My First Car

When I turned 16 in September, I waited two weeks to get my driver’s license and then aced it! In the meantime my Dad had found a little old car for me. It was a 1951 Morris Minor two door and was an ugly army khaki! However old it looked, it did run quite well but had a few little quirks all its own!

The first thing I discovered was that the driver window would not stay up so I found a piece of wood to jam into the handle to keep the window fully closed. That was easy to solve. The other little quirk was a pain in the butt. This car had a very weak clutch rod assembly. Without warning, the clutch rod was snap off and I would be stuck in whatever gear I was in. I soon learned to jam it into first so I could slowly get home. This caused a lot of problems.

I would get home and Dad would go out to John Rotheisler and get a clutch rod and put a new one in. When it became apparent that this was going to be a weekly or monthly happening, John made a dozen at a time and we kept them in the trunk.

That brings me to my first automotive lesson….how to change the clutch rod wherever I was stranded. Since I wasn’t particularly big I was able to crawl underneath the car, undo the old rod and put a new one on. If I managed to get home I would just drive it up on the ramp Dad had made and quickly change it.

My friends and I spent many happy hours bombing around in my little car. Everyone chipped in for gas and the occasional quart of oil. I had a curfew and a promise to Dad to not go out of town so we mainly stuck to the main drag or sawmill road!

So now we come to November and the weather was pretty crappy. This particular day was quite snowy and Dad specifically told me NOT to take the car anywhere. In the afternoon Mom needed something from the store in order to finish dinner so I jumped in the car and headed to town. Part way there I saw Mrs. Scott, our P.E. teacher and stopped to give her a ride.

As I approached the intersection where the Friendly corner was, there was a beautiful black car sitting at the stop sign. I applied my brakes and to my horror my little car slid right into the back of his car and dented his trunk!

Mrs. Scott jumped out quickly, said thank you and took off in a hurry. The guy got out of his car and came to talk to me. I wanted to call my Dad but he said if I gave him $50 we could call it even. I promised I would meet him the next day with the money and he got in his car and left.

I soon discovered that my car was pretty badly damaged and I managed to get to where Louise Burns’ family lived and pulled over. Mr. Burns found a tarp and covered the car up and I went home.

Now I was pretty scared to tell my Dad and when he came home from work I just said I took the car but it was too slippery and it was over at the Burns house. The next day I walked down and met the man who turned out to be a car salesman from Penticton. I gave him the money and I went home.

When Dad came home, we had dinner and then we were off to pick up my car. As soon as Dad started it, he smelled the anti-freeze that was all over the engine and smoking like crazy. He got out and took one look and came back and managed to drive the car home.

He sat me down and said he wanted the truth and so I told him and gave him the man’s name. He knew him and got on the phone and advised him that what he did was illegal as I was a minor. I got my money back and Dad paid him $15 to bang out the dent.

My car, however, suffered catastrophic damage and out to Rotheisler’s it went on the end of a tow rope. I had managed to push the radiator right up over the motor to the firewall so a new radiator had to be bought and put in. I intended to pay for the repairs myself but John was wonderful and didn’t charge me labour as Dad helped him….I just paid for the radiator! I did buy him a bottle of his favourite liqueur!

I learned a serious lesson that day. Never disobey my father and never drive on snowy, icy roads again! My little car carried on until well after I graduated from High School.