Times Past: Wheels

I’m a Baby Boomer who grew up in Adelaide, the relatively small capital city of South Australia.

This month the theme of Times Past is, “Wheels” and what excitement there always was anticipating a “new set of wheels”.

Me on the left, Mum and Dad with Mike sitting in front.

The first family car I remember was a big black one, The Oracle, ie big brother, tells me it was a 1938 Pontiac. I can still remember sitting in the back seat when Dad drove Mum to hospital for my sister’s birth when I was 3 years old. It had what are now referred to as “suicide doors”, I just remember sitting lost in the big bench seat of the cavernous, dark vehicle.

The next one, a Ford Thames estate car, I remember more for the associated angst than anything else. Dad bought it from a cousin who worked for “Dependable Motors” and there seemed to be one problem after another with it. I guess it appeared perfect for a family with five children. The first time I rode in it was when I was picked up from the railway station after a holiday at my auntie’s in Port Pirie. I tried to wangle my way into the front seat but obviously absence hadn’t made the heart grow fonder. I had to sit behind on the bench seat for two and behind that was another bench seat. The only other memory I have of it was sleeping under the stars beside it and Dad spending hours under it after it broke down about 2 hours into a planned long holiday. There is no family photo of the car, not suprisingly!

The replacement for the barrel of bolts was a Vanguard Spacemaster.

I don’t ever remember the 1954 Vanguard, Spacemaster breaking down and over the years we went from one side of Australia to the other. It had big bench seats front and back. I can remember shortly after I got my license reversing it out of the driveway and getting it caught in the wire of the gate. The gate was open at the time I just didn’t manage to keep a straight line! Thinking back I have no idea how I managed to drive it at all, the bench seat was set up for Dad and I always felt the car drove me not the other way around. The Vanguard was eventually put out to pasture in the back yard and stayed rusting there until Dad died and it went for scrap.

I’d left home when Dad got the Valiant but I did get to drive it a few times and was most impressed.

 

Not once in his life did Dad get a brand new car.

Before I was born Mum did drive but the story was that one day when she was driving in the city the car got stuck on some tram lines. Mum bundled my brothers out, got home somehow and told Dad where he could find the car. After I got my license Mum “bought me” a Ford Consul at a local auction for $65. Some days after it arrived home Mum got me to sit with her in the car, when she asked, “Which one is the brake pedal?” my heart sank. She’d never had to sit a test to get her license but surreptisiously kept renewing it  until she decided she was going to drive again. Fortunately she never did but if Dad was driving anywhere in busy traffic and we spoke to Mum she’d say,  “Don’t distract me, I’m driving!”

My sister and our niece with the early 1950s Ford Consul.

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