Please enjoy this walk down memory lane written by former resident Chuck Sodergren (1934-2021).
To the best of my memory, I can count seventeen different cars that I have owned since I belatedly was taught [by Dick Rome] to drive at age 20, in the summer of 1954. Each of them have many stories to tell- some more than others. In retrospect, I wish I had kept them all and created a memories museum. But, even in my fondest memories and I know that would have been stupid and really impossible. Think of the space it would take in my backyard!
It all started with the 1929 Model T that Dick Rome and I bought and is described above. Next I bought a 1938 Pontiac Coupe. It had headlights mounted on the front fenders.
When I was in the Navy in California I bought a 1951 Chevrolet from a navy man in Long Beach who had received orders to ship out aboard ship. The car was light gray color, and the body was very pitted from being around salt water, but it ran fine. We drove it to Kansas on leave and when we reached the Texas-Oklahoma border about midnight we noticed that the outside temperature was dropping and we were getting cold. We tried to turn on the car heater, but it didn’t work. We never had a need for a heater in California and had never tried to turn it on. It got so cold that we had to put on every piece of clothing we owned to keep from freezing. We discovered later that the wire connecting the switch to the heater had come off, and it would have been a simple thing to fix if we had only known how to do it.
When I was coaching I used that car to transport players to out of town games. After about five years, I bought a ‘52 Chevrolet. The kids joked that I had really moved up in the world- five years pass and I get a car that is only one year more modern.
Then we really splurged and bought the only new car I have ever owned- a 1963 Rambler Station Wagon. We went on a vacation to the “Great Outdoors” in this station wagon- camping in a western Kansas thunderstorm, muddy roads, the smell of cattle pens and ticks in Colorado, the ache of salt up my rear-end because I was too stingy to spend 10 cent to shower off, a wheel bearing going out in Arizona and buying an expensive new tire ($25) in an Indian reservation.
Then we got the small red Volkswagen that we drove, with four kids, to the Ozarks and Branson, Missouri.
Next a white and green Pontiac, Yellow VW Rabbit. Blue Ford, Chrysler Imperial, Red Toyota Pick-up, Black and white Toyota Celica, Brown Toyota Celica, White Chrysler 5th Avenue, ’96 Maroon Buick, Maroon red Ford, and a 2006 Buick Lacerna.
(The above are not pictures of the actual cars that Mr. Sodergren had – just photos of the same year and make/model.)
What cars do you remember? I remember our 1972 white Chevy Impala with a black vinyl top that had no a/c. We drove it to Minnesota and back one summer with the windows closed because my grandma couldn’t have the wind blowing on her. That was a long trip.
