The Old Coot’s first car
was a beauty.
By Merlin Lessler (A south
side kid, now an old coot)
I bought my first car in
May, 1962 from Jack Tyler, a classmate in the Electrical Technology class at
Broome Tech (now SUNY Broome). The campus consisted of four classroom buildings
and a combination cafeteria – gymnasium-hang-out area and a quad.
The car was a 1953 Ford
convertible. Jack couldn’t get it started and left it in the parking lot at
Cloverdale Dairy on Conklin Ave., one block to the east of Telegraph Street. It
sat there all winter, buried under a pile of snow. Jack couldn’t get any takers, so he let me
have it for $60, taking a loss from the $350 he’d paid for it a year earlier.
My friend, Jimmy Wilson,
and I dug it out, jumpered it from his car and twisted the ignition wires
together in the Ford, since there were no keys to this beauty. It didn’t start.
Out of gas? No, the gauge read half full. We had a brainstorm, try some dry
gas. It did the trick; the car started right up; I backed it out onto Conklin
Avenue and it quit. I added another can of dry gas and I drove one block to the
gas station at the bottom of Telegraph Street, pulled to the pump and added 10
gallons to the tank. At 26 cents a gallon it nearly emptied my wallet of the three
dollars I had left after buying the dry gas. The gauge still read half full,
yet another of the imperfections of this, my greatest treasure, a 1953 Ford
convertible. No Keys to the ignition or the trunk -a non-functioning gas gauge
a heater that didn’t work and the motor to lift the convertible top was missing.
“Why,” you ask? “Would you buy such a beast?” Did I mention it was a
convertible?
I solved the trunk key
problem by taking out the back seat, crawling into the trunk and fastening a
cord to the lock so I could open it from inside the car. The Ford had one other
problem – a bad spot in the starter motor. If it landed on that spot when I
turned it off, it wouldn’t start; I had to get a push, or if I’d parked on a
hill, pop the clutch and get it going. It was a game of Russian Roulette,
except with a starter motor, not with a gun.
That car took me through
the summer of 1962. Many trips to Quaker Lake with the top down and the wind rushing
over me. To my first real job, at Compton Industries on the Vestal Parkway and
into marriage in January, 1963. It was parked on the hill outside my parent’s
house, waiting for us in six inches of snow when we came out the door after a
small in-house reception. Off we went on our honeymoon, only fifty dollars to
our name, a car with no heat, no keys, a top that had to be yanked up by hand
and a bad starter. But for us, at that age, it was, “No Problem!” We were
living the dream. I sold it in the fall for $100 and bought my first of five VW
Beetles. Brand new with a thirty-seven-dollar monthly payment. It seemed the
mature thing to do since we were expecting our first child in December and
needed to become real grown-ups.
Comments? Complaints? Send
to mlessler7@gmail.com
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