My next rod ($50) was a 1956 Pontiac Chieftan convertible. I drove it for about two weeks when I was 16, until the differential locked up. I sold it to someone for $50.
In 1970 I bought a 1954 Ford Station Wagon from Moochie Dehnert for $200. It was a flat grey, the color of a battleship, and sported mags and a pair of threadbare pair of slicks on the back. I earned money working after school at the Westland Hatchery, where I was known as "the boy" or just "boy." I painted houses that summer, with my old Junior High speech teacher, Don Kinberg. I actually drove this for four or five months until it was struck by some expensive meltdown. I don't even remember. I got $15 for it when the junkyard guys hauled it away.
When I was 18, in 1971, I bought a 1962 Volkswagen Beetle for $500, paying $50 a month. It was pale green and detailed to a fine gloss. I had a stipend of $125 a month as a volunteer at a crisis center, which just barely covered the nut of my life. It was a sweet car other than the heating and defrost system. It ran for a year or so, when I lunched it in an accident. My friend Maureen's stepfather Gerry bought it from me for, I think $50. I don't know. I would have taken $10. . .so maybe he gave me the standard junker payment of $15. He restored it top to bottom.
When Mo finally got the car back it was totally pimped out, every ding and nick vanished, a frenched out new interior, totally new running gear and a breathtakingly gorgeous metallic Lapis-colored paintjob. Even more galling than seeing my Bug elevated to hip street rod status was Maureen refusing to let me take it for a spin! I can only assume that was at the behest of Gerry, who had seen firsthand the results of my malignant neglect of what another friend's father called "Hitler's Revenge."
I bought another rod for $200. Part III tomorrow.
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