By Ken Robinson
Managing Editor

When we were younger than teenagers, Dad's cars were not particularly interesting to me and my four brothers. The 1950 Chartreuse Green Plymouth station wagon, the one where younger brother Tim got a smashed finger in the tailgate, was the first one we remember. He got the end of his middle finger ripped off. He ran inside. Mom scooched it back over the bone and gave him a bandage.

The wagon carried our family of seven until Dad got a pea green1951 Chrysler in 1955. That's the car we took to Disneyland the year it opened. We towed a 12-foot trailer Dad rented for a local guy. On the way home on a freeway outside of Anaheim, the trailer hitch broke loose and the trailer traveled up next to the car as if it wanted to pass on the right, then wobbled into a soft sand shoulder and stopped.

On that trip, we stayed cool thanks to an odd air-conditioner device that was a two-foot long breadbox which allow cooled air to enter the car. As long as the car was moving fast. Otherwise, it was just a big carbuncle on the window. For the record "Old Faceful" was attached with heavy clips to the passengers side window. It was filled with water at each rest stop. The speed of the car would waft through the louvres in the font, passing the cooled air into a tube that fed into the car near Mom's seat. When dad hit a pothole, the water would splash inside the box and send a big spray down the tube and into mom's face. It happened enough to make us all laugh.

At age 16, the Chrysler was the first car I drove after missing only four questions on the driver's test for a license. The main one I missed was "What do you do when you see a sign that says 'Speed Zone' ahead." I wrote, Speed up. I have learned this is incorrect. English can be so confounding.

The day I got my license, I proudly drove to Burien for no good reason. At the intersection of Ambaum and 152nd Street, I sideswiped another car. The driver got out of his car and yelled at me. He asked if I got my license at "Sears and Roebuck" Then the drove off, shaking his head.

I now regret writing the words "The Green Weenie" with a Magic Marker on the side of Dad's green Chrysler. He was not pleased when he came home to see that.

In 1960, Dad took over the payments on a 1969 Buick a friend had. It was sky blue and had wings like a manta ray. The suspension was soft and felt like a carnival ride, making the car very tippy.
It was impressive though, when I drove up in front of Vicky's house for our first and last date. Her dad grilled me a bit, counciling us to stay in the community and go only to the local movie theater. She was shy and very pretty. We immediately left the community and drove all over the place. And kissed, a little.

In 1962, Dad finally got cool. He came home with the most incredible hotrod an 18-year-old could imagine. It was a 1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo. He bought it in Portland where his brother worked at the dealership. The car had rolled-and-pleated black and white bucket seats, a manual transmission with "four-on-the-floor" and was Fire Engine Red. Dad let me drive it the first night he brought it home and I put 100 miles on it showing it off to my pals at Lou's Hamburgers on 1st. Avenue. I should have been grounded. And at least whipped.

I don't know why Dad got rid of that great car. Except that one day as he parked and got out, another car came by an knocked off the driver's door.

In 1964, he came home with a iridescent green Plymouth convertible. A convertible! His coolness ratcheted up again! It was fast and sporty. My brothers got to drive it. I was away at school. He kept that car a few years, then bought a gold Chrysler convertible with black top. That was a sexy car. He looked great in it. So did Mom. And when I was away in the Army and came home on emergency leave, it was that car he picked me up in at the airport and where I learned that Mom had died during surgery as I flew home to see her in the hospital. She was 46. We never talked about it, but I wonder if Dad sold that car because the memory of it was too strongly connected with mom's passing.

He showed up one day with the longest car we had ever seen. It was a 1972 Lincoln Continental, a two-person land yacht. Huge hood and small back seat and the distinguishing trunk bump where the spare tire resides. It was the color of warm cinnamon and rode like a powerful magic carpet. An attorney friend who saw it parked next to Dad's office said with a curled lip, "How ostentatious". It was all that. Dad kept that beautiful car through the 70s, eventually selling it to me and buying another Lincoln a little less ostentatious. Nearing sixty years old, Dad's love affair with cars was waning, I think. He had been there, done that. His later cars were much more pedestrian.

He retired at age 69 and loved driving a little jacked-up Toyota pickup he bought. He like to go to the Cloverdale transfer station in his grubbies and toss stuff into the pit. Once day he leaned too far and fell in the pit, onto a pile of leaves. He couldn't get out of the deep pit. The pit attendant yelled at him to use the ladder at the end of the ramp.