in the steering at highway speeds.  

Have you ever steered a small boat, like a bass boat? When you steer it, you rarely end up going in a straight line. You end up taking kind of a zig-zag course. Well, that's what the Corvair started to do. It would never just drive straight, it would drift right, then I'd correct and it would drift back to the left. It really added to my stress level of the drive to and from the ship. One night Coming back to the ship, I nearly ran off the road, it got so bad.

I sold the Corvair to another sailor on the Fulton and I definitely let the owner know about the steering problem. I think Joyce and I shared a car for a while.  I don’t remember what kind she had at that time.

The next car that sticks out in my mind was a 1973 Mazda RX3 Wagon with a rotary engine.  

We bought it new and had it for several years. I got rid of it when it started burning a lot of oil. But before I ditched it, Steven and I tried to rebuild the engine. That was a disaster nearing the magnitude of Pearl Harbor. When the rebuild failed, I got rid of it.

My next car was a 1964 Mustang. 

It wasn’t much to brag about, but it was very reliable.  I'm pretty sure it had 4 on the floor, and a 6 cylinder straight line engine. That’s the car I drove down to Dallas.

Again, I’m not sure what kind of car Joyce was driving. I’m pretty sure it was a station wagon of some sort.

Let me explain our situation pertaining to cars.  Joyce has always gotten the newest car as she had the kids to cart around. I usually got her old vehicle, as I was more able to repair something if it broke down while on the road. I commonly carried a tool box in the trunk for on the road repairs. Most of the time her hand offs did not have much life left in them.

Once we were in Texas, we moved up to larger cars.  Since there were 6 of us in the family, we needed more seating than just a sedan provided. I think the first car we bought in Texas was a Chevy Suburban. 

It had 3 full rows of seats, and room behind the 3rd row for luggage. That car was a tank. It drank gas like a tank also. I think the most mileage we ever got on the road was 14 or 15 MPG. Of course gas was way cheaper in Texas than it was in N.Y. As I remember it we drove that car for several years. I do remember that towards the end, the hood started to bend in the middle when you tried to close it after checking the oil.

The car I next remember is the Ford Econoline F150. 

This was one of those conversion vans. It had Captains chairs for the front and middle, and two small fold down seats facing each other in the rear.  

While we were going to Holy Trinity, one of our cars died, totally. Father Ralph knew about our situation, and found a Member of the church that had an AMC Pacer that ran, and was not being used.

That became my work Car. I drove that car for a couple of years, and finally passed it down to Dani when she started driving. The Pacer was really roomy for a two-door car, and I enjoyed driving it. It just looked like a pregnant roller skate. 

I got a Renault R5 after the Pacer.

This car was pretty sporty and ran well. I drove it for a while until Heather got her license, then it was passed down to her. I know Heather also had a Mustang II at some point, but I never drove that car.

I got a Chevy Pickup truck for a while.

I made a mistake on this truck. I bought it through a local credit union. I think I overestimated my income on the forms or something, because just a year into having the truck, I started to have difficulty making the monthly payments. The credit union repo’d the truck and I had that on my credit report for several years.

Next came a smaller Chevy S10 pickup.

This truck I absolutely loved to drive. It had a small V-6 engine, and had a good weight to power ratio. It was a lot of fun, and was good on gas. 

A short story about this pickup. Kelly went off to College in San Angelo. One Christmas Eve, she was coming home from school and an ice-storm hit the area she was driving through. There are not really mountains between DFW and San Angelo, but there are some challenging hills in between. There was a stretch of these hills that the ice-storm passed over. It was so slick, the State Police shut down I-20 in the area. They closed on the east side and the west side of the hills.  Kelly was on the west side of the closure and was directed onto a side road that led to Ranger. Once she got there, she called us and let us know she was stuck. I told her to get a motel and put it on my credit card. She said “Dad, you don't understand, Ranger has the Whataburger I’m calling from, 2 churches, and a gas station. That's all.”

I packed up the S10 and headed west to get her. It took me about 6 hours to go what normally would have been a 2 hour drive. The icy conditions were the worst I had ever driven in. There were several times I nearly ended up in ditches with the other cars already there. I finally got through to Ranger and by that time, the Whataburger had closed, and the staff there had directed her to one of the churches, which was taking in stranded travelers. I found the church, and there was Kelly, with a bunch of the local old ladies and some sadsack travelers - remember, this was Christmas Eve - all playing board games and eating old-lady food in the gathering hall. We packed her clothes in the S10 and started to head back to I-20 and back home to Mesquite. We got as far as the city limits sign when we were stopped by the local police, saying the State Police had shut down I-20 totally in both directions. They had no idea when it would be open, because the salt and sand trucks were sliding into the ditches, the ice was that treacherous. We returned to the church and ended up staying there for 2 days waiting for the highway to become clear enough to drive back to Mesquite. The whole town was thrilled that Santa made a stop there for Christmas. Santa was late for Christmas that year. Dang I wished I had brought the sleigh.

The next car that stands out was actually Joyce’s, but I drove it quite a bit. It was a Ford Windstar.

Joyce and I were driving over to Heather and Marty’s house in Mesquite. They lived across town, closer to Forney I think. We were passing through an intersection when a guy in a Mustang T-Boned us on the passenger side of the Windstar.

He hit us going 45 to 50 miles an hour, and never hit his brakes. He flatly blew the Red Light he had. Joyce’s door and seat were pushed so far over towards the driver's seat, that the center console was just gone. Joyce was badly injured on her right side. Her right leg was broken, and her right shoulder was torn up. All the ligaments were torn and that made her recovery from her broken leg that much harder. She couldn’t use crutches, we had a wheelchair inside the house. I was much luckier, I just had some bruising from the seat belt locking, and the airbags deploying. Our car was spun around 360 degrees and ended up pointed in the same direction we had been traveling. 

I got out of the driver’s side door to go around to Joyce’s door to get her out. When the airbags deploy there is a lot of smoke and vapor that is generated. I thought the car was on fire, so I was frantic to get her out. I did not realize there was no door left on her side. It was still there, but the whole frame on that side of the car had been pushed in by the crash, and was just one solid sheet of metal from behind the front tire to the back tire. 

While I was going around the car to try Joyce's door, she was busy getting herself out. She managed to get the seat belt unbuckled, and drag herself from the passenger side of the car into the drivers seat. With a broken leg and a damaged shoulder, it was a remarkable feat. She is one determined lady.

We checked on the kid driving the mustang, but he was relatively unharmed. I'm not sure, but I think he was high on weed. He was the right age, and his car smelled funny.

We weren't travelling any more that day, except in the ambulance to the hospital. I called Heather and Marty from the hospital to let them know what had happened. When they got to the hospital, I had been checked out, but Joyce was still having x-rays and scans done.

When the tests were completed, the doctor came in and told us her condition. She would need surgery on the leg to reset it, and surgery on the shoulder to fix the ligaments. It would be a long recovery, and very painful for her.

They performed the surgery on her leg to reset it properly, but the shoulder would have to wait a while before they could fix it.

A quick note to bitch about the hospital. When Joyce was brought into the hospital from the ambulance she was wearing the clothes she had on in the car. After they checked her in, they put her in a hospital gown. She had surgery the next day and when she got back to her room, she told me that something was poking her back. I checked and found several pieces of the safety glass from our car in the bed. They had never even checked to see if she had any injuries to her back. Also, after the surgery, she needed to use the bedpan. The nurse who helped her spilled the bedpan pulling it out from underneath Joyce. She told the nurse she was lying in urine, and the nurse did nothing about it. The day after her surgery they came in and told her she would be sent home that afternoon. We both were incensed. She had not even been to the physical therapy group to tell her how to navigate with her broken leg. 

We called an ambulance and had her transferred to Baylor Garland. She was checked into the rehab unit and spent 2 weeks learning how to get out of bed, roll the wheelchair, get on and off the toilet, and get dressed.  God we hated that first hospital. I think it is now just a day surgery center.

I went to the wrecking yard and looked at the car after the accident. I found out there is a solid steel bar that runs down the length of the front door in that car ( it may be in all cars now). That steel bar is what saved Joyce’s life. If it had not been there to stop the impact, the Mustang that hit us would have come into our car’s interior, and Joyce would now be dead instead of getting annoyed with me about spending so much time on this blog.

During the time I worked for Aztec Comm, I bought a small Saturn to drive. 

Aztec paid me mileage and maintenance while using it for company business.

After the Job with Aztec, Joyce and I bought a Saturn VUE.

It was our first SUV. It was a nice car, and by that time the kids all had their own cars, so we did not need a large vehicle to haul the family any more.

When I started with AFL Comm, I bought another car, because I thought I would be travelling around DFW a lot. I did not know they were supplying me with a company truck. The car I bought was a Hyundai Veloster. 

I loved it, what little I drove it. Joyce absolutely hated it. She thought it was too low to the ground. I think she only rode in it 2 or 3 times while I owned it. 

I believe after the Vue we got a Honda Odyssey.

This car lasted until we paid it off. We decided to get the Kia Soul I now drive.

When the Soul started getting high mileage, 80,000, we traded my Veloster in for the Kia Sportage that Joyce drives now.

I got the Kia soul and it now has about 172,000 miles on the odometer. I don't think that car will ever die.

Well, here ends the reading from Vehicles Chapter 2. AMEN.