Memories
My father, looking younger than 16, if you ask me, at the wheel of the family car. A 1927 Chevrolet.
His memoirs record a couple of incidents related to that car:
The first car I ever drove, and in fact learned to drive on, was my folk's 1927 Chevrolet 4-door sedan. I don't know if they bought it new, but that's unlikely as we were pretty hard up for cash on our Manitoba (Canada) half-section farm back in the depression days of the 1930's and early 40's. I was 16 years old in 1947 and had already been driving the car around the farm and to the neighbours and the like. But I knew you SHOULD have a driver's license so one day I took the car and drove the 8 miles into our local small town of Oak Lake in south-west Manitoba. The municipal office issued driver's licenses in those days, so I presented myself at the municipal office where the clerk asked "Did you drive in?" When I nodded, he proceeded to fill out the form and issue me with my first driver's license.
The old Chevy had wooden spoke wheels, a wooden body and a wooden steering wheel but it DID have a starter, tho' we often had to resort to cranking, especially on cold days in the fall. We always put the car "up on blocks" in the winter. A year or so after I left home my folks were still driving the car until one day, at an intersection in town, someone "T-boned" them. No one was hurt but the old wooden "Body by Fisher" couldn't really be repaired, so that was the end of the road for our old car.
