l-r, Ruth, Thelma, Mary in 1967
This true story is about these three sisters. At the time this picture was taken in Spring 1967, Ruth was 42, Thelma was 44, and Mary was 46. From what I’m deducing this picture was taken at Thelma’s home in rural Alexander County, Illinois, in the middle of the Shawnee National Forest. Mary lived a tenth of a mile up the road.
So let’s break this down and look at the automotive choices of each during my lifetime, which began in 1972. Let’s start with Mary, my paternal grandmother.
Grandma purchased a new Ford Maverick in 1971. Painted in grabber blue, identical to the car in this ad, her Maverick was sparsely equipped, coming with the 170 cubic inch straight-six and a three-speed manual transmission.
Long ago Grandma told me the Maverick represented a triumph of sorts for her. My grandfather died quite unexpectedly about five months before the lead picture was taken and it left her in a distinct financial bind. The amount of unsolicited advice about what to do didn’t sit well with her (get remarried quickly, sell the property, etc.) and she dug in her heels. Grandma said her goal was to stay in her home (she’s been in her house sixty-two years now) and pay cash for a new car within five years.
She did so with her Maverick.
Grandma had been hoping for an approximate ten-year cycle on her cars, but it didn’t quite work out. One day in late 1979 or early 1980, she was on her way to work when she encountered some loose gravel. Living about six miles from the nearest paved road, her hitting loose gravel wasn’t an unknown event. But this day was different, with the Maverick ultimately hitting a large oak tree head-on.
Unhurt, Grandma simply put the Maverick in reverse and continued on toward work. When she noticed the engine getting warm from the now ruptured radiator, she stopped and walked the rest of the way.
The backyard repairs made on the Maverick (which involved a Ford tractor, a come-along, and my father jumping up and down on the hood) gave Grandma a solid year of service before she sought a new car. The biggest driver of her change of heart was not completely trusting the Maverick to make the two hour trip to her sister Ruth’s house. So in late 1980 Grandma purchased a teal tropic green metallic 1980 Dodge Aspen sedan with a matching green interior.
Grandma Mary detests green.
Equipped with the trusty if choked slant six, this Aspen was living proof Chrysler had finally perfected the F-bodies. Driven primarily on gravel roads, the Aspen cleaned up great before being traded in 1990. This was the first car my grandmother had had with an automatic transmission and air conditioning. She quickly took to having air, but wasn’t so sure about the automatic. Part of that was breaking the clutch habit as she periodically slammed her left foot onto the brake pedal for the first few years of ownership.
Grandma was never afraid to use her car beyond its intentions nor was she afraid of much else. For instance, she once had a temporary sawmill about a mile up the road from her house. After the mill left, she routinely made trips up to raid the copious pile of refuse wood for burning in her wood stove, loading the car to the gills. As she said at the time “Why split wood if somebody has left some for you?”. It was also during this time she let ten-year old me drive her Aspen back and forth to haul wood.
Her philosophy was if your feet can reach the pedals, you’re big enough to drive.
During a freak encounter at a McDonald’s in Cape Girardeau in early 1991, I saw a familiar green Aspen. Walking up to the lady getting out of the car, I asked her how the Aspen was doing, telling her it had belonged to my grandmother. She exclaimed how she had been happy to find such a low mileage car (it had around 55,000 miles when traded) that had been treated so tenderly. Well, she was half right.
Grandma retired in 1989 and decided to get another car as a retirement present to herself. Having put the Aspen through the proverbial wringer, she got another Dodge in 1990, this time a 1989 Aries with the venerable 2.2 liter. It had been a “program car”, a nice euphemism for saying former rental car.
Except for a transaxle that committed hari-kari at 23,000 miles, it was a good, solid, and forgettable car. It was perfect for a retired woman in her seventies. With the Aries being silver, I once joked how she had managed to get a car that matched her hair. She did have to have some mild body work performed after an ice storm caused her carport to collapse onto the Aries.
The most memorable thing about the Aries was the day she took delivery. Seventeen year old me accompanied her. Her having paid cash threw the finance people for a loop, yet they still wanted to up-sell her an extended warranty. She and I walked into one of the offices at Town & Country Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge in Cape Girardeau to talk to the warranty salesman.
The guy we met is still vivid in my memory – he looked like the wardrobe person from Miami Vice had dressed him. Pastel blues, t-shirt under a sport coat, horrible mustache, no socks with dress shoes – the works. He quickly dived into his sales pitch about getting an extended warranty and how it was so good, etc.
Grandma was skeptical but I beat the guy to the punch. I said something to the affect of “look dude; she’s retired, she just traded you a ten-year old car with only 55,000 miles, and she’ll be driving even less now. Besides, it sounds like you have no faith in your product. She doesn’t need it.”
His face turned crimson red as I stood up and smiled with a “Grandma, let’s go”. I drove that Aries off the lot and she bought me lunch.
In 2000, the Aries was sold to a co-worker of mine. Grandma had found herself a base model 2000 Ford Taurus with 1,800 miles and she brought it home.
This was another durable car that received the Mary Treatment. In her eighties by now, Grandma got tangled up with a 1976 Dodge pickup and knocked off an outside mirror a time or two while parking in the garage. She gave up driving about two years ago and the Taurus was sold in 2015 with 24,000 miles on the clock.
Let’s now move on to Thelma.
Thelma and her husband Sherman, like Grandma, purchased a new Ford in 1971. They needed bigger and obtained what is one of the ultimate Fords of all time – a 1971 LTD!
Years later, Thelma and her husband sold the LTD to their daughter and son-in-law, and I rode in it a few times while in high school. Descriptors such as awesome and phenomenal don’t even begin to do these LTDs justice.
This LTD was still going strong in the early 1990s when I moved away from the area. As a point of reference, I’ve realized while writing this I haven’t seen Thelma since her granddaughter, who is my age, got married in 1994 or 1995.
When Thelma and Sherman sold the LTD, they bought a G-body Pontiac Bonneville. They still had this car when I moved away.
Thelma has simply had fewer cars. Let’s move on to Ruth, who has had a much different life than her sisters and the most diversity in her purchases.
Ruth loved her wagons. My first memory of Ruth contains her tannish 1971 Plymouth Fury wagon (1970 shown). The contradiction of this delightfully huge wagon being driven by a woman barely over 5′ tall was profound.
This Plymouth wagon lasted until the late 1970s when one fateful day Ruth crested a hill and a tractor-trailer was parked crossways in the road. Knowing there was no way to stop in time, Ruth was faced with the choice of going beneath the trailer or into the ditch. She chose the ditch and demolished the Plymouth when it rolled over.
Ruth then bought a new half-ton Chevrolet pickup. Putting a camper shell on it, she pretty much had her Fury wagon again, albeit in a taller format.
Ruth drove that pickup all over the place. Living in a cabin on the banks of the Kaskaskia River outside of Sparta, Illinois (a town whose primary claim to fame is having the Sidney Poitier film In The Heat Of The Night filmed there), Ruth always had something to haul.
Several years later, Ruth and her husband began taking care of his aging mother. Ruth’s mother-in-law, who personified the old stereotype of mothers-in-law being difficult people, threw a fit that the pickup was too tall, gave a negative connotation, looked peasant-like, etc. So the Chevrolet went away…
For a Honda Civic. And, in Ruth’s tradition, it was a wagon. Incidentally, Ruth’s mother-in-law had an amazing 1971 Ford LTD two-door.
Admittedly, I had never seen any car like this and it created a small degree of curiosity, although I could never picture myself actually driving it or wanting to own one. But Ruth drove it all over the countryside, continuing to use it like she’d used her pickup and her Fury.
I remember once asking Ruth what she thought about her Honda. Her response said so much in so few words: “Jason, it’s not my pickup.”
By 1995, Ruth’s mother-in-law had passed away and she had divorced her husband after discovering his eye-poppingly nefarious activities. So what did Ruth trade her Honda for?
A Buick Skylark. So while Ruth had traded her American Chevrolet for a foreign car, she reversed course. It makes me wonder how many Civics were traded on Skylarks, but there was at least one.
Ruth kept this car for twenty trouble-free years. Two years ago, she realized her Buick wasn’t exactly new anymore so she made one more purchase.
She reversed course again and got a Corolla. In a sense, it is the successor to the Skylark – a reliable small car with rather quirky styling. I haven’t seen the car yet, but I know it’s a creampuff.
l-r, Ruth, Thelma, Mary in 2017
These three sisters are still going strong. Ruth is now 92, Thelma is 94, and my Grandmother Mary is still as feisty and stubborn as ever at 96. Of the three, Ruth is the only one still driving, but since she’s the baby of the three, that’s to be expected, isn’t it?
What a great story! Your grandma hit on some good ones, with the Maverick being maybe the weakest. I’ll bet she got a good deal on that Aspen – Chrysler had a hard time selling those even though they had turned it into a pretty good car by then.
Ruth was certainly all over the place in her choices, running pretty much to every corner of the market at one time or another.
Those ditches are nasty. After my own grandma was widowed in 1957 she drove her 51 Kaiser into a ditch after a bee flew into the window and stung her. She only had three more cars until she died in 1978: a used 55 DeSoto Firedome, a used 64 Pontiac Catalina and a new 69 Catalina – silver, black painted roof, cloth seats and no air.
Great story.
Agreed about the ditches. One of my early automotive memories is riding in my grandparents’ Dart as we dropped into a ditch after slightly too-vigorous merging on a slick road. As a kid, my reaction was “Cool!” The adults in the car didn’t enjoy it quite as much. No damage or injuries, however, and the Dart lived to drive many more days.
From what I can remember she did indeed get a screaming deal on the Aspen. Like the rest of her cars, she never had an ounce of trouble with it.
When our 1956 DeSoto Fireflite was new we were coming back from vacation on the California coast. As we entered the Sacramento Valley a 1950 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 going the other way, had it’s left front suspension collapse, the wheel assembly tore loose and the car was sliding onto our side of the road. Dad slid the DeSoto into the wide ditch. The car suffered 0 damage, but because of the deep dirt, came to a stop from around 90 mph in a very short distance, throwing me and my sister forward from the rear seat. I hit my head on the large chrome grab handle on the back upper corner of the front seat on the passenger side just above my right eye, knocking me out. My sister hit the handle on the other side above her left eye and was knocked out. We each have a smalll scar in our eyebrows. We weren’t out long. By using the pushbutton trans, dad rocked the DeSoto out of the deep dirt. Witnesses to the event were helping with traffic, Dad told them he was taking us to the hospital to be checked out (we were only a couple of miles from a town) We both had concussions, dad added seat belts.
Cars of the 50’s and 60’s certainly did not have safety in mind. My family had a 1963 Chevrolet Station wagon from 1964 until 1976. There was no third row seats and my younger brothers and I just sat in the “way back” with metal sides. The car had no seatbelts at all. Jay Leno has a joke about his 1956 Buick Roadmaster. He said it was the kind of car where if you had an accident, your heirs would hose off the dashboard and sell it to someone else. Crude joke, but true. Cars today are destroyed in similar accidents and you walk away. I did.
One day while out plowing I turned at the far end of a field and saw something waving in the ditch at the other end. I completed my turn and cruised over in sixth gear to find a car overturned in the ditch, with a handkerchief waving from the driver’s window. I stopped quickly, dismounted and approached, and as I climbed over the fence I saw what looked like chunks of something deeply red all over the back of the car. This made me more than somewhat reluctant to approach more closely, but I was relieved to find that the red substance was only the remains of a cherry pie that the driver, a friend of the family, had baked and was bringing for a visit her daughter. She had gotten her legs entangled in the steering wheel, and after we got them loose we were able to get her out without apparent injury. No such luck for the cherry pie, however.
It is not unusual for gravel roads to develop a washboard surface in the Spring, when the county grader makes a pass after a good rain, but is unable to dislodge a rock from the roadbed. The blade passes over the rock, leaving a diagonal ridge, which passing cars will soon find and strike. Their suspensions will then bounce up and down at their resonant frequencies, over time producing a series of high and low spots in the softened road surface. As the surface dries and hardens the washboard remains, waiting for an unsuspecting driver to find it and lose control. Country folk soon learn to drive cautiously in the Spring, but city folk and young drivers sometimes have to learn this lesson for themselves, at considerable cost.
Awesome story of three lovely, feisty ladies and their cars! Thanks for sharing!
What a wonderful story! Cars aren’t just for transportation, they’re a part of one’s life.
From a Chevy pickup to a Civic wagon; now that is a bit of a transition.
Nice profile of three fine-looking ladies.
Come to think of it, there was a similarity between the Chevrolet pickup and the Honda as both were tan. As was the Fury and the Corolla. The Skylark was the outlier by being red.
Another winner of a story from the Shafer family. Will you ever run out or do we start to hear about 2nd cousins eventually?
Thank you.
You might appreciate my grandmother’s youngest brother – he has an affinity for BMW motorcycles. He’s 84 and still riding.
A great story — particularly timely coming on the heels of yesterday’s Fargo piece that focused on car casting. This is real-life car casting, and is a terrific piece to read.
Grandma Mary’s use of her cars reminds me of my oldest relative who is still driving — at 96. He drives a Pontiac Vibe that has well over 150,000 miles and sees some pretty rough use and lackadaisical maintenance. I’m sure it’s hauled its share of firewood and who-knows what else. The fact that the Vibe keeps running for him despite the adversity it faces has made me a Vibe fan (plus I drove it once and liked it too).
I always enjoy these Shafer family recollections. Every generation of every family should have an unofficial “official” storyteller and yarn weaver. I may be going out on a limb here, but judging by the installments I’ve read since hanging around here I suspect that the Shafer family might have more than one.
In light of my own grandmother’s passing last month at 94, I’ve been considering going through the old family photo albums and scanning some photos to begin a possible CC post on my grandparents’ cars and their times with them. Who knows, maybe Hurricane Irma will afford me some time to devote to that. While cleaning out some old paperwork my mother recently came across the file my grandfather made up when he bought the car I’m driving now. He kept a folder full of all documents and receipts for every car he owned, tossing them or passing them on when he traded or sold the car. (Oh how I wish he’d kept them all, as I’d love to have all of his carefully curated notes and documentation on each of those car.) Among the papers for the ’99 Chrysler was the original window sticker, which notes across the top “Built Especially for Jean Tietjen”. Jean, of course was my grandmother. Pop always went to the same dealer, struck a deal to order the car he intended to buy next, then took my grandmother in to pick the colors and options, so essentially every newly purchased Chrysler for at least as long as I’ve been alive was Made Especially for my grandmother. This continued right up until the last one in 1999. I thought it would be rather tacky to frame what is essentially a price tag, but it brought back a lot of warm memories of my grandparents together. I have it put away for posterity.
You’ve hit upon something I really need to do, and that’s go scan pictures from my maternal grandparents photo albums and nobody else will do so. It’s been done on the paternal side.
I really like the special ordering of cars, it seems to demonstrate a more personal touch.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to label who is in the pictures. Future generations won’t know unless you do.
Nephew I don’t mind you swiping my pictures but please give me photo credits!
Hahahahaha!
Great story!
During my high school days, I was familiar with several ’71 Fords, not the least of which was my Galaxie 2-door. Strangely equipped, it was. (351 Windsor 2 bbl., A/T, factory A/C, manual steering, manual drum brakes, interval wipers, rear window defogger) Bought it for $75 dollars out of a farmer’s yard. Installed a battery, reconnected the master cylinder, replaced a couple of freeze plugs and drove it home. Soon after, had 4 recapped tires installed and replaced both motor mounts. It was pretty reliable after all that but I kept it for less than a year. A friend’s dad had a ’71 LTD 2-door and the same friend bought a ’71 4-door version. (Not sure if it was a Galaxie or an LTD, though.) Both of these had 351 Windsor engines also and gave good service. Another friend ‘s dad bought a well-used full size Mercury of similar vintage with the 400 2-bbl and it was a smoky piece of crap. I’ve encountered a couple of other 400 Ford engines and they were similar. So, when it comes to Fords, my opinion is that it’s hard to beat a 351 Windsor for reliability.
Jason, Very enjoyable story. It’s great to see these sisters, with such varying tastes in vehicles, living interesting and active lives and looking so well.
Absolutely loved this read and pictures! Great stuff, Jason. When I got to Ruth’s Plymouth wagon, and if faced with the choice of going under the semi-trailer or into the ditch, that was some fast thinking on her part.
The leadoff picture of the blue Maverick shows just how well Ford had nailed the fastback’s styling in its initial form.
Thank you. I need to write a full-blown account of both the Maverick and the Aspen, cars that were much stouter than what I have accounted for in this brief account.
What a great story; your grandmother and her sisters sound like sensible, down to earth women who met life head on, and made few compromises. Good for them and may they continue to be well going forward.
Great to see you still have three relatives in their 90’s going strong! I recently got some family vehicular history from my parents as well, and I have a relatively complete picture of family cars on Mom’s side, but the details on Dad’s side are a little sketchy in spots.
Thank you.
As for family over 90, that’s just the paternal side. My mom’s parents (whom I’ve written about several times) are 90 and 93. Four of my grandfathers five older siblings all made it well past 90 with one hitting 100.
The last picture of my grandmother and her two sisters was taken this past weekend at a family reunion. Someone announced their pregnancy, so there will soon be, according to my mother, six generations of the Minton family living. That’s a rare event.
Jason, you have a fine storyteller’s touch, and evidently no dearth of (family) material–“write what you know about,” they say.
I made a few guesses before reading the article–the only correct one being the thrifty Maverick. Living past 90 isn’t the rare distinction it used to be, much less still driving at that age. Hats off to today’s featured women!
In wish I could write a similar story about my grandparents cars. Of the four, only my maternal grandfather ever got a drivers license. He once brought home a car and my grandmother made him return it that day. She said “what do we need than damn thing for. We have the trolley right outside the front door”. He took the car back. Ironically, he died in 1950 when he was hit by a trolley. The rest never drove.
Well my stepfather has had about 35 cars in 30 years. That is an interesting story if anyone wants to hear.
Yes, please!
Good story ! .
I love feisty old Women .
-Nate
I never knew either of my grandmothers as they died the year I was born, but usually the family, especially on mom’s side has longevity. Aunt Julia substituted as a grandparent and I visited her growing up. She lived in the same Pasadena mansion she’d been in since long before I was born. She died at 114, still sharp as a razor, still driving her gorgeous ’70 Cadillac convertible (usually very fast but very well). She attended dances every Wednesday and Saturday. One Saturday, in the middle of the “Anniversary waltz she slumped in her dance partners arms and had died on the dance floor. She lived life on her terms. All mom’s siblings (large family) lived to 95-101, mom made it to 90, but a fall had shortened her span. Even though I’m 69, I am resigned to most likely being here another 30 years or so. My doctors say internally I am the same as someone in their 20’s, unfortunately that’s not what it feels like in the joints of my body. More power to the three ladies, and to extraordinary long lives
That is an amazing story about your Aunt Julia. Thank you.
That’s quite a story. A few years ago, I danced with my grandmother at her 100th birthday party. She was a much better dancer than I am. She’s 102 now, and looks like she’s about 80.
She never liked driving, though. Grandma never drove until after her husband passed away in 1980 — at that time she bought a used Pinto, but rarely drove it and just preferred relying on others to get around.
Just wow! That’s the way to go – after arriving in a ’70 Cadillac convertible!
Thanx for the follow up .
I too never met my Grand Parents .
I was waiting in my wheelchair in COSTCO yesterday when an old Man walked up top me and said ” how’s the battle of why going ? ” then introduced him self to me, said he was 93 and still walked easily and enjoyed driving although he missed his Wife of 69 years….
He gave me a few upbeat thoughts, shook my hand and walked away unbent, wow .
Here and there through my life I’ve met some seriously strong Women who didn’t need any man, didn’t take any crap and lived lives entirely on their own terms.
I learned a lot from each one just as I’m always learning new things here, thank you all for sharing .
-Nate
I love that last picture! Since the author comes from such a long-lived family, looks like we have many, many years of his storytelling to look forward to.
If we may share our own stories, the earliest of my maternal grandmother’s cars that I can remember is a mid-1980s Pontiac Parisienne. At the time I dismissed it as obviously being just a Pontiac version of GM’s ubiquitous B-platform. Looking back, I now realize what an uncommon car this was in the US. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen another Parisienne.
You enjoyed researching and writing that, I think.
What a range of cars for a range of characters!
Jason, great as always. Thanks for sharing!
I remember Granny’s car being bright blue. Didn’t she have another almost identical after the “tree jumped out in front of her”?
Nope, she kept it until the Aspen. We were in third grade when she hit the tree. That night my dad and your dad pulled it back to our house; I rode in the Maverick.
The fix was a mess but it was practical. Your dad was the selling agent and it went to some family in Mounds and they drove it for a few more years.
Here’s samples of Ford’s colors for Mavericks in 1971. Hers was the Grabber Blue – your mom picked out the color when the car was ordered.
Loved the story, thanks for sharing. Fuselage Fury wagon looks grand.
Cars without the personalities who chose and use them are creatures out of context. Even the most ordinary appliance can become something special when we know its role and history. You’ve demonstrated this brilliantly, not that the ladies’ selections were ordinary in this case.
Love the story. Mine is a bit different. Grandma Rose only had two cars in her 100 years. Her first was a 1959 Desoto Fireflite 4 door with a hemi V-8. What a screamer! She loved it but as my family grew to 8 in 1966, she gifted it to us for a second car. She then bought a 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass 4 door with a 330 V-8. She owned it until 2010 when she gave up driving at 97. She was stopped many times because of her love for speed. Being snowbirds, they spent winters in Phoenix. The police had a habit of parking on the side of the road in the desert with their trunks open to hide their lights from speeders. Rose- 87 at the time- got caught again . As the office approached her car, he asked her if she knew how fast she was going. She said “well, the speedometer said 105 mph”. He replied that she should have the speedometer checked becaused he clocked her at 113 mph. Asked why she was driving so fast, Rose replied ” well, the car hasn’t been run out for a while and I was burning the carbon off the valves”. The officer chuckled and told 5′ 2″ pink haired Rose to keep it down and let her go. I’m sure the cop has shared this story many times a well.
“He quickly dived into his sales pitch about getting an extended warranty and how it was so good, etc.
Grandma was skeptical but I beat the guy to the punch. I said something to the affect of “look dude; she’s retired, she just traded you a ten-year old car with only 55,000 miles, and she’ll be driving even less now. Besides, it sounds like you have no faith in your product. She doesn’t need it.””
That’s the ultimate irony of the car buying experience, the salesman tells you how wonderful the vehicle is and how far the manufacturer has come with quality, and then the F&I guy presents horror stories about expensive breakdowns, frequently showing you a chart of how expensive various individual repairs are.
The scary part is, a lot of those warranties are from third party insurers and usually don’t have any relevance until the new car warranty is expired. So, they ask you to pay two to several thousand dollars for a future that may never happen if you take care of the car, sell the car after a few years, lose the car in an accident or the warranty company goes out of business and leaves you stranded.
The price flexibility on third party warranties alone should be worrisome. When I bought my 2012 F-150, the dealer started pitching the warranty at over $4,000 and after pounding on me for 15 minutes it was down to around $2000. I wonder how much of that was still just commission for the dealership?
No, I didn’t buy it at any price.
Good to see another story about old 70s/80s domestic cars that isn’t snarky or filled with the word “malaise”.
Always appreciate Jason’s family and cars stories, the three sisters still look great and much younger than their ’90’s.
Jason may still be posting CC articles 50 years from now! My grandparents passed when I was quite young, between age 7 and 16. They were all in their early 70’s, Mom passed at 81 and Dad at 90. Lifespans are increasing as time goes by.
It’s funny how some people have little or no car problems, while other seem to have more then their share of breakdowns, even when driving similar makes with proper care.
“Ruth’s mother-in-law, who personified the old stereotype of mothers-in-law being difficult people, threw a fit that the pickup was too tall, gave a negative connotation, looked peasant-like, etc.”
Absolutely hysterical! My Gram M was like that – she refused to ride in my rather nice Nissan King-Cab because of the image it conveyed, but The Golden Child, my cousin Deb, was completely exonerated with her Toyota 4Runner.
My Irish Catholic father would not ride in my orange car because he said it represented Protestant Northern Ireland. The Irish flag is Green, White and Orange. He said the Green stood for Catholic Southern Ireland. The Orange stood for Protestant Northern Ireland and the White represented the wall that keeps them apart. Isn’t that a lovely sentiment for a flag. So he never rode in my orange car until he was forced to give up his license. Then he grudgingly rode in it. People are strange.
The “orange” (Dutch royal family) got left behind when Ulstermen emigrated en masse to N. America and formed a large proportion of the settler class. Until Potato Famine migration, the term “Irish” in America referred to these folks.
Sparta, Illinois, has at least one more claim to fame beyond the movie. World Color’s Sparta plant, opened in 1948, was the most technologically advanced plant in the industry devoted solely to the printing of comic magazines. Can’t seem to determine if that plant is still in operation…
In 1974, I bought a used ’72 Ford Maverick IDENTICAL to the one in the ad. Mine had the 200 ci 6 and automatic.
I drove it for about 4 years until I totaled it in an accident that was completely my fault.
And when my wife and I married in 1992, she had an ’86 Honda Civic AWD station wagon with 5-speed stick. We drove it until it rusted to death at 150,000 miles…
Nice story. My grandmother and grandfather on my mother’s side were like your grandmother. They paid with cash for their cars. Up until late 1991 it was a 1978 or 1979(I forget which year) Cherokee Chief with no options except for Power steering, power back window, 4 wheel drive and an automatic trans. That truck was cool as shit with its cow catcher on the front but was very miserable to ride in in the hot PA summers when growing up as a kid due to no AC
They then bought a brand new 1992 GMC S-Series Jimmy with no options but 4 wheel drive, power steering and a automatic transmission. No AC ether. I got it when my Grandmother stopped driving and it only had 30,000 or so miles on it in 12 years of ownership.
As for Ruth’s pickup truck, I have to admit that in the last 10 years, I have come to like the looks of that gen of Chevy truck. For years I only liked the 2nd gen Chevy truck and the 4th generation Chevy truck. I ignored the 3rd gen truck.
Now I see the 3rd gen C/K truck as being the embodiment of a truck you could work the crap out of and it did not need a thing and after washing it down then you could go out to dinner with it.
The Honda Civic Wagon was the gem here. The LTD, no so much.
My mom had a four door Maverick. Traded it in for fake Maverick Grabber. Red with white trim and inline six!
A great story about three great women and their cars. My own grandparents never drove, but I do have an old photo of my paternal grandmother holding myself (at 1 year) and my older sister in front of my dad’s ’61 VW. My mom learned to drive from a friend who was a trucker and she drove quite well (if a little fast at times) for many years. I remember her going over a railroad crossing on a back road at night in our ’73 Impala doing about 90 mph. The car went airborne but landed on all fours with a good loud thump. She said “don’t tell your father!”. My dad was none the wiser, and the Impala was none the worse for wear. She drove many different cars over the years, mainly Mopars that she bought through my brother-in-law who worked for Chrysler Canada. He was able to get deals on executive driven vehicles for her, and she got good use out of them. Her last car was a 2010 Honda CRV that she drove until early 2016 when she had to give up driving. She always thought she’d get her license back, but when they take it away at 88, it’s not going to happen. She passed away this summer, and my sister has (and quite enjoys) the CRV. My mother-in-law (at 75) is a kid next to your grandmother and great-aunts but she’s driven everything including dump trucks and school buses while raising six kids, and she’s still at it. Keep up with the great stories – they always make for a fine morning read with my coffee.
Great story Jason.
YOU GO GIRLS!!