Whenever I review old family photos, see various family members posing so proudly with their automobiles, I can't help but go down a memory lane that's full of stories and vivid memories of how cars played such an important part in our family.

 

Dad was the one who loved cars.  Couldn't work on one, but he loved them, methodically maintained them and frequently traded them.

 

His first "horseless carriage" was a red Model T Ford.  He probably bought it not long after graduating from South San Antonio high school in 1929, as there are several photos of him in the 1930's time period, in proud macho poses - he was a show off - with his "new" car.  He wrote in his memoir that he borrowed $40 from his younger brother, John, to buy the car and never paid it back.  But as the stories go, John got a lot of road time in it as well, for he was the chaperone when Dad and Mom were dating in the early '30's.

 

It was an arrangement, according to Mother, that Granny Reynolds (Annie Lucy Reynolds, Dad's grandmother who lived with his family) insisted on.  I'm sure there is a good bit of truth in that, for Granny was "old country" and very conservative in her attitudes about what was proper in male-female relationships.  Mom used to tell an interesting story about how she shocked the family one time when she stood up to Granny and told her that "George was old enough to make up his own mind about what time to come home!" from one of their dates.

 

Anyway, John dutifully went along with the young couple wherever they went riding around, with John squeezed into the cramped quarters behind the seat of the old Model T, from which space he pestered and teased his brother and his beloved "Ruthie".  I have no doubt that all the photos of Mom and Dad standing beside the car were taken by John.

 

I've often tried to imagine what it must have been like to drive the little car from San Antonio, TX to Paradise, KS where Mom's family lived.  I had a parishoner many years ago who told me about what roads were like in those days - rutted, bumpy, gravel surfaced obstacle courses - at least in Oklahoma.  So I can only imagine what a trip that must have been from southwest Texas through Oklahoma and on to north central Kansas.  Chugging along at 25-30 mph (probably less than that), windows down, hot and sweaty.

 

The photos definitely show Dad and Mom there during at least one summer.  Dad apparently made the obligatary visit to Kansas to meet Mom's parents and brothers and do the "family thing" by helping out with the wheat harvest.  There are photos of him posing with the boys on the combine, with the "hoot-n-anny" and sitting on the back porch of the old home place with Mom.  So Iit seems likely to me that he drove the car (did Mom go with him? - probably not - it would have required an overnight stay somewhere) to Kansas.  Of course it's possible they took the train, but I have no memories of stories being told about a train trip of any kind before WWII.

 

But it's for sure that the car went to Hutchinson, KS, when they both went there to attend Breese Nazarene Bible School.  The photos of Dad with the car in that time frame show it dirty and aging - "rode hard and put up wet".  How long Dad had it either at school or after they married in 1932, I've never heard.  In fact, there aren't enough photos in the early years of their marriage (probably couldn't afford the luxury of a camera) to determine how many or what kind of "wheels" they did have.  There is one threesome family pose with a car backdrop, taken in 1934, while they were living in Bristow before Marna was born; but I'm not expert enough in dating antique vehicles to make out what kind of a car it was.  Then the next car photo is of Dad, Mom, Jim and Marna posing beside the "new" 1937 Oldsmobile.  A blow up of the license plate shows a 1939 date.  However on February 7, 1944, only days before reporting for induction into the Navy. Dad wrote his mother: "...I sold our car today for 170.00 more than we paid for it in August 1940  Sold it for cash and turned it from a perishable asset or possible liability into a live asset for Ruth. It is sort of a relief to be free from it too, with tires and gas getting to be so tough.  She'll never miss it much and prefers to have the money than a car while I'm gone."  This could mean there was yet another car purchased in 1940.