MY FIRST CAR

      I bought my first car in about 1953 in partnership with my brother. It was a 1929 model A Ford. The car was in good condition as it had been driven very little. 

    Now here is where the story starts to sound like my motorcycle story. Neither one of us had a driver's license. The car did not have a license. We did not have insurance. And yet we merrily drove around with our car. The area was remote with few people and little traffic. We avoided driving into the village as it was rumored that there was a town cop in the village. So we drove the country roads with some of our friends.

    Today's weather brought back the memory of my car. Today we had lots of snow and wind. and it was minus 20 C. On a similar day about 71 years ago we decided to go for a drive. These cars did not have heaters. There was no anti freeze so we had to put water in the radiator and hope that the water didn't freeze. There was no snow plow. In the winter everybody put their car in the garage and used their horses for transportation. Only fools decided to use a car. 

   This didn't discourage us from going for a ride. We picked up 2 or 3 friends and made sure that we had some shovels and off we went. The first couple of snow banks we were able to plow through but finally we got stuck. So everybody out of the car and pushed. These cars were not very heavy. We got it out of that snow bank. We got stuck again and had to use shovels to get the car out of the snowbank. 

    Finally we turned around and went back home. I remember feeling exhausted after all the effort to get the car through the snowbanks. 

   Today I stayed in the house and kept warm. For that caper we were outside 3 or 4 hours and enjoyed ourselves.