1962 Econoline, Found On Road Dead

Not mine, but similar.

But I did find it on the road dead.  The 62 econoline was on Diamond Street, which was the northern border of Temple University in 1983 or so.  It was some sort of telephone repair truck, with windows only on the passenger side, though actually, there was no glass in the vehicle at all.  But, I liked the old "Scooby Doo" style vans, and despite the fact that it was dull green with two wheels missing,  glass busted out, and doors open, it didn't look bad.  I also knew that we had lots of leftover ford van parts from my dad's various wrecks, even a newly rebuilt 300 cu. 6 cyclinder motot...   Anyway, to make a long story short, I borrowed Jim and Cathy's Fairmount Wagon, picked up a Uhaul trailer and towed it to Reading.  Amazingly, after unloading it, I was working on one of the wheels when a cat exited the vehicle.  Somehow, he had managed to stay there the entire (very windy) drive from Philly.  He was orange and friendly.  I patted him on the head and continued working.  A few minutes later, I realized he was kneeding my leg.  I went to push him away a saw that he had managed to get about 16 square inches of my shirt into his drooly mouth, yuck!  This cat was to sire many of our stupidest and most loved orange cats, I believe we named him Malcolm, but that could also have been his offspring.
  Eventually, the van looked pretty sharp.  Jim helped me paint it white (we may have painted both vans white in the same week) and we put the wide Torino rims on it.  I had also cut the sunroof out of the Mustang 2 (poor Mustang 2) and riveted it into the roof of this van.  Then I took the M2's seats and bolted them to the seat pedestal's of the van.  By the time it was all over, it was a pretty pleasant vehicle.
 Many things happened in the van because like all white vans it was a secret agent van.  I taught the anti-graffiti kids the true meaning of fear by taking them all swimming at St Petersberg quarry when Philadelphia was on strike (what was I thinking).  I was Bryan Root's personal camera vehicle for a while, with platforms mounted above and in front of the van.  Mike Garr wrote the song "Carbon-monoxide" to celebrate driving as a passenger in the back of this van.  I forced Gerry Bannan to surprise his girlfriend 3oo miles away so she could feel extra awkward about dumping him when we arrived AND -not having learned my lesson- then we stopped in on MY ex-girlfriend with much the same result.  Jimmy likes to remind me that early one morning on my way to look at realestate with Russell, I immediately spilled half a cup of coffee in my lap in this van.  I was wearing cutoff painters pants (white).  The coffee made a fantastic stain from high on the front to wide on the back.  A conversation stopper to say the least.
  Until I changed the engine (it had a worn out 144 cu six.  We crammed the 300 into it with only minor cutting of the floor and engine compartment), the carburetor floats used to stick, causing a panic situation where you have to tear open the engine compartment (located between the front seats) and whack the carb all the while hoping the engine wouldn't catch fire.  One night it did. It was halloween.  It was late and we were returning from...  Jim Wynkoop's maybe.  Remo Saraceni's son Luca was visiting, I can't remember what he was dressed as.  I had been the human fly, but I had taken off my fly eyes, but the rest of me was blacked out and my hair was spiked.  Mike Garr was dressed as a Salt shaker with a cube of NaCl on one foot for balancing on (brilliant). We're driving down Spring Garden and as we reach 12th, I smell the gas, then I hear it ignite.  Mike smells it too.  Luca is sleeping in the back of the van.  I don't want to park the van near ANYTHING because it may burn to the ground in the next few minutes and it would be bad form to spread the problem.  So I stop right in the center of Spring Garden (it's two lanes in both directions with a center turning lane), Mikes out with Luca, I'm trying to open the engine compartment.  Mike is circling the van yelling at me to get away.  I'm telling him I'lll be careful, but no sense losing a van if you don't have to .  He is going in bigger and faster orbits around the van, looking like some sort of space ship with his salt shaker costume on.  He keeps grabbing me and yelling but he's incoherent, I keep turning around and trying to explain I'm busy.  finally, I grab him by the shoulders and say, "get a fire extinguisher!"  Finally, with a mission, he shoots off down the street toward what looks like, at a great distance, a very large bumble-bee.  Now I've got the engine compartment open and indeed the engine is on fire, but it's not THAT bad.  I grab my indian blanket throw it on the engine, stuffing it down into the cracks to put out the blaze.  It mostly works, but they keep igniting again from underneath, so I keep trying to throw the blanket in a different way.  Now someone else is talking to me, "excuse me, excuse me, do you need help or anything?"  There's a little car behind me with four teenagers in it.  As I turn around and pull the blanket off the motor, the flames spring up and lick the roof of the van, as though hell had opened up in the floor.  Backlit by flames, blacked out and spiked, and sweating like a pig, I must have been quite a sight because they looked at me and the driver just said, "nevermind," and peeled away. I went back to my swatting with the blanket but I just couldn't get the last bits of the fire out, the blanket wouldn't fit in the small spaces.  I remember losing my temper and just doing it with my hands.  Mike got back with a fire extinguisher and we made sure it was out.  He had ended up at the massage parlour that was being watched over by a large man in a Yellow and Black tux.  It took a lot of convincing to get him to lend out the fire extinguisher, and a few of the girls who worked there had to help him find it.
  We pushed the van over to the curb, parked it legally, and walked the remaining 15 blocks home.  I think I picked the van up the next day.  It was a bit like a campfire the day after.  I think I headed off to Reading to change the engine;  a guy can only take so much.  

John and Kay, auto-fashionistas

I have only the vaguest memories of the dark green 1957 Nomad with the Red Cigar band parked under the porte-cochère at Little Linden farm.  But I remember clearly the "new" cars, the 1967 or so Pontiac Wagon and the Oldsmobile Toronado (1969?).  The wagon was gold with a black top or some very stylish combination of black and gold.  It was one of those bloated american wagons with the two way tailgate and rear facing seats in the way-back. And because it was a Pontiac, it had the enormous chrome nose, which to my kid's eyes made it seem like the Firebird of station wagons (which I still thought were cool).  This was Grandmom's car, luxurious but useful.  Grandad's Toronado was medium, metalic blue, anything but useful.  As long as the wagon and 6 inches wider, it was a two door.  The white interior reminded you of the kind of white leather loafers that really rich guys wore, and indeed, they might also drive this kind of car.  The Toronado was the luxurious future, this was the car that the best sci-fi/car designers had saved for their flagship (flag-space-ship) vehicle. I remember looking at these two gleaming vehicles and thinking "wow", some people can really buy a car. 

There came that time when all I thought of was performance of the camaro, mustang,and GTO variety so these vehicles lost their high place of admiration.  However, once I was mostly "over" the muscle car phase, I remember stopping by to visit Kay. My grandfather had died a few years before and they had even given us the Pontiac wagon. But she was still driving the Toronado, "it just doesn't seem to have the pep it used to," she complained,"could you take a look at it?"  I lifted the 9 1/2 foot-long hood and gazed at the 455 cu engine. Nothing obvious seemed wrong.  I took it out for a "test-drive" in her quiet neighborhood.  Silently rolling out the white stone driveway, and sinking into the leather bench seat, I returned to my previous admiration of the car.  Wow, no tranny hump, and look at that speedometer; the drum type that rolls downward as you accelerate. I didn't want to throw any stones so I got all the way out on the street, lined up with the road and I pushed the pedal to the floor.  The car wasn't loud but the front tires started shreiking and I was pushed back into the -rather comfortable- seat.  Then the four-barrels kicked in about two seconds later and the front tires broke free, which is a very weird feeling in a front wheel drive boat.  I was going way too fast for this neighborhood, so I let off and saved it for a less populated street; went under 309 and made a right.  Again. Ferocious. And a little scary.  I brought the car back to Little Linden and parked it carefully in the driveway.  "Seems to be running okay to me, Grandmom,"  I said, still a little shaky from the adrenaline, "maybe you just need to move the seat up a little..."

What the hell was she doing with that thing?

My present ride, the 96 Town and Country

It's true that you have to invest about $5,000 in these vehicles right after they cross the 100K mark, but it's actually been a pretty good vehicle, and for the price it's pretty cushy with leather seats, etc.  However, all at once a few years ago the paint started pealing off in US letter size pieces, so I had Nine and her friends paint it.  This is paint job number 3, and that's Nine, Maya, and Johnny on top of the van after painting it.  Thanks kids!

First Car Memory, the '65 Rambler Wagon

If it is true that Mom and Dad once bought a new car, then I would have been around 2.  I remember crawling around in the back of the Rambler Wagon at the dealers'.  I remember with exactness, the pattern on the silver-gray seats; little rounded rectangles the fit together to form something similar to a weave pattern, with little rounded square holes.  Mom and Dad were trying to keep me contained to the rear seat.  I was rolling all around and onto the floor with the fuzzy black carpet.  I got back up on the seat and leaned over the back of the front seat; the steering wheel was big and shiny and black and chrome.  I remember thinking how attractive it was.  Then I was looking at the seat belt buckles, they seemed so clean and heavy with a big circular depression with the same R that was on the steering wheel.  Cool.  The seats made a zipping noise when I lifted my leg up, the pattern had transferred.  I think I was wearing diapers.  I don't remember driving home in the car, but then the car was there like it's "timeline" in my life had begun, sort of like my younger siblings, things are suddenly there and then they stay there.

Learning to drive stick, at night, with no clutch, when you're 15,..

I remember when I was 9 years old, that it was STILL going to be 7 years until I could drive.  Like many boys, I dreamed of driving ALL the time.  I "practiced" driving stick shift -mentally-from what I understood of the mechanism.  I ran around making engine noises and shifting gears, much in the same way that my daughter trots, canters, and gallops now.  Dad let us steer the cars home, usually from church, so the middle front seat was hotly contested.  To say the least, I was very ready to drive.

  In yet another, "driving home from Uncle T's" episode, I got my big break when I was 15 (1978).  We were making our way home from the farm in the 72 VW microbus.  I wasn't paying attention much except to notice that we weren't taking the normal route, we were on route 209 or 309 or something. Dad stopped at a light, and there was a lot of thumping on the floorboards accompanied by his usual incantations.  We pulled over to the shoulder (a second home to my family...) and Dad slid under the back of the van.  Here's the weird part, where I need some help...  Somehow, Dad either lost or broke his glasses, or he had already lost them before and now he lost his remaining contact lens, or something, but he was blind as a bat.  So he couldn't drive and to make matters worse, the clutch cable sleeve had split, making the clutch inoperable. 

"We'll need to drive her with no clutch,"  Dad said. My mom didn't drive stick at the time, Jim wasn't there, Jenny didn't think she could but she barely had time to consider.  "I got it, Dad," I said nonchalantly.  "You think you can drive it with no clutch?" he asked, but kind of in an encouraging way.  "I think so," I said.  I'm not sure if Dad remembered that I was almost a year from getting my license, or maybe he couldn't see me that well, maybe it was just desperation.  "Okay," he said, "you'll have to start the engine with the shifter in first, that'll be pretty rough on the starter,..  so try not to stop anywhere if you can possibly help it."  This was it, I was in the driver's seat, sitting high over the road, with my arm out the window in the summer twilight, and driving a vehicle!  I was thrilled but I had to make it seem like just another day, you know, driving a car with no clutch, along a route you don't know with your blind father beside you and the rest of your family sleeping behind you.  They trusted me.  As unlikely as it might sound (to anyone but my family) it turned out to be pretty easy to drive with no clutch, and it wasn't that hard to avoid stopping, though there were moments.  It took another hour and a half to get home, even my dad fell asleep for a while.

  That was my first time driving,..   a car.

The Crappy 69 Mach 1 that was bought after dusk...

It has perhaps become obvious to many of you that "impulse buying" is something many Reed's suffer from; the bigger the mistake it could be, the more of a hurry we are in to "just get it over with".  As quickly as Jimmy was able to destroy Mustangs, he was able to find them.  This one was located in a "development" (similar to a trailer park, but without the mobility) not far from the house on Old Spies, in fact, it was just off Spies Church Rd.  Just as the sun was setting, Jimmy dragged me up there to look at a Mach 1.  "It even has the fold-down rear seats, a rare option", Jim enticed.  Flat tires, mismatched and cracked after-market wheels, missing a fender, and with at least one dent on every panel of the car...  it even looked rough to my extremely optimistic eyes.  It got darker.  But it WAS a 69, arguably the Mustang that looked the most like an F-14 fighter jet, and we hadn't had one yet... When Jim gave the guy the $150, I think he left before we did.  When Jim (amazingly) got it running later, we could see that the crankshaft could (and did) move forwards and backwards about 3/4 inch, yikes.  In the light of day, we realized that anything of value on the car was ruined. The console was hacked up, every single piece of trim was somehow besmirched, the seats were ripped, nothing was saveable.  "No more car purchases at night!" Jim decreed.  Finally, when the "rare", optional, fold-down rear seat was folded up, it became evident that someone had tried to spray paint it black and then closed it -wet- in frustration.  Jim stomped off somewhere.
   A few hours later, we had decided to drop the 351 Cleveland four barrel that I had hanging from the engine hoist (well, we all know it was a burial vault hoist) into the Mach 1.  In those days, we seemed to swap engines in minutes rather than hours, and this one was just hanging there all in one piece, with a transmission and everything.  I knew it was fast, I had pulled it out of a 71 GT which was the fastest year for this particular engine. But I wasn't prepared.
  By late afternoon, we were pulling out of the driveway for a test-drive.  I can't remember if the windshield was in, but there wasn't much glass in the car, nor much of an interior.  There was a seatbelt, and even in 1982 (or whenever this was) I knew to put it on.  Jim pushed the gas pedal to the floor, and we were stunned to learn that the car had another "rare" option, a posi-traction rear, meaning that both tires started spinning and the car was fishtailing wildly through the narrow passage between the Horst's (or the Henry's) house and garage.  We were doing 60 before we even got to the Palm's house and it was a sliding screeching miracle we made the corner around Keidiech's house.  Jim was going crazy, maybe he had been so depressed by the car originally that he was making up for it in adrenalin, I don't know.  We actually did slow down a little as we passed by Shaaber's and Paul's, and exchanged our enthusiastic remarks/expletives for the power of this new engine.  At the "S" turn, Jim power-slid the car through the narrow stone bridge in a ferociously graceful curve, which was hair-raising to say the least.  We started up the other side in a wide slide.  Then the pedal went to the floor again, I read "let's see what it can do" in Jim's body language.  I was giddy with fear by the time we passed Wanshop, I was very worried as we continued to accelerate past the big pond.  What was Jim thinking?  In one second, we would pass the place where -if we slammed on the brakes- we might be able to stop by the "T" intersection. Three or four LONG seconds passed before Jim switched from "floored" to "sliding".  WE went through the stop sign at about 50 mph sliding diagonally.  We went right off the other side of the road, up the bank and between the phone pole and the guy wire.  Still traveling 40 mph, more or less in someone's field, Jim's foot was back on the gas, the car was fishtailing and spinning, dirt and grass were flying everywhere.  We made a wide arc toward Spies Church Rd, sliding onto it, fishtailing off into a parking lot for the namesake church, sliding around in a loop, back to Folk Hill Rd.  Making the left onto Old Spies, Jim let the car settle down to maybe 20 mph and drove home quite calmly.
  Other than to say "Oh man!", I don't think we talked much after that ride, both of us in our own very-different universes. 

The orange van continued... in White!

Now the van is painted white. I'll try to make this one shorter.  We had to deliver the "BIG" piano to NYC.  I had made the trip once in my 62 econoline (also white) but it had engine problems on the return trip.  We grabbed the Now-white-orange-van and returned to NYC to do the filming.  Met Ron Howard, Penny Marshall, Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia.  On the way back, the van suddenly started sounding crunchy -Jimmy had mentioned that he thought one rear bearing might be going bad.  We pulled over and investigated and couldn't find anything sufficiently wrong to stop.
Why was Jimmy suddenly interested in looking at the mud that had been squished up by a bulldozers at the adjacent construction site?  Keeping in mind that he was doing ceramics at Kutztown, and that he was living in the van, and that we had just made an emergency trip to NYC to work on the movie, one can imagine the "eclecticism" of the van when Jimmy started loading hunks of clay -maybe a dozen of them- the size of basketballs into the van.  The clay was thickly striped, gray and coffee and brick-red; jim claimed it would be great for ceramics,..  maybe.

We continued down the highway with some caution.  We were passed by a police car driving with his lights on, who proceeded to pull over a white van 200 yards in front of us.  This didn't seem odd until two minutes later when another police car passed us and pulled over another white van.  The gears began to click in my head, "you don't suppose..."  another cop, another white van.  There sure are a lot of white vans in the world!  I was interrupted in my chain of thinking because there was suddenly a loud "thud" and the van apparently popped into neutral -not good on I-95 (I think, some highway north of Philly by 15 miles).  I looked out the rear-view mirror and saw the rear wheel sticking out, literally, 2 feet from the side of the van;  the axle shaft had popped out of the differential and was "telescoping" out of the axle housing. It was like a cartoon.

  I was afraid to hit the brakes (not that they would have worked) and since the van was no longer powering itself, we had limited options.  As in all panic situations, my mind was racing thinking of a plan (how would we stop, how would we "park" the van, would it roll away, fall on the ground..?)  And like all panic situations, it suddenly got stranger as the police car on the back bumper hit the horn and the sirens and the lights all at once.

Now my mind was really racing; what if the van rolls backward into the cop car when we stop?  How long had he been tail-gating us? What if Jim jumps out to block the wheels and they shoot him?  Fortunately, the van just stopped.  The cop got out, walked around the wheel magically not noticing it and asked us for our licenses and registration.  Jim's was in the back somewhere, but I had mine (or did I have the fake one?.. )

The cop asked me why I took so long to pull over.  I said I didn't realize he was pulling us over until he turned on the siren, but we were already pulling over because we were having car problems.  "Oh really?" he smirked, clearly not believing me, "What car problems?"  I pointed out the wheel he had just failed to notice, sticking out so far it was an exaggeration of a car problem,..  clearly both of us AND the van were mocking him!  The interrogation went downhill in  comical fashion from there, as the police were clearly looking for something but they wouldn't tell us, but they had stumbled upon a strange story, already in progress, which had all the hallmarks of being suspicious but just didn't line up with whatever script they were following.

They made us get out.  While Jim was looking for his license they could see into the back of the van.  The officers were trying to make sense of what they saw in the van.  And why was Jim wearing pajamas?  They wanted information but they yelled at us everytime we talked, "shut up you...  clown!" one of them yelled at Jim.  They made us sit on the front bumper of the van (not easy) while they examined the licenses. "Hey, how come you guys have the same last name?"  A pause while all of us thought of all the possible reasons.  "Are you guys funny or something?"  Another pause while Jim and I tried to think of the reason that he had thought of.  "Umm, no, we're brothers," I offered, "see the resemblance?"  He said something like "he'd rather NOT!"  or an equally cryptic and angry utterance.  The other cop was starting to realize that we weren't whatever they were looking for and seemed less agitated, so we said something like, "look, why don't you just tell us what you're looking for and we'll try to help if we can."  He said, "Well, someone reported that a white van had stopped on the highway side of a construction site and stolen a bunch of stuff, but then they drove off before anyone could catch them.  I guess it wasn't you guys, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Oh, yes that was us," I said, trying not to seem simply contrary, "we stopped to check a noise in the van, and then Jim saw this clay that he thought would be good for pottery."  The look of disappointed resignation set in on the cops faces, "these mud-balls?" exasperated that there seemed to be no crime committed.  "We could put them back," jim offerred, "well, after we fix the van,..  unless you want to, um.. take them..."  the cops were already getting in their car.  "Could you call a tow-truck?" I asked jogging back to their car.  "Yeah, right, sure," he mumbled with the car already in reverse.

It was a long wait for the tow-truck.  Actually, I can't remember the tow truck at all.  Memories are like that.

Before "blowing my own horns", I'd like to add a few moments of shared automotive splendor.

The 63 Fairlane and OrangeThenWhite 69 Ford Van.  I had the 63 fairlane (I don't remember why, perhaps I was the only one who would fix it at the time?  Or did Jimmy own me for the 351 Cleveland engine I pulled out of the 70 Ford GT, which we dropped in the crappy white 69 mustang and nearly killed ourselves instantly?  I'll return to this...) while I was at Tyler.  And of  course, Jimmy had that orange van which we all remember as the vehicle he drove around cooking black beans on the manifold while he was at Kutztown.  I don't actually remember whether Jimmy or William originally bought it (I lost it...).  After stealing a giant wooden buddha sculpture from Tyler by rolling it onto the 63 Fairlane, I realized there was no way I could drive the car 60 miles or so to K-town for the "Bring your own something to burn" party.  And the car looked ridiculous and incriminating parked by my apartment with a giant buddha crushing the rear bumper to the ground.  Something needed to be done.  After much convincing, Jimmy showed up (with Keith Hartman ?) and together with four of my friends we all managed to shove this thing in the orange van, then shove ourselves in on top of it and drive to the party.  It was already late, and of course we got lost, so we pulled into the party around 1:00 in the morning.  The 10 or so people there tried to prevent us from burning the sculpture but needless to say, we weren't going to be stopped at this point.  It burned until it was getting light outside.  I wonder where we went?

My favorite story of the orange van was the trip back from uncle T's one summer.  Strangely, I can't remember for sure if William was with us on this idiotic trip,..  I just can't.  anyway, no sooner had we left T's than the van started to overheat.  We tried all the time honored tricks that Dad had taught us -loosening the radiator cap, coasting, etc- but the darn thing blew it's freeze plug out after a few miles.  We Actually managed to buy one, or Jim already had one because the original metal one had a small hole.  The replacement one is a stepped rubber plug with a bolt through it and a nut on the outside.  You fit it into the hole and tighten the nut which smashes the rubber.  The problem is that you have to remove the exhaust pipe (and usually the exhaust manifold ) to get to it, which wasn't fun since the engine on the van is accessed from the inside by removing the engine cover, and the engine had just overheated, and it was July...   Got the whole thing put together and...  the battery was dead.  Got a jump and set off -I think we took the route through Eagles Mere, then onto 42.  What I do remember is that the next time the plug blew out, we just barely limped into a service station in Muncy Valley.  surprisingly, the plug was still there, it landed on the engine mount or the frames crossmember which seemed unlikely after "blowing out".  Somehow, the blow-out plug never got lost, in subsequent blowouts which seems a minor miracle.  Anyway, we had to repeat the same horrible routine -engine cover off, burning hot engine, take off the exhaust pipe, replace plug, find water, battery dead again... get jump.  Down 220, hard left up 42, up the long, long, long hill,  verrrrrry slowly.  The next time the plug came out we coasted so far it seems like a dream.  We'd pick up speed on a downhill and -sensing that we would almost make it over the next hump with a little "extra", one or two of us would jump out the back doors while it was still going 10 mph or so and start pushing on a run.  When we'd get down to 5 mph, the driver would push from their open door.  We did this for so long we had to switch drivers on the run.  I swear we went 20 miles, almost to millville before we couldn't go any further.  We approached a settlement with our prestone jugs.  There were lots of people but no one would look at us except one hyper-active kid who ran up to question us, then turned around and yelled "Hey Paw, there's strangers... and they want...WATER!"  Somehow we got water without anyone else talking to us and went back to perform our ritual.  Someone reluctantly gave us a jump start, which we noticed was getting increasingly difficult; it took longer and longer to charge the battery up enough to start.  Anyway, this scene played out a few more times, we were already on the road for 12 hours or so.  The last guy to give us a jump was a toe-truck driver.  We told him it would take a few minutes to charge the battery before the van would start.  "Not with MY cables," he said showing off a hefty set of professional cables.  The van didn't start.  "It's f-d," he said, "it ain't gonna start!"  We managed to get him to wait  and sure enough, it did start after 15-20 minutes of charging.  But now we needed to run headlights, and it was an added drain. I think we made it pretty far and we had one more incident, but as we were re-assembling, I noticed a braided wire hanging off the engine under the floor -the engine ground strap.  I vice-gripped it to the floor.  Instantly the inside lights brightened up, the engine smoothed out, the universe shifted.  We started driving home cautiously, still with the loose radiator cap, driving slow,  but it was clear that everything had changed.  The temperature gauge stayed below the center line, the headlights were bright white, and -even though we were driving along with the engine cover off- it was more peaceful in the van.  I remember passing the Coca-Cola bottling plant (a sign we were nearing home when we were kids) and adjusting the cruising speed up to 55, and hanging my hand out the window.

  Actually, there's a different story of the van, but I"ll tell it next time.  Cheers,  John

From Jessy

I originally just sent this to Jenny, but I resending because I want to read the others too. Dates refer to actual dates, not the ages of the cars!

Early 70's I remember the Rambler because I remember driving with our large family in it. I remember me William and John in the far back laying down while you and Jimmy and one of the twins were in the middle row, and Mom, Dad and another twin were in the front. I remember this as the car which went into the snow bank on the way back from the farm in 1971 on Easter causing us to take refuge in a school bus. Also in this car when I was 10 or so Dad and I went to the Oley Dairy for our regular 6 gallons of milk. He loved to go fast on the stretch of road there and we were hauled over by a cop. I remember Dad explaining that he couldn't get the registration out of the glove box because it was locked. The key was in the ignition, but if her turned it off, it wouldn't restart due to a dead battery. We had jumped it at home and kept it running in the store. Also, as Dad pointed out, he was buying milk for his 7 children, of which I was one, and was left-handed and poor and dyslexic and could he be let go. Result: received warning.

Mid 70's Of course I remember the Caddie. I remember the day we got it and how Dad said not to get in it with our ice creams which we were eating when he came down the driveway with it and how John or William got in with the ice-cream and spilled it anyway.I liked the fold down jump seats and the "electric eye" which lowered the high beams, but not really fast enough. It ended up parked in the field after a little accident, where it acquired a yellow jacket nest. Someone sent me out there to check for a saw when I was maybe 12. I was attacked by the bees and stung all over, running into the house and tripping and falling over the rusty saw, screaming. Jimmy had this car fixed up and I drove to my wedding in this car, 6/9/1990. It had a theme song to the tune of Yellow Submarine, but the words were" We go to school in a long gray limousine, long gray limousine, long gray limousine."

I remember Dad dropping me off to kindergarten in a panel van, which had high seats and no front door - don't fall out!

Mid 70's Ford Van (someone can tell me if this was a Craftsman or another line. I can't remember)  Dad would drive us to school or pick us up in this classic cargo van with no seats in the back. We got to stand up as we drove in basically snowboard or surfboard position, trying not to fall when braking or going around curves. Lots of pre-seatbelt fun.

Late 70's I remember how the Pontiac station wagon we got from Grandmom had car trouble on the way back from the farm and Dad put vice grip pliers on some part which remained there til that car was towed away by someone when mom insisted we cut back on the clunkers.

Late 70's, early 80's I remember the red vw van because I learned to drive on that one. Letting the clutch out while not drifting back was a tricky business in hilly Reading.

80-'83 I drove my bf's '69 Dodge Dart which we spray painted a camo pattern. I crashed (totaled) that car when I was 17 and stupid by turning in front of another car that was running a red light.

'80-'81 Drove to school in Johns cars, which included the datsun, played lots of Who on the tape deck. Ran out of gas on the Schuykill Expwy when I was 14 and John was 16 on the way back from a Who concert. Cop wanted me to move it because I was in such a dangerous spot. I said, "I'm 14!"

Early 80's I remember the white honda civic which didn't have 2nd gear, couldn't open the passenger door, and you had to turn it off to get it back into 1st gear. I drove it the summers I was in college to my crappy jobs.

Avoided having cars for years.

Got my first car in 1996 when I was 30, a blue Toyota Corolla wagon for $6500 in Ann Arbor for the purpose of delivering cakes for my new bakery. I liked this car and used it until someone T-boned me when I was pregnant with Julie 1998. That scared me and totalled the car.

1998 bought another station wagon, a white Honda Accord Wagon. This had all those car seats buckled in while I drove kids around. I needed a bigger vehicle. 

2003 I bought my Toyota Sienna van just two years old then. I still have it and it's been trouble free and blameless for 10 years. I haul kids, camping stuff, groceries, dorm stuff, apartment stuff, Ikea stuff etc.

The only other thing I would add is that I always loved the cars my siblings had, like the Mustangs, Bugs, Land Cruiser, New Bug, etc.

Welcome to the Dear Reed Family Blog, FOLLOW THE RULES

Sent telepathically...

Dear Family,
I would like to put together a book of stories centered around the cars we've owned, any details about the cars, their problems etc, and how they related to the time of life you were experiencing.  If you could put down on paper a list of all the cars you've ever owned, their year, color, anything you can remember about them, their significance in your life, how they made you feel, who you were dating at the time, any accidents they were in, the troubles they caused you...anything like that.
I know I'm asking for a lot of information, but I thought it would make an interesting reed...ha ha ha....an auto-biography of sorts...
Love,
Jenny