Somewhere on the blog I saw an article which made reference to “an older car – a 1989 Buick”. That got me thinking about the cars in my life.

In 1944, learned to drive in a 1929 Buick coupe. It was a racy model with a rumble seat (a seat in back of the cab that opened up like a trunk. Room for two). It had velvet interiors, tassels around the windows, an oak wood dash board and steering wheel. Stick shift. 29” wooden spoke wheels with no-nonsense truck tires. It had a 6-cylinder in-line engine, and got about 5 miles per gallon of gas. Thankfully, gas was just 15 cents a gallon. We took the rumble seat out, opened up the back and used it like a pickup truck. It was a very powerful machine. Cost? We found it up on blocks in the garage of a little old lady, and she parted with it for the grand sum of $50. I don’t know what eventually happened to this car, but we certainly got our money’s worth out of it. My dad, his father, and I used it to build our first real home over on Roxbury Street.

The Buick was replaced by a Ford Model B, also a 1929. It too was a coupe, and the engine was a trivial-looking apparatus under the hood. All you needed to work on the engine was a pair of pliers, a screwdriver and some bailing wire. Like all Ford cars of that vintage, it was black.

By the time I was in college and seriously interested in girls, my parents had acquired a “new car”, a 1939 Oldsmobile. That was in 1948. Why all these old cars? Because of the 2nd World War. There were no cars produced for civilian markets during the war years. So a good used car was worth a lot, and that’s what people drove. The Olds was acquired by my family after the war, but we still could not afford a brand new car. Actually, my dad was sensible about cars, I think.

During the years after graduating from college, I had a variety of cars. Married and raising a family, we liked station wagons which had space to accommodate our four kids. As a young Army Lieutenant, we drove from post to post all over the US in these cars. Sometimes towing all our worldly goods in a home-built trailer to save moving costs. Those were the happy go lucky years.

One of the memorable events in 1961 was our arrival in Lawton, Oklahoma at night, hungry after a long day's drive from Dugway, Utah. We pulled up at this place with golden arches, advertising hamburgers. We didn't realize that it was MacDonald's. I bought a sack full of hamburgers for about 5 cents apiece, and we all feasted on them in the car.

When I was in Bangkok, I drove a Fiat 125. A peppy 4-door car with a V-4 engine, 25 HP per cylinder. Stick shift, right hand drive. I drove that car all over Thailand for 5 years and sold it when I left for India. It never let me down.

Before leaving Bangok I bought a car at the PX, of all places. As a member of the Embassy I had access to that facility, so bought a nice Mercury Marquis Brougham 1972 sedan, loaded, for delivery to me in New Delhi. A couple of months after we were settled in Shanti Niketan, the car showed up on a flat bed trailer pulled by a bullock and a caribao. I kid you not – that’s India. Someone had stolen the spare tire. I drove that car everywhere in luxurious comfort, feeling something like an aircraft carrier commander, though not without risk, because it was left hand drive which is very tricky to drive on the left as they do in India. When I left in 1974 for Syria, I sold it for exactly what I paid for it. I could have gotten more on the black market. The car was handed over to one of the Ministers of Government.

In Syria I bought a Plymouth hard top convertible from a dealer in Beirut. My wife wanted it. We eventually took that car to Washington DC and drove it there until we left for Cairo.

In Cairo I bought a Buick, and it was a lemon. That was the only post-WWII GM car I ever bought.

In West Africa, I bought a Peugeot in Paris, configured for Africa, and shipped it to Abidjan, Cote d’Iviore. It was a good serviceable car.

Now here in the Philippines, many years later, I drive diesel powered Ford SUVs, Mitsubishi pickups and an Isuzu 1.5 T drop side flatbed truck that we could never get along without. I don’t know why Americans don’t switch to diesel engines. The rest of the world, for the most part, is running on diesel.

Whenever I go to the US, which is not that often, I usually drive a Ford Focus, which I really like. It is fun to drive, and has a huge trunk. I sold it on my last trip, and will use rentals from now on. Every time I pull into the supermarket parking lot in Issaqua, and park among the BMWs, Porches, Lexus and Mercedes SUVs, and Cadillac pickups, a wave of inferiority sweeps over me. I keep telling myself than none of those fancy wheels are paid for. In fact, now, many of them may have been repossessed.

-=<()>=-