You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

MY FIRST CAR

Over the summer of 1952, while riding my bike around Eugene, I would occasionally pass the tennis courts on the University of Oregon campus. On those occasions, I noticed that an old Ford coupe was always parked in the same spot next to the tennis courts. It was covered in dust. It had leaves from the previous Fall and other debris piled up under it. I thought that it must be abandoned. I began to fantasize about having that cute little car. Late on a Friday afternoon in December, I peddled past it and decided to try to find out if it was abandoned. There was a dormitory across the street. It seemed logical that the owner of the car would live in that dorm. I went in. I asked several people, “Do you know who owns the Ford coupe parked by the tennis courts?” No one knew what I was talking about. But then a student told me, ”One of the guys in room 307 might know about it.” I climbed the stairs to 307. A young man answered my knock. I introduced myself and asked, “Do you know anything about the Ford coupe parked by the tennis courts?”. “Yes,” He said, “I am Jason. Come in.” I asked, “Is it for sale?” He explained the car belonged to a friend who had returned to Hawaii. His friend had told him to sell it. “How much does he want for it?” I asked. He responded, “How much you got?” This was a question I had not anticipated. I hadn't expected to find anyone who knew about the car. It never occurred to me to consider what I would do if I needed to negotiate a price. I paused, attempting to add up what I had at home and in my meager savings account. He interrupted my thoughts and said, “No, no, I mean how much do you have on you, now?” I emptied my pockets, and $3.64 came out. Jason’s friend laughed. Shaking his head, he said, “Come back when you have some real money”. Then Jason said, as if thinking out loud, “We have a party tomorrow night. $3.64 will buy a short case of beer.” Jason looked at his friend, who shrugged his shoulders. There was another pause. Then Jason turned to me and said, “OK, it’s yours”. He stood up and walked over to his dresser. He rummaged through the socks and underwear until he found a small envelope. From the envelope, he produced a signed Oregon DMV title and an ignition key. Speaking to his roommate, he said, “Kai told us to sell it. He didn’t say for how much.” He turned and handed me the title and key. I emptied my hand full of coins and wrinkled dollar bills onto his desk. There was another awkward pause in which none of us knew what to say. I thanked him, and we said goodbye. I left. I could hardly believe that I had just bought a car, that beautiful 1937 Ford Coupe, for three dollars and sixty-four cents.

By then it was twilight. I can remember my excitement as I walked over to what was now MY CAR. I put the key into the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened, not even a click. The battery must be dead, I thought. “What can I do?” It was getting dark. I opened the hood and the radiator cap. I could see that there was no water in it. I found an abandoned paper cup next to the curb. Half a block away, there was a water fountain near the gate to the tennis courts. I filled the cup and walked back to empty it into the radiator. I repeated this trip back and forth between my car and the water fountain many times. It was becoming dark and cold. I looked around, wondering what to do. It was then that I noticed a trickle of water running down the street from under my car. It had not rained. I knew that a leak meant that the engine probably had a cracked block. I got onto my bike and rode home.

Several days later, in a phone conversation with my dad, I told him about the car and the cracked block. A couple of days after that, he called me to say that he had talked to his mechanic and that he would pay for his mechanic to install a junkyard engine into my coupe if I could find one.

I called local junkyards and located one that had an engine. It was from a wrecked ‘42 Ford. It was more powerful than the 1937 engine, but it would fit into my coupe. I went to see it. I was shown an engine on the floor of the junkyard shop. I asked, “How do I know it runs?” The junk man said, “I’ll start it.” I looked at it, a dead engine sitting on a concrete floor. It seemed impossible to start it; there was no key, no starter switch, no throttle, and no fuel. The junk man took a battery with cables from his workbench and set it on the floor next to the engine. He clipped the black cable from the battery onto the engine block. He crossed the shop to his bench and poured gasoline into an empty beer can. With the can in one hand and the red battery cable in the other, he proceeded to pour a small trickle of gas into the open carburetor. With his other hand, he touched the end of the red cable to the starter terminal. There were sparks, and the engine cranked over a couple of times. He continued to pour a small stream of gas into the carb, and the engine roared to life. I was amazed at this stunt and bought the engine. Dad’s mechanic arranged for the car to be towed to his shop and for the delivery of the engine. He was doing the installation after hours as a kind of favor for Dad, so it took a couple of anxious months to be completed. During this time, I occasionally rode my bike to the shop to see my car and delight in the progress being made.

At the time the engine was installed, I was 15 and had my learner’s permit. One of my high school friends had recently moved from Oklahoma, where he had been able to become a licensed driver at age 15. So I could drive legally as long as he was in the passenger seat. When he wasn’t available, I would take it for a spin on the empty roads of Hendricks Park, which was close to our house. By some miracle, I was never caught driving without a license.

My friends wanted to ride with me, but the coupe had no back seat. To accommodate passengers, I removed the panel that separated the driver’s compartment from the trunk and placed a mattress in the space between the back of the front seat and the trunk latch. If I had more than one passenger, the others could climb into the trunk and recline on the mattress.

I thought that this arrangement would be convenient for drive-in movies. I could back into the parking spot and open the trunk, from there my friends and I could watch the movie while lying on the bed. When we tried it, it was not all that great. By the end of the movie, we all had stiff necks.

There was a problem. The ‘37 Ford had mechanical brakes. These were steel cables connecting the brake pedal to the brake levers on each of the wheel housings. These cables were prone to becoming shorter or longer depending on the outside air temperature. In order to have consistent braking, I occasionally had to crawl under the car and adjust the brakes. This was an unpleasant task, especially in the Winter when the pavement was cold and wet.

I didn’t want to continually have to adjust the brakes and that installing hydraulic ones would be complicated and expensive. I decided to sell the car. A neighbor, Tony, a boy two years older than I, had a friend, named Jake, who was willing to pay $150 for it. I accepted, but then when I handed the title and keys to him, he said he couldn’t come up with all of the money immediately. He handed me seventy-five dollars and promised that he would pay me the remaining $75 in a week when he was paid at work. I let him take it. I never got the balance. When I challenged my neighbor friend to intervene, he laughed and said, “Well, that’s Jake”. As you can see, since I write about it, I am still angry at Tony and Jake 72 years later.