Old Family Cars and Memories - and a Mystery Car!

The car to the left has a page to itself. It is a photo I have always treasured, and it started the search for the other car pictures. (Go to its page by clicking on the picture.) I vaguely remembered a picture of our1934 Ford sedan on the desert, and when I searched through the old photo albums, I found it, as well as others. A few of the memories associated with them, and the mystery car I don't remember are below.

I think it is pretty obvious that this '34 Ford was a NEW family car - at least new to our family. It must have been purchased - probably used - in about 1935 or 1936, since there are only two little girls so far (Ginger and me), and Katie was born in 1937 (I think). You can feel the pride that Dad has in the car, and his family. As I remember, we had this car until about 1949 or 1950, when we bought a used Mercury station wagon, an old wooden one. (Our first long trip in that car was to Yellowstone.) I probably learned to drive the '34 in 1948, when I was 16 years old.

In 1963 we flew to Kathmandu, Nepal. At the airport, the taxis were Fords that looked just like the one above! We were told that the road into Nepal had only been opened a year or so earlier. How did those Fords get there? Apparently they had been flown into Kathmandu in parts, and reassembled when they arrived. I certainly was suffused with nostalgia when I saw those old cars, and the memory has stayed with me ever since. It's one of my strongest memories of Kathmandu. (For even larger pictures of this '34 Ford, click on the one you want to see.)

This picture records one of the family "legends." Before there were any paved roads into Canyon de Chelly (pronounced "shay"), it was a challenge to get there because of sandy washes. The story goes that on our trip there, we got stuck in the sand, and had to unload everything in the car in order to get out. When we arrived at the campground, Mom and Dad discovered that the camp stove had been left behind when replacing the load, so Daddy went back to retrieve it. Mom, of course, was sure he would get stuck again; besides, it was after dark. He made the round trip successfully, came back with the camp stove, and ever after Mom said that he must have left it in the wash intentionally, in order to prove he could drive through the sand without getting bogged down. (This picture is labeled as being Gordon and Katie Gardner.) I was old enough to remember this occasion, and to remember Canyon de Chelly. I've been back several times as an adult, but can't find any place on any entry roads that even remotely remind me of this event.

I had always assumed that the Model T was the only car that preceded the 1934 Ford sedan in our family. When I was searching for the picture taken of that Ford stuck in the sand, I came across another photo of an old car. There were no people in the photo, so I couldn't guess whether it had been in the family, and I'd never heard it referred to. At the same time, I was searching for pictures of a house I remembered only as the "Louis Street house." It was the first house Mom and Dad bought, in the middle of the depression. Dad had a steady job with the County of Los Angeles. Mom said she went to the realtor and told him they couldn't make a good down payment, but they could be depended upon to keep up with their monthly payments. My strongest memories of that house are of puppies and kittens being born under the house, and of falling down and scraping my knees and having my father paint the scrapes with Mickey Mouse faces in mercurochrome. I remember that the fall was on a steep hill in front of the house. I found several pictures obviously taken around that house, including one with a view (above, a cropped enlargement) into the garage. When I compare this rear view and the other photo, I'm pretty sure they are the same car. So, when you click on the photo above, you can see the whole "mystery" car. I've had it identified as a Model A Ford; these were made between 1926 and 1931.