I am thinking about my grandparents 1949 Plymouth. The picture is it a 1950 Plymouth.I know that car manufacturers changed body styles in the middle of the year, that's maybe why it was in 1949/1950, just as my 1953 Chevy was a 1952/1953 model. But that's not the story.
This would be the car that my grandparents would own from the time they bought it new until it was sold when my grandfather was in his 90s.
They had a car before the Plymouth. It was a coupe, it was black, and it had one windshield wiper which was on the driver's side. I remember coming into town from Rosewood and standing up in the back watching grandpa wipe the windshield off with a handkerchief because the motor on the wiper had quit. I would stand on the hump on the floor and view the world of washboard roads. What ever happened to those humps, anyway? There is a picture of the car in shed, taken on Thanksgiving of 1941. We just can't quite make it out. I remember it looking a lot like a 1936 Chevy Coupe in shape.
The gray Plymouthwas truly an up grade! This was the car they would take on Sunday afternoons to go visit. It would be at their service for almost a and a quarter of a century.
What I am thinking about on this cold day in February, is how grandpa took the battery into the house during the cold winter days and how they would cover it up with quilt.s I am thinking about how the paint faded and grandma waxed it with floor wax I am thinking about howwhen the flooring started to wear, they used pieces of linoleum as floor mats.
The Plymouth was rarely in a garage. At the last house they lived in on Horace Avenue it sat in the snowbank during the cold winter months. There was a philosophy about cars, especially old cars, and when they did not start they should be left to sit until warmer weather. Daddy called it. "Tying it up".
No one drove grandpa's car. No one knew what kind of shape was in. No one knew that on that clear sunny day when he was coming back from building a fireplace in the country, his clutch, which had long since worn out, would slip, causing the car to die. He would restart it, not look--and pull onto the highway in front of a car coming from the west. The oncoming car took the ditch rather than to hit grandpa. To understand grandpa is to know it was the other guy's fault.
Imagine my dad's horror. He was following grandpa and saw the nearly fatal accident. Daddy checked on the guy in the Oldsmobile in the ditch first, then took him and Grandpa to town. Once it was certain no one was injured, the Oldsmobile was replaced and grandpa's driving days were over. The Plymouth's clutch was fixed and the vehicle was sold.
I remember hearing a Rosewood story about a man with a car. He pulled the car with his tractor to get it started. Another person put a BBQ under the engine to warm it up. At a motel in Thief River Falls, there are hook ups for engine heaters. It is the same for some older office buildings in Fargo.
Perhaps you are spoiled. Perhaps your car is in the garage. Perhaps you have a engine heater plugged in so it warms quicker. Perhaps you have an automatic garage door opener AND a car starter which not only starts the vehicle but warms the seats as well. Perhaps, in this frigid part of the world, you leave your car running in the parking lot.
For those of you who live in sunny climate now, I am certain you remember those ice cold cars which appeared to have flattened tires as you drove away from your house. Perhaps you remember scraping inches of ice and snow off the windows so you could see. Perhaps it was your job to shovel the drive way to even get the car out! And if you stalled and had a clutch, just get a few strong guys to push at 4 mph, pop that clutch and get it started again!
Come back to the snowbank! We have snowblowers to clean the driveway and 4 x 4 vehicles to buck the snow banks if you don't want to shovel! Just remember you will need mittens and a few choice words to remind you of why you don't live here.
e.
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