My First Car Wreck

A very long time ago when I was still too young to drive, I was a country boy living about three miles from town. I was the youngest of my dad's two families with two half-brothers, three half-sisters, and a brother two years older than me. I was born an uncle to several nieces and nephews since my dad was sixty years old at the time of my birth. He retired when I was just five years old so for the most part he was always around, either relaxing in his easy chair watching TV on the old Capehart console black-and-white TV/radio/phono and looking out the living room picture window at one of the finest hillside views in Maine, property that came into the family in the late 1800's shortly after his birth, or doing any of a million chores country people tend to always need to tend to.

Between our house and the town airport was a patch of land originally taken from my dad by the town for the airport but abandoned for years when the airport's third runway was dropped from development. Atop the hill at the airport level was a rectangular field which at one time was a rich hay field. My dad was a farmer in his day but the farm ended when the land was taken for the airport.

My brother took an interest in cars when I was right around twelve years old. His first car, acquired before he had a driver's license, was a 1948 Pontiac fastback 4-door sedan with 2-tone green paint, a flathead straight-8 engine with a hydramatic transmission, and to top it off, a visor over the windshield.

Here are a couple of YouTube videos of Pontiacs of this vintage:

1948 Pontiac Silver Streak 4 door Straight 8

1948 Pontiac streamliner silver streak, Now available with hydra-matic automatic

The car ran well but was a real dog, a lazy dog, but using that car, my brother and I and a few friends managed to carve out a single-lane oval race track in that rectangular field. The straightaways were long enough to speed up to 25 or 30 miles per hour before reaching sharp right-angle turns. One of our favorite tricks was on rainy days we would get up enough speed on the straightaways to skid the car around the turns. In one of the turns we dug such a deep trench in the mud that even to this day the depression and associated mud "bank" remains, 60-plus years later.

One summer day after a dry spell my friend Roger who lived on a farm on the other side of the airport was riding shotgun with me when I, not willing to wait any longer for rainy weather, decided I was going to make that car skid on dry land. Racing down the back stretch at top speed I started into my skid when the car stubbed its toe on something, rolled over ever so slowly, and came to rest on its roof.

Roger and I were unhurt and managed to get out of the car but a little while later we climbed back in. There was a strong smell of gasoline inside the car. We noticed that the dome light was on, and Roger thought it shouldn't be on so he used the heel of his boot to kick the light to break it and make it go out before it maybe started a fire. Well, I still remember seeing the spark that made, the spark that ignited the gasoline fumes inside the car, and I remember making our escape through one of the back doors. I exited first and remember guiding Roger out. I was unhurt but he managed to singe his eyebrows and I think may have had some minor burns on his face. Still, we considered ourselves lucky all things considered.

My brother and Roger and I watched the car burn to a crisp, gas tank first, then the interior, then the tires. The last fire to go out was the hydramatic transmission which burned for hours. Our dad was not very happy about all this, but he didn't stop us so the next thing we did was to take his 1940 Ford dump truck, and using a cable we were able to repeatedly snap that cable tight and tear the entire body off the frame. We hauled the body to the dump, but we towed the frame back to the barn where my brother painstakingly replaced the burned ignition wires and tires, refilled the hydramatic using pitch black drain oil, propped up the steering column, and attached a seat cushion getting the old car frame running again and back on the track.

I even have a memory of fitting a back seat cushion onto the frame and along with a couple of friends driving the thing on the airport runway!

Seriously, it should be against the law for kids to be allowed to have this much fun! Oh, right, it no doubt was. We just didn't get caught.