Those of us born in the 1930s were probably the first to own more than one or two cars in a lifetime. We were also the first generation to be defined by the automobile, and all that stands for.
By Brian T. Doyle, The Ottawa Citizen July 15, 2012
Were we the first generation to own not one, or two, but many cars in a lifetime? I think we were.
We were born, however, in a world with relatively few cars around. On my street in Lowertown, a car would go by only now and then.
Mostly then. It was a rare enough event that we would stop what we were doing just to watch it move by.
That changed, of course.
I, personally, have owned well over 20 vehicles.
None of them lived up to my expectations.
One of the worst cars I ever owned was a Russian-made Lada. It was also one of the very few cars that I bought brand new. My two kids were teenagers at the time and were just getting their licences. I figured, let them make all their mistakes on the cheapest car I could find.
I bought the new Lada and drove it off the lot onto Richmond Road. At the first stoplight it stalled and refused to start. While people called me a Godless Commie I raised the hood and walked back to the dealer.
My sales guy shook his head. He was ashamed. I’d noticed while I was buying the car that he was less than enthusiastic. He wouldn’t look at me. He looked at his shoes and out the big window.
Especially when he presented me with my “A Toast to the New Lada Owner!” gift. It was cardboard box with a cellophane window containing a bottle of cheap champagne nestled in tinsel and two plastic long-stemmed glasses.
“Here’s yer wine,” he’d said.
I had to wait a couple of days while they found a new starter solenoid for my car.
When I went back I couldn’t find my salesman. He’d quit. Apparently his buddies who sold other brands of cars around town had been calling him a Communist, a traitor and saying stuff like,“Better dead than red,” to his girlfriend.
This was not an uncommon reaction to Ladas. My brother-in-law wondered aloud why I didn’t move to Russia if I didn’t like our Canadian way of life.
Within less than three years the Lada was finished. Sagging suspension, rust, stuttering timing, blue smoke, leaking tank, dripping transmission fluid, wobbling front-end and a warped axle.
Not to mention the cosmetic carnage, what with strangers kicking it, keying it, throwing stones at it, splashing it with paint, purposely denting it in parking lots and snapping off the mirrors. One avid Cold Warrior left a cinder block on the hood.
And, of course, my kids did the rest.
Going way, way back, my first association with cars was with their back bumpers. In winter, on icy days, we’d “hook” cars. Hang on to a back bumper and, in a crouch, slide as long as you can before the speed of the car picks up to where your feet are ripped out from under you and you wind up flat on your face in the middle of the street.
This was best done at night since it was disapproved by just about everybody.
Many of us Depression Babies learned to drive at ridiculously young ages in the country around farms.
One of Aunt Minnie’s neighbours had an ancient tractor and so I knew how to drive by age nine.
My father never owned a car but his bachelor friend, Frank, did.
Frank had lost his licence in Ontario for running up on someone’s lawn by mistake one lovely summer evening while the family watched from their veranda.
But he was still allowed to drive in Quebec, so he moved across the river to Hull where in no time he lost his licence there, too. He’d allowed his car to roll down a steep street one afternoon while he got out to take a long leak.
Having lost his licence in both provinces, Frank was, according to my father, only allowed to drive on the Inter-Provincial Bridge.
Because of this, my father often had the use of Frank’s car. I tell all this for a reason. To describe my first city-driving experience.
It was because the car was sitting outside our house on the street doing nothing that I took the keys off my father’s dresser while he was asleep and stole Frank’s car and drove it over to Judy’s house near Pretoria Bridge because I loved Judy so much especially when she wore that tight blue skirt.
While visiting with Judy in her back shed I didn’t realize that I’d left the car lights on and drained the battery and couldn’t get the car back and ...
“Your timing is just right,” my father said finally back at home. “Most criminals on death row started out exactly like you’re starting out. Stealing from their poor fathers!”
I was 14.
We Depression Babies loved cars from the start. We still do.
We still do, even though they’ve constantly let us down, betrayed us, drained our incomes, poisoned our planet.
We don’t care. We love them anyway.
As young boys we sat in them and dreamed. We seized the steering wheels and dreamed of growing up. The definition of growing up was being allowed to drive a car.
For us, to get to steer one of these internal combustion engines down a road was to arrive at one’s manstate: to be strong, brave, honourable, resolute and virile.
And free.
I sat in those old cars at the age of six, in the darkest days of a war far off, enclosed, waiting for the future, surrounded by my destiny (the most effective time to do this is when there’s fog).
I smelled the dusty, cloth upholstery, moved the long stick shift, studied the speedometer, inhaled the sweet tang of grease, the intoxicating whiff of gasoline, the torrid scent of rubber, reached for the pedals, lit up an imaginary cigarette ...
And steered like mad towards the horizon.
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