My first car.

My first car was a 1930 Ford Model A. I do not have a picture of it but it looked like this.

I was around 14 and did not know how to drive. Of course I did not have a driver's license. I had a friend drive it to the backyard of the house where I had a rented room. I drove back and forth in the yard and the alley until I could drive down the road.

The car was ten years old. It had probably cost around $400 when new. I paid $35 for it. I later sold it for $10 after the timing gear failed in Fresno. It was in good operating condition. I put a lot of miles on it.  I can remember driving daily to a job at March Field in Riverside. A friend and I had jobs as carpenters in the building of March Field.

One morning when we were driving to work I looked through the floor boards at my feet and saw fire! We pulled over and threw dirt on the fire and put it out. A spark had ignited some grease. We then replaced the fllor boards and drove on to work.

An interesting quirk of the car was that occasionally the headlights would smoke when I put on the brakes and came to a stop. Pretty fancy, huh?