My Dad’s First Car

My Dad’s First Car

For most of us, our first car is a big deal, something to always remember.  This was true for my father and his first car.  I must confess, I do not have first hand knowledge of the purchase of this car, I was only three years old at the time, but I do remember the car and what it meant to my dad.

My father was not wealthy, a cabinet maker by trade, he came to America from Eastern Europe in 1950.  He earned his passage working on a merchant ship.  He arrived in New York carrying a cardboard suitcase, in it; a change of clothes, a few dollars he had earned on the ship, the phone number of his great aunt, his American sponsor, a few odds and end and a bag of salt.  Why cross the Atlantic with a bag of salt; because his mother, my grandmother, gave it to him when he left for America.  To her salt was important, you needed salt to live and it was all she had to give. The salt did not last long in America, it was confiscated by customs.  

My father was able to contact his great aunt.  She sent him train fare to Chicago and thus began the Americanization of my dad.  By 1959, my father had married my mother, learned English, became an American Citizen, brought over my grand parents, his sister and her family, twice became a dad, and bought a three flat in Chicago where we all lived.  He had been in America less then ten years.  He was 38 years old.

My father never owned a car before this and had no idea how to drive one.  Some of his friends owned cars and agreed to give him driving lessons.  So in 1959 my dad decided we, the family, needed a car.  He would buy the most American of American cars.  He would buy a Ford.

Like I said earlier, I don’t know all the details, but after all the shopping, kicking of tires and haggling; my dad became the proud owner of a brand new, 1959, Ford, Galaxy 500, two door hardtop.  For anyone who remembers the late 1950’s, people liked cars and appliances in colors that today would be considered strange.  Some popular colors of the time, were; avocado, bronze, turquoise and in the case of my dad’s new two toned Ford; white and coral.  For anyone who is not familiar with the color coral, it is a cross between orange and pink.  The coral color of my dad’s car was more pink then orange and seemed to become pinker with age.

You may wonder how I am so familiar with the color of my father’s first car after all I was only three when he bought it.  The answer is simple; he kept his two toned, white and pink beauty until 1970.  After eleven years of loving abuse, the old Ford finally just died, pinker then ever.  

I admit now, that throughout most of my early adolescence, I was embarrassed by my dad’s pink and white Ford.  I never wanted anyone to see me in it, especially my friends.  I could never figure out what my dad saw in that car, why he did not trade it in for something new, something normal. Today, if I could bring back that old pink and white Ford, I think I would polish it up and drive it everyday.