My First Car

I landed my first job as a paperboy at 13 years old. As the oldest of 5 kids in the family, I learned early on that if I wanted to buy something I needed to earn it. I was not into picking berries or mowing lawns, so I became a paperboy, delivering papers until I was old enough for a “real” job. It was during my paper deliveries one day that my mom found me and rolled down the car window. “Have you got $30?” she asked. That was a weird question. “Yeah,” I answered. “Go straight home after you’re done,” she said, “your dad has something for you.”

At that time my dad was the parts manager for Fitz Auto Rebuild in Auburn, Washington. He was in a good position for deals, and they came his way often. He was always bringing cars home that needed something fixed, at which point he would do the needed repair(s) and sell them for a profit. It was a good supplemental income for our 7-person family.

It was one one of those deals that sent mom out to find me that day. It was well-known that I would often continue around town on my bike after my paper route was finished, wasting time and looking for adventures (or trouble). My parents didn’t mind as long as I was home for supper.

When I got home that afternoon it was already there—A 1964 Chevrolet Impala SS. I’m sure I was surprised. After all, I had barely turned 15 at that point! The car was a weird beige color--like one of those original Band-Aids that match absolutely no-one’s skin color. It was really straight, having only a dent in the left front fender above the wheel opening, and a smaller one near the back on the same side. The interior was perfect. There were no tears or holes anywhere except for the gaping hole in the transmission tunnel where an automatic shifter and console used to reside. There was no engine, transmission, or driveshaft.

My life changed at that point! For a fifteen year-old gearhead like myself, there was no better way to keep tabs on me. From that point on I couldn’t wait to get home when my paper route was finished. There we so many things to tweak and work on! I cleaned, painted, polished, straightened out wiring—you name it. I fixed little things that I found here and there, and learned as I went. If I didn’t actually work on the car on certain days, you’d likely find me sitting in it, just listening to the AM radio (complete with its factory trunk-mounted reverberator!)

One day dad came home with another car, and this one was a game-changer. As he backed it up the driveway with the Fitz wrecker, I wasn’t too impressed. It was a plain-Jane medium blue 1962 Belair 4-door, and it looked like it had been literally dragged out of someone’s swamp. The whole lower half of it was mud. Dad explained that it had a (probably) good 283 and 3-speed transmission, and almost everything else I needed to make my 64 Impala complete. I can’t remember if it even cost me anything for sure, but I think it might have been like $20 or something.

By then, my 64 was all prettied up the best I could do. The engine compartment was all freshly painted and waiting to be filled with an engine.

The main objective (according to both parents) was to get that blue Belair stripped of anything I could use so dad could get it out of the driveway and back to the Fitz Auto Rebuild boneyard. Imagine my surprise when I started working on removing the parts I needed and and found that there were 4 chrome reverse wheels under that layer of mud! We got it started and listened to it run before tearing the engine out. Besides the engine, I yanked the transmission, driveshaft, dual exhaust, lights—almost everything I could think of, then swapped wheels and tires.

With the donor car gone, I started in on cleaning the engine all up. I replaced the oil pan gaskets, valve cover gaskets, and anything else that might have been leaking, then gave it a nice Chevrolet-orange paint job and dropped it in the car (not by myself of course.) At dad’s urging, I splurged on a new clutch and pressure plate before I put the transmission in.

Now, I had a car that was drivable! Well, except for one thing: There was no shifter yet. That didn’t stop me from starting and running it all the time though. Tweaking, tuning, and learning everything I could about the Carter WCFB 4-barrel carb kept me busy, too. It was a little particular, and I fussed with it quite a bit, but in the end I won, and had it running pretty well.

Some time later—maybe a month or two—a 65 Impala came home on the wrecker. It appeared to be in nice shape, but looks can be deceiving. Whomever was driving it had caught a low tree stump dead-center. It had passed under the front bumper, so there was no apparent damage, but the oil pan was munched, the transmission was broken, and the driveshaft was bent. What it did have was the one thing I was missing: A shifter! While it was still hooked up on the wrecker I got all the shifter stuff unbolted. The shocks all looked brand new, so I took all four of those well. It went back to the boneyard the next day.

A 3-speed manual transmission was not offered in a 1964 Impala SS of course, so mounting my “new” Hurst shifter meant I had to enlarge the hole in the transmission tunnel. I did the best I could at trimming it out and making it look okay afterwards.

I now had a running car that I could actually drive, and it looked cool, too! I still had months before I was 16 and could get my driver’s license, but I was able to drive it back and forth between our alley and the driveway in front of the house. (We were the second house from the corner, so the drive was literally about 500 feet.)

 

 

By the time I turned 16 I knew everything about that car, and it was so clean and polished it would have made anyone proud.

Then came the bad news.

My parents had Pemco insurance at that time, and it was then we learned that Pemco would not insure a 16 year-old driver if there were more than 3 cars in the family. They determined that kids weren’t mature enough to drive until they were 17. WTF? Didn’t they know how hard I had worked to get that car? I believe we had like 5 cars in the family at that time, so there was no way around it short of changing insurance companies.

Imagine. A kid that has worked on his first car for a solid year, suddenly having it all fall flat at the last minute. Well, I had no choice. I was still able to drive mom & dad’s various cars on errands and such, but not my own.

When I turned 16 I gave up my paper route and got my first real job. I was the “lot boy” at (then) Bothell Brothers Chevrolet in Auburn. Because I couldn’t drive my own car, and mom & dad sure wasn’t going to give me unlimited use of one of theirs, dad suggested that I put all the lights and stuff back on his old hot-rod Honda S90 and ride that instead. He decided insurance wasn’t a big deal with a small motorcycle, because how much damage could it do to a car? (I guess damage to me didn’t matter that much.) Anyway, I ended up riding it the whole year I was 16—rain or shine. (And in Washington, there isn’t much shine.)

Side note: It was 1972 and the state of Washington had just enacted the law requiring riders to have a motorcycle endorsement on their driver’s license. I remember feeling pretty cocky while running through the pylons on my S90 while other riders there had to complete the course on their big bikes. There were even a couple of Harley riders there.

I can still remember turning 17 and finally able to actually drive my car. The feeling I had as I drove down the street, seeing our house fall away in the rear view mirror was one I’ll never forget.