The first car I owned was a 1941 wore out Ford that I purchased in 1948. On the way back to Salina, Kansas where I was in the Strategic Air Command, that car burned 10 gallons of oil. Don't think it burnt much gas because it was too busy burning oil. I got a shade-tree mechanic to do something to it and that worked OK for a couple of months, but when I headed back to Texas after escaping from the Air Force it started burning oil again.

        After getting the engine completely overhauled I drove that sucker another hunnert thousand miles! A funny thing about that car however, was that every once in a while the engine would just sputter and stop. Turned out to be the Fuel Pump had decided to stop pumping fuel! I bought a new fuel pump and threw the old one in the trunk of the car. Then the new pump stopped working too. So I took the old fuel pump out of the trunk and used it. That ole car took off like it had a brand new fuel pump! For a long time I switched them fuel pumps back and forth and that pore ole car never knew the difference.

        One day while on a grocery shopping trip to San Angelo however, I saw this beautiful 1949 Ford with one of them fancy Sun Visors and decided I couldn't live without it. It had something called an 'overdrive' that was supposed to be the latest thing. A few days later I went down to the local grocery store which was on a hill. When I was paying for my groceries the owner said, 'Is that your car out there?" I proudly said, 'Yes maam!' She then said, "Well, it is leaving.' I looked out the window and sure enough, my car was headed right on down the hill all by itself! I went loping out there and since I was young and swift I caught up with and rescued it! That was when I found out that if you have it in 'overdrive' you have to put it in Reverse or something when you park it!

        A year or so later, again in San Angelo, I spied a beeutiful Chrysler four-door sedan in a used-car lot and before I knowed what had happened I owned it. That sucker had something called a 'Fluid Drive' which worked OK as long as you weren't in no hurry. One time when I was trying to get out of the way of a Greyhound bus that Fluid Drive thing was so slow I almost got kilt. After I got thru shaking I took it back to the finance company and said, 'Here you are, I don’t want it no more!"

        Since by this time I was getting plum car poor, I bought me a stripped down two-door six cylinder 1953 Ford with nothing extra but a heater. But it was brand NEW, something I was not used to. It didn't take me but about a year until I got the car fever again and somehow I wound up with a beautiful 1954 V8 Ford! Since by that time I was plum car poor I decided to change the oil and filter myself. I bought a filter and the oil from a service station about three miles away and then found out that the filter was plum under the engine and not on top like them simple engines. Well, after a couple of hours I got the old filter undone in the process of which I got oil all over myself. Then I discovered that the replacement filter was the wrong dang size! So I had to walk plum back up to that service station, get some more oil so I could drive that stupid car to get a simple oil change....That was the last time I ever worked on a car!

        The next car I bought was a 1957 Mercury, a beautiful car with one of them new fangled air conditioners. Being the kind thoughtful guy that I was I let my wife drive it home…But she of course didn't know how to drive very well and as soon as we drove up to the house the air conditioner poured water all over my feet! That car turned out to be the mother of all lemons. Several times I almost got kilt by some burly mechanics when I yelled at them for not fixin that stupit car... Also was in the plum middle of a busy intersection in Los Angeles when the motor died. Had to get out and put a tube of lipstick between two thangs to get it started.. Talk about weird!

        I still get upset when I think back about that car so I think I will go take my BP pills.. May write about some more cars if I don't kick the bucket!