Land Cruiser

My father always said he had been wrong once. He must have been referring to the huge mistake he made in December, 1949. He bought a ‘50 Studebaker as a surprise Christmas present for my mother. She never drove it. Her problem wasn’t that it was a Studebaker. With the exception of his first car, a Model A Ford, neither of them had ever owned anything else. She was used to standard shift and non-power steering. Her real objection was that he made a major purchase without talking it over with her first. After that incident, I don’t believe he ever bought a pack of Luckys without clearing it with her. My mother continued to drive her ’41 Studebaker with rust holes in the floor.

Dad taught me to drive on the bullet nose. We lived on a private gravel road, and I sprayed a lot of stone getting used to the clutch. When Mom thought I was ready, she let me drive about a mile down the hill to pick Dad up at the bus stop. I was 15. I started to mark off the 730 days until I could get a drivers license on the basement wall. It was a long two years. Good thing neither one was a leap year.

Our next-door neighbor had a decent ’36 Ford humpback Tudor which he used as his daily transportation. He kept it in a garage stall which he rented from us. One day, it couldn’t make it up the hill, so he had the compression checked. His mechanic said he was surprised that it moved on level ground, let alone uphill. If I had asked for the car, I think he would have given it to me. If not, I could have paid him what he got to scrap it, but I never brought it up.

In 1955, Mom took the family shopping for a station wagon. We looked at a DeSoto with an unfortunate olive and white paint job. Mom and I liked it anyway. Dad wouldn’t buy it because it cost over $4,000. It had a Hemi, but who knew? My brother John and I lobbied for a Nomad but Dad didn’t think a two door wagon made sense. Besides, he was wary of the new, unproven Chevy V-8 engine. Eventually, Mom picked out a two tone blue ’55 Dodge wagon with the 270 ci non-hemi V-8 and a two speed automatic. It was a slug.

I started looking for a car when I was 16. The first one I looked at was a ’36 Dodge coupe. I remember thinking how tiny the engine looked. I was already V-8 oriented. Next, I looked at a red ’39 Ford convertible. The rumble seat had been removed and the lid leaded shut. It had a ’49 Plymouth rear bumper and 6” shackles on the rear spring. I bought it for $150.00. I hand sanded off six layers of paint, sprayed it with rattle cans of gray primer, and installed fender skirts on the back. If I took a corner at more than 15 mph, the inside wheel hit the fender skirt and knocked it off. If the top was down, whoever was riding in the back seat would jump up, run down the rear deck and retrieve the skirt. Spectators must have been amused.

Some of my friends and I started a car club in Metuchen, NJ. With unintentioned irony, we called ourselves “The Saints”. The most memorable member was Celestin “Charles” Matteo, who had an old Pontiac with 20 feet of flex pipe wound through the frame (no mufflers). Charlie’s mother was inclined to throw heavy objects in Charlie’s direction for real or imagined infractions. When she missed him with a glass ashtray and dented the wall, she said “You’re in trouble now. I’monna tell your father you did that.” Charlie would’ve been better off if she hit him.

Charlie’s father was a professional boxer with a history of winning by knockouts. Because of the ashtray incident, he decided to teach Charlie the manly art of self defense. He said “Swing at me.” Charlie protested. His dad insisted. Charlie threw a right; his father blocked it and knocked him cold. He woke up ten minutes later. His father asked him “How many times I told you not to hit your old man?”

The Saints bought a ’35 Ford coupe body and frame for $25.00. We were going to build a stock car. We figured “Why not?” Looking back, I’d have to say that an abysmal lack of talent, money, desire, knowledge and probably driving ability were adequate reasons why not. I have no idea what ever happened to the car, but we never lifted a finger to work on it.

When I was working on the convertible, I drove the ’50 Studebaker. My friend Rich Schulz observed “It must be terrible to own a car and know that no matter what you to it, it will never be fast.” I had a job at Two Guys from Harrison, one of the first discount super store chains. The store, which had a grocery department, sat on a hill North of Route 22. Shopping carts rolled down the hill regularly, sometimes hitting cars on the highway. After the store closed, we had to collect the carts. We used the Studebaker to push them up the hill, through the doors and into the store. One night, we were pushing 150 carts up the hill when someone locked the doors to the store. The carts were rolling about 20 mph when they hit the locked doors. There was a loud crash, the aluminum door frames bent like a pretzel and glass flew everywhere. Time to look for a new job.

My next automotive purchase was a ten dollar ’39 Chevy coupe. It had faded black paint, a screeching throw out bearing and a huge dent in the right front fender. Since someone might miss the fact that the fender was dented, I took gold paint and painted ”6 DEAD” in the dent in four inch letters. A Plainfield cop told me “Get this piece of shit out of my town and never come back.”