A STORY WORTH TELLING
“You’ll never relive the moment you got your first car. That’s it, that’s the highest peak... it has a lot of meaning to me.”
— George Lucas
Cooler evenings a couple of days last week marked a nice break from summer’s sweltering heat. But don’t be fooled. Mother Nature plays tricks in Texas, teasing that there will actually be a real fall.
Cool breezes were just enough, however, to entice me into the garage where my 1950s vintage first-love cars spent the hot summer.
This is the garage where I connect to motoring memories dating back some 60-plus years when I bought my first auto.
Memories of first cars and first dates have been an American phenomenon for generations, typically beginning with captivating garage aromas—gasoline, motor oil, chrome polish and unique interior fabric scents lingering longer than the finest French perfume.
Or at least until there is the fragrance worn by your first date in your first car.
Memories of my first car are somewhat more vivid than those of my first date. But that’s no reflection on the attractive young lady who first caught my eye at Mount Pleasant High School. After all, she was the first to take my mind off cars long enough for me to make a stammering attempt to ask her to go out.
Still, I must admit my first-date memories pale slightly in comparison to the time I laid eyes on the first automobile I envisioned as mine: a dark-blue 1951 Chevrolet Styleline DeLuxe sitting at Rex Kidwell’s Fina Station in Mount Pleasant.
Everybody knew Rex. The friendly service station proprietor displayed autographed black-and-white photos of country music stars on the walls. Most of them were signed, “To Rex …” The station is where customers were always greeted with a smile, gas was pumped while they sat in the car, the oil checked, the windshield washed and the floor mats hand swept with a whisk broom, one just like every service- station attendant used to keep in his back pocket.
And all that for about 30 cents a gallon.
That service was standard for everyone.
Not just customers filling up with ethyl gas and getting change from a five. The drivers who said, “Gimme a dollar’s worth of regular ‘til payday, please” received the same treatment.
I was no stranger to driving when the car at Rex’s turned my head.
My father and grandfather had groomed me in driving skills since I was 12 years old.
I made it legal at 14 by taking driver’s ed, the minimum age for becoming a licensed driver in Texas in 1963. Stopping at Rex’s station on the way home to gas up Dad’s car that night, I saw the old Chevy. It was love at first sight. The car gleamed in the spotlight beside the building.
Rex was known for acquiring pristine used cars that met his standards of “nice” and parking them at his station with a “for sale” sign.
With some meager money pocketed from my after-school job at Bealls department store and an interestfree loan from my grandmother repaid at $5 a week, I was back the next day with the $250 asking price in hand.
If I live to be 100, I will never relive that moment of driving home in my first car during my sophomore year in high school.
As time and money permitted, I added personal touches: a split manifold with dual exhaust and glasspack mufflers from Redfearn’s Automotive and baby-moon hubcaps from the J.C.
Whitney catalog.
My first car got me to school, to work, to Saturday night drag races and to church on Sunday. It was a participant in many nights of cruising fun between the Dairy Queen and “Bobby Joe’s,” aka the Dairy Mart, located at opposite ends of town.
Last but not least, it was a trustworthy mode of transportation for a Saturday night at the Martin Theater to see “Goldfinger,” the third film in the James Bond franchise. I went there on my first date.
Visiting Mount Pleasant a few years ago, I happened to see her coming out of a store where I was going in. We spoke briefly, and I wondered if she remembered being my first date all those years ago. I also wondered if she remembered my first car.
I still remember both.
Contact Aldridge at leonaldridge@gmail. com. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.com.
