The first car that I was really aware of, other than the custom-made pedal car with the Austin hood ornament, was a 1938 Chevrolet sedan that dad ran as a cab in Finland. It had a floor shift and since it was in Europe it had those little arms that flipped out of the post between front and rear doors to indicate in which direction you were turning. The actuator switch was right in the middle of the dash, up toward the split windshield. Dad had an odd quirk of running his finger around that black bakelite switch to wipe the dust off every time that he used it. I'm surprised that he didn't wear it right out. Cab drivers in Finland in the postwar years wore uniforms. It started with a hat with a black brim. Grey jacket and grey pants that tucked into black knee-high boots. Yowser. In the winter dad had a leather suit with sheeps' fleece on the inside, the kind that bomber crews wore in the war. I still have the gauntlets from that suit.
Mom got her driver's license with that '38 Chevy which was fairly rare for women in those days. My sister and I would stand on the front seat, no seat belts then, ready to do a header to the floor if the brakes were hit. We had a summer place out in the country and for some reason dad was not along so mom drove with us three kids and my aunt from Kotka and her son. On the way home mom failed to disengage the parking brake fully so the drums heated enough to expand so that when we got to town, there were no brakes. It was quite exciting as we coasted through a busy intersection of five streets with street cars coming from two of them.
The next car was in Canada, a 1929 Chevy coupe with a rumble seat. We kids sat on a wooden seat behind the front seat so we were out of the weather. This Chevy had after-market turn signals. The actuator was clamped to the steering column and had a little rubber wheel that rode on the hub of the steering wheel to click it off when you straightened out. The lights on the front had those eye-brow covers over the top. Prior to these after-market lights, you had to stick your arm out of the window in all weathers to show in which direction you were turning. In those days dad was driving truck hauling peat moss from Burn's Bog. The truck was a 2 ton bull-nose GMC like this but with a big canvas covered bed. In those days a 2 ton truck often carried ten tons. I got to spend a
day with him in this truck when grade one was out for some reason.
When we moved from the flats by the Patullo Bridge to Coquitlam around 1954, the '29 Chevy was traded for a 1938 Hudson Terraplane sedan. Now there was a roomy back seat with swinging grab loops on the rear door posts and padded line that went from one side of the front seat-back to the other, to help rear seat passengers to get up from the plush luxury, and out of the suicide rear doors. What I remember most about that wine coloured Hudson is pushing it up Blue Mountain Road in the winter when the worn tires didn't have a lot of grip in the snow. Often mom and the kids were in the back for ballast and on one snowy evening, the car went up the hill backwards.
I guess that dad thought the Hudson ok because he traded that one in for a 1941 Hudson Commodore around 1956 when we moved onto a couple of acres at the end of Austin Avenue. It was like its predecessor, plush in the back seat with hand loops and I think it even had a little flower vase on the door post. It must have died because it was still in the back yard two cars later and we kids would play in it. Finally a scrap dealer came to get it & dad got 10 bucks. Now you have to pay to have them hauled away.
The next car to come home was a 1947 Chevrolet Fleet Master sedan. Two tone, wine and tan. Yowser. We had a really long driveway and that's where I learned to drive, taking that '47 back and forth up the rocky, potholed drive. The Chevy was followed by a 1947 Studebaker Champion, blue, which later became mine in around 1959 when I was 14 years old. I was supposed to tear the Studebaker apart and learn how it worked, instead I drove it on the back roads until I had to start stealing gas so off it went to the wreckers too. Yep, 10 bucks.
The reason that the '47 Studebaker trickled down to me was that dad had bought a 1956 Chevy wagon, pale green. Wowie. A three year old car after all the relics that we had. The wagon was plain, with plastic seats, but it was great right from its tail light hidden fuel filler to its eagle beaked hood ornament. Power steering was just then becoming an option only so these Chevies had a very large, 18 or 20 inch, steering wheel. After 1959 or 1960, power steering became standard and wheel size started to get smaller. The Chevy became a workhorse around our place as we started putting up houses on that couple of acres. I remember times coming from the lumber yard down on Schoolhouse Road and the front wheels barely touching ground because we were so loaded at the rear. That '56 Chevy took us to New York and back in 1962 and when dad was ready to move to a '62 Chevy Belair in 1963, the old '56 hung around the yard until my sister Satu and her husband Howard were ready to use it.
In the early 1960's, loggers would still come to Vancouver, drink and party their pay cheques and head back into the bush broke. That is how dad got the 1962 Chevy in 1963. The logger was holed up at the then newest hotel in Vancouver, the Bayshore Inn, and needed money. He had bought the Belair brand new but because he used it up north and that model had very deep foot wells, the logger had punched holes in the floor to let the water out. I never did know how dad heard about the car being for sale (no Face Book in them thar days) but he paid $700 for a car that was worth $2400. In those days there was a Motor Vehicle Branch right across Georgia Street from the Bayshore and when dad went to register the vehicle, they thought he was trying to wiggle out of paying sales tax by stating such a low purchase price. Dad had to go back to the Bayshore and drag the logger over to verify the price. He kept the car for a few years and then traded it in on a 1965 Chevrolet Biscayne.
By the time the Biscayne arrived, I already had my own wheels but was still living at home. That winter we drove to California to spend christmas with my older sister and her family. To my shame I managed to smack up dad's new car. I was tooling along too fast on rain damp El Camino Real in Palo Alto and another car made a left hand turn from the other direction across my lane. I almost came to a stop without hitting but did crunch the puny bumper and a bit of the bodywork in front of the hood. We fixed it up ourselves back home, good as new. My own cars were small so it was great to borrow the Biscayne to cruise Vancouver or go on a date. It was almost six feet inside from door to door. Yowser.
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