Our 1931 Chevy has been a part of my family for as long as I can remember. My father bought the car in 1957 from a friend of his in Nelsonville, Ohio when I was yet one year old. As the story goes, he had a choice between the little maroon 1931 Chevy for $125 or a 1947 Hudson. The Chevy won out and it became a part of the family from then on.
Dad drove the car to work occasionally in the summers I have been told. The earliest recollection I have of riding in the car was when I must have been about seven or eight and my sister was still a toddler. We had a good time with mom and dad in the front seat and my sister and I in the rumble seat cruising down High Street on a warm summer night. Soon after I suppose, the car was retired to the back of my grandparent�s barn, among the groundhogs and other barnyard rodents where it sat unattended for several years.
One summer when the family farm was sold, the Chevy saw sunlight once again but only long enough to be towed to another local barn. A couple of summers after that, dad would hook the car up to a tractor and pulled the '31 back to our house for a cleaning. I thought it was really fun to get on the top of the front fenders and slide down the running boards like a sliding board!
My First Experience with Driving
I really began my interest in driving when I was about 14 and dad towed back to our house another car we had in storage, a 1938 Pontiac Coupe. He was able to get the car running one afternoon, and he told me I could drive the car around our front yard (about 2 acres) if I was careful. With me out driving contently in the front yard going round and round in 1st gear, dad went off to attend to another project in the garage. Well, I must have gone around the yard about a hundred times just having the time of my life! It would be safe to say the old Pontiac had not been driven that long and hard for over 10 years. It must have been the cloud of dust that caught dad's attention. I had over the course of the afternoon - worn down a beautiful dirt oval in the yard. That was the end of my first driving/dirt track experience. |
