Lets go Back in TIME!

[_kiotes_]

When you were a little kid, what was your first car memory. Just something that stands out in your mind.

What stands out the most for me I was able to stand on the floor board of dads 69 Roadrunner just able to see out the side window. The radio was playing Hooked on a feeling by Blue Swede, mom was driving back to the house. Dad also raced back in the early 70's. He was always working on his 56 ford crown vic race car in the shop. I got to go for a test run down the road (man was it loud). Why I remember that I dont know! I couldnt have been more than 3 or 4 at the time. I think about that all the time. I hope my kid look back and say do you remember when dad would take us out in the old dodge and tear around (man that thing would smoke the tires).

Edited May 3, 2011 by _kiotes_

[Young Ed]

Check my thread on the car side. Some of these are before my memory.

http://www430.pair.com/p15d24/mopar_forum/showthread.php?t=26663

[Dave72dt]

My earliest memory isn't something I can see but of a sound. The old truck my dad drove. He painted buidings, barns, sheds, houses but mostly barns. Once in a while0 we got to ride along and I can still hear the whine of the gears when accelerating and the ka-klunk when shifting. I had forgotten about it until I took a F-3 pickup I had just completed for a test run. The memory came back in an instant and the smile wasn't for the successful test run but for moments 50 years ago

Thanks Dad. Rest in peace..

[Dan Babb]

Mine's when I was a bit older...probably around 6 - 1974. My uncle was proabably only 16 or 17 and had a Yellow 'Cuda. It had the 383 Magnum motor I think...definately wasn't a Hemi.

Anyway, we're driving to pickup a pizza to bring home for dinner and I slammed my fingers in the door. He had to run over to unlock the car to open the door. It hurt a lot...but I don't remember crying (too manly, even at 6).

I did really like that car though.

[ggdad1951]

well I can give you several:

truck: driving in the truck I'm restoring with my dad and brother going to county fair with a heifer in the back with hay and straw and asking why the speedo doesn't work and "ticked".

car: riding in the back seat of the '66 Catalina between my brother and sister (I always got the "hump"), sick as a dog to go pick out a new farm puppy (German Shepard) since the beagles all were gone. I loved that puppy even tho he pee'd al over me on the way home

tractor: riding on my dad's knees "steering"

Airplane: riding in the back seat of a Cessna that was a trainer that had a rear seat contol stick, again in the middle between my sibs AGAIN!

[HanksB3B]

One day (I must have be 5 or 6) a car overturned on our street. It was one of those "hump-mobiles" from the 40's. The neighborhood was aghast and everyone rushed to the scene. Just as I arrived a little blond girl crawled out out the rear window, held up an empty ice cream cone and with tears in hers eyes crying said "My ice cream fell out and it was my first one". Everyone was o.k.

Hank

[Don Coatney]

When I was 4-5 years old my mom and dad would put hot bricks wrapped in newspaper on the back seat floor of there 1937 Packard to keep my sister and I warm as we traveled from Indianapolis to Belmont, Indiana to visit my moms uncle. On the way my dad would read the Burma Shave signs to us. My sister and I would play a game of count the cows on your side of the road. Pass a graveyard and you got wiped out and had to start over. Drove through small towns such as Beanblossom, Morgantown, Fruitdale, and my favorite Trafalgar, this was my favorite as my dad taught me to spell it and say it backwards. raglafarT

[Mark D]

My dad and mom had '64 Chevelle SS. It was maroon with a Black vinyl interior. My earliest memories are of my father being frustrated installing the "car seat" that I was to sit in. Dad tells me that the seat was constructed of a metal tube frame and had arms that extended up underneather the back of the rear seat. I'm not sure which worried him more, the fact that his first born son would be riding in something that offered next to no protection of ejection, or the metal arms tearing up his interior! To this day he wishes he kept that car.

[Young Ed]

something like this?

[Flatie46]

I remember my dad had a 65 Impala 4 door when I was a kid. Used to ride over to my cousins house on saturdays. Always listening to the saturday morning bluegrass show. My cousin lived in the sticks, there was a good long gravel road we'd go down. Several small bridges over creeks that I think were just planks thrown down. It always freaked me out when we crossed cause as the tires went over the planks they'd jump up on the end. I always thought we were going in for sure! One of these creeks along the road had old 40's and 50's cars in it and around it. They were there forever seemed like. I was alway focused on that pyle of cars. Dad would always buy gas at the Bay service station close to my house. Paul Gose "The Ghost" lived next door to the station. He was a pretty famous race car driver in this area. [i'm sure you'll find something on him if you google him] He always had old race cars around his house. I remember one 40 Ford coupe that I thought was super cool. Dad went in to get a pack of cigerettes one day and I slipped out of the car to check it out. Paul saw me looking at it and put me in it. Dad was mad when he had seen what I'd done but him and Paul got to talkin' and forgot about it. They still talk about how Paul could take flathead and beat them smallblock Ford and Chevys on the short tracks. He was a good guy.

[greg g]

First car I remember was Dad's 49 Dodge meadowbrook bustle butt 2 door. And hating to wear shorts because of the prickly, ad itchy mohair upholstery.

Also remember sitting between my folks in the front seat, on a seat made from the ends of a fruit box. The top had a padded top that my mother tacked together and the bottom still had the lable on it. Dad would stick his arm out if he needed to stop fast...

Friday night was movie nght at the Drive In, We would take our own popcorn and maybe a hershey bar, Dad would put two ro three beers and two or three soda bottle in the galvanized bucket with some ice and water, and wrapped in burlap and newspaper as a cooler. He also made a bed out of a piece of plywood that layed across the back seat. and supported by some legs to the floor.

Recall playing with other kids in their pajamas on the swings and slides below the screen, then the lights flashed and we all ran back to our cars before the cartoons started Don't ever remember seeing the second movie of a double feature......

I remember lots of Big band stuff on the radio with some Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Vic Damon, Mitch Miller. Some Peggy Lee, Doris Day, Dinah Shore and the McGuire Sisters and Julius La Rosa. The first break through songs I remember were Blueberry Hill and Rocking Robin, and Theresa Brewer had a couple rock type songs.

Also remember later the stations getting switched when Elvis, the BigBopper, or the Everly boys came on. But that was a few years later in the 54 Dodge.......

Edited May 4, 2011 by greg g

[Don Coatney]

Drive in movies. My mom would always pop a large brown grocery store bag full of popcorn before we would head to the drive in movie. Same as today the popcorn cost at the movie was way too much.

[Mark D]

Ed - it was almost exactly like that, except the arms went up under the back seat instead of over the seat. It's a wonder I ever got out of the 60's judging from the looks of that contraption. One qucik stop and you lauch the kid threw the windshield. I do recall how good my dad was at throwing his arm in front of us when he had to stop quickly. But that was when we where older and we got to STAND on the front seat next to him in the '69 SS Wagon!

[TodFitch]

Drifting to sleep in the back seat, with the mohair smell and the sound of the old L-6 engine roaring away the miles on US 80 on the way home from visiting relatives in California...

[SteveMelchiorre]

My Dad had a 69 Fiat Spider (red with a black top) that he had to sell when I was born.

His idea of a family car was a 71' Challenger with a 440 in it. The white interior was not very child friendly...

Steve....

[norrism1]

In the back seat of dads Hudson Hornet looking at the new puppy we just got laying on the seat next to dad and going for a ride. It was in 1960 when I was 5.

[buds truck]

my neighbor had a son who drove a red 49 or 50 Plymouth station wagon, I was probably 6 or 7 years old at the time. I have had a love affair with mopars ever since and have always wanted to own one. I have a 49 Plymouth club coupe that I love, but I still yearn.....

[Scruffy49]

Oh man...

1st hotrod was Uncle Gary's 35 Ford that I tried to knock off the jackstands when I was 3 or 4.

1st "old truck" was Grandpa's 60 Dodge Sweptline Power Giant with a poly 318 and a 3 on the tree. I learned how to change/set points standing on the bumper with Dad or Grandpa holding onto my belt so I wouldn't fall in.

1st "dead old truck" was Grandpa's 49 B1B-108. At my house now.

"Borrowed", okay stole, the keys to Dad's 77 Corolla hatchback and taught myself to drive a 5 speed stick.

Took my driving test in Dad's 73 F100 with 360FE/C6. Still miss it, good truck, 23 mpg highway.

My other Grandpa taught me to drive a 3 on the tree in one of his Fords, in the cemetery. I ran over a tombstone...

Drove great uncle Frank's 37 Dodge 3 ton into the biggest patch of poison ivy in Riverhead New York. I'm not allergic, he was...

Dad and Gary are still around, out in Washington. Both grandpas and Frank are gone. Really want to get my truck done before Dad can't drive it, he and his brother Bob hauled many a steer or heifer in it over the years.

Edited May 4, 2011 by Scruffy49

[Reg Evans]

This photo was taken in early September 1948. I was only 2 weeks old at the time and the old Ford is loaded up and ready for a cross country move from San Mateo,CA. to Silver Springs,MD. Of course I don't remember that trip but I do remember 3 or 4 years later when my mom came back from taking my Dad to the bus station in this car to take me back out in the car to get a turtle that she spotted along the road. Sad news....there was the turtle on the road but...as flat as a pancake.

Then a few years later we all loaded up in a new 55 Mercury and moved back to the East Bay area of Calif. I remember spending many hours watching the countryside go by from the back window of that shiny new Mercury.

[DollyDodge]

I probaly have posted these pictures before, but they bring back lots of memories. Some of my favorite times were driving Dolly Dodge around when I was a kid. I started around 12. These pictures show a time when I got her stuck really good. My grandfather was 85 at the time and we had to walk to get help, I didn't have a drivers license yet. The next day OK Kelly, the tow truck operator, pulled us out. The man standing by himself is my grandfather A.A. Brierly. The other thing my grandfather would let my brother and I do is ride on the running board space right behind the doors as he would drive down the dirt roads of Inyo County. He had wood sticks stuck in the stake holes (as seen in the pictures) and we would hang on to those. Great fun for kids. I also have found memories of the canvas water bags he used (you can see one hanging off the stake), the water from the bags tasted so good.

[John Mathias]

My first vivid memory is driving down the hwy (m78) in Michigan with Dad at the wheel of his new 72 chevy caprice classic. 454/auto, with him tellig me "Gotta clean out the carbon" as he floored it. Don't remember how fast over 100 we went (me standing on the front floorboard), but I do remember the smile on my face. Funny, I dont remember him smiling when I did the same thing in his 78 Olds when he caught me. Althought, I do remember that belt:o. Here's hoping my son get some good memories from camping and playing in his 54'.

[50farmtruck]

I was about 4 or 5 when my Dad taught me to drive a stick so I could move his 3/4 ton Ford around the property & help Mom & him work. I had only a foot or two to back the truck in to position but I still managed to hit something. Hey, I was 5.

Bryan