FEATURE ARTICLE
April 15 - May 16/01
1935 IHC Pick Up Truck
MY FIRST MOTOR
VEHICLE
BY LORNE FINDLAY
Vancouver Chapter
The
other day I asked myself "How early did my interest in the automobile
arrive and what occasioned that interest?" As I thought about it I realized
that I don't remember much in this regard from before the time that I started
school except that my Dad (a teamster in the teens; trucker in the 20’s) owned
a big old '27 IHC flat deck truck when I was 4 to 6 years old. Dad was short so
to accommodate the gas pedal being in the center of the floorboard he had
become accustomed to sitting a bit to the right of the steering wheel. Because
this left available space to his left, whenever the truck was used as family
transportation I was stuffed into the cab by the driver’s door.
I guess that gave me a very early driver's side perspective that has remained with me - I like to occupy the driver's seat! Add to that the fact that I’m left-handed and some of the negative things that have happened to me on the right side and you'll no doubt, understand this idiosyncrasy. On one occasion, only Mother and I were going with Dad in the IHC so there was no need for me to be on the left side. I rode next to the right door and at one point Mother slammed the door shut with my thumb in the way - that little thumb took a beating that still shows. I developed a dislike for the right side! By the time, in 1932, that Dad traded the old truck on a '29 Pontiac business coupe (no better a vehicle for a large family than the truck had been) his driving from the center habit was so ingrained that he continued that way for a long time and I continued to ride on the left. As I got a bit bigger and could see out I began to get the driver’s view of things and I liked it! I guess all of this would be the beginning of the answer to my original questions.
1930
Pontiac – Lorne’s Dad 1932 – Lake Chelan
Back
then we never went far or often in the car so it was a big treat when it
happened. I remember the first time I rode up Kruger Hill out of Penticton in
the first car ('29 6-cyl Chev.) around to make it all the way in high gear.
Sure, I was in the back seat but on the left side, right behind the driver where
I could watch the whole operation and see the speedometer go down to almost five
miles per hour as the Chev. chugged over the top, still in high.
When
I was ten my oldest brother, Alf, owned a '34 Dodge sedan and one day for some
unknown reason he gave me the ultimate left side experience for a ten year old.
He let me sit behind the steering wheel, on his lap, and steer the Dodge as we
rolled down the road. I was hooked! From that time on I sat behind the wheel of
any parked car that I could get near and went through the motions of driving.
1934
Dodge
.
In 1938 my spinster aunt Kate bought and learned how to drive a new Plymouth
coupe. Learning to drive a bit late in life did not make her one of the
world’s all time great drivers and driving always remained a chore rather than
a pleasure for her. She liked to have someone along so I often went with
her-anything to be near a car! Of course I had to be on the right side and in
that spot had some extraordinarily bad experiences. None of them, however, was
as bad as the time when, as I walked up the main road of Kaleden, our village, I
saw Aunt Kate approaching up a steep hill out of an orchard. I kept well to the
right, thinking that she’d turn left towards her place. Big mistake, I think
she intended to turn right or perhaps she didn't know which way to turn but she
ended up chasing me up into the orchard and I would have been run into the
ground by the right end of her front bumper had not my cousin been in the car
with her. In desperation he reached out and turned off the key. Fred stopped her
from taking my life even though she would have "broke even" since as
Kaleden's Nurse and Midwife she had brought me into this world in her own home.
1938
Plymouth – Lorne at 16 yrs.
Well,
now, what about my first car? As I approached the age of the driver's license
and wishing more and more that I could have a car the possibility became more
and more remote. There was a war on; cars, gas and tires were very hard to come
by-not a hope even though I worked in the summers and was paid well due to the
men
having
gone to war. But long before I could get a driver’s license I could drive a
car quite handily. I had become Aunt Kate’s helper, changed a tire if needed,
brought her car out of the garage, turned it around for her when she came to our
place, etc. And once, when I was called out to fight a forest fire a beauty of a
'37 Ford pickup was commandeered and I was ordered to drive it-no questions
asked about D.L.s Another time my foreman sent me in to Penticton on the truck
to bring his '34 Ford coupe home from a repair garage. Of course I gladly went
and experienced the peppiest car I'd yet driven.
I
had a near miss in getting to own a great car when I was 16. A mint '27 Ford
coach became available because of the death of a man I delivered papers to. He
lived with two spinster sisters who never drove a car nor would now. So the car
sat. My folks didn't know them much at all so one day I summoned up a massive
amount of nerve, knocked on their door, was well received by the old maids, gave
them our family's condolences and finally broached the subject of what would
happen to the car. They said that it would have to be sold and had set a price
of $115.00 on it. I told them that I had the money and was interested in
purchasing the car. They agreed to hold it 'til I talked to my folks. This had
to be done as, back then, until one was eighteen car ownership papers had to be
endorsed by a parent. Well, my Dad was a man of few words and when I laid out
the whole plan to him he had a very short, sharp and to the point answer, NO!!!
I scrapped the plan.
1927Model
T
It
wasn't all bad. I was working in an orchard with a Doukhobor chap and when I
told him my disastrous story the next day he got me to put him onto the Ford and
bought it. He was so grateful to me for that Model T that he would lend it to me
and in it my friend, Leonard and I would go on double dates with a couple of
high school girls. That's when I learned that when you could provide a car you
could quite easily date girls!
Until
I graduated from High School and joined the army I was able, occasionally, to
get the use of the Ford or Aunt Kate's Plymouth (always with the addition of an
errand to run for her, of course!) My Dad was a patriotic believer in using no
more gas than needed so getting our family "34 Chev coupe (why did we
always end up with coupes or cabs?) occurred only for legitimate causes.
To my chagrin I discovered that dating girls didn't fall into the
patriotic guidelines!
I
went into and back out of the army without owning a car but while in the forces
I trained as a driver and motor mechanic so once back home in 1945 I was real
ready to own. Problem was, nothing was available. The dearth of cars since the
cease of production in 1942 had become wide spread and finding an available used
car that would run was near impossible. I didn't fret too much about it 'till
late that fall. Leonard and I were working in the local fruit packing plant and
we were dating two sisters who had come into Kaleden for the packing season and
we found lots to do without needing wheels.
Then
a crisis set in! Our packing season ended and Judy and Marg moved on to
Naramata, 25 miles away, to help wind up their packing season. A little too far
to ride our bikes, we needed a car! I dredged the depths and found a decent
running '35 IHC 1/2ton pick-up in Penticton, (another cab!!) Of course, the guy
was holding out for a huge price but Len and I were desperate so we decided to
go halfers and we bought it. That old truck saw a lot of that road to Naramata.
A few weeks after we got it, a very quiet but observant uncle of mine came up to
us at work and muttered to us" How's the Naramata Special running?"
So,
our supposedly clandestine trips to Naramata were common village gossip but
Leonard and I didn’t care all that much, we were on wheels! But now that I was
almost always on the left side where I wanted most to be, since I was older and
a far more experienced driver (trained in the army, you know!), I discovered
that being on the right side was not always bad. Because of our 'cab' vehicle,
when we took the girls out Judy would sit in the middle while Leonard had to
have Marg sitting in his lap and she seemed to have to hold on tight. I began to
have second thoughts about it all! That escapade wound down before Christmas
when Judy and Marg, their jobs being finished, went back to the hometown from
whence they had come-a bit too far away for regular visiting. Like the girls,
our seasonal jobs petered out so Len and I decided to try our luck at finding
jobs in the big city, leaving for Vancouver on Dec. 28th, 1945 in the pickup
truck. Because there was as yet no Hope-Princeton Highway our route took us
south into Washington State to Wenatchee, over the mountains on Hi. 2 to Everett
and north on 99 to Vancouver close to 400 miles, a very long trip in those days!
The old corn binder gave us no problem, we were justifiably proud of it.
Two
things happened to give me sole ownership of the IHC within a week of reaching
Vancouver: first, I got a job working in a gas station and second - Leonard got
so homesick that he wanted nothing more than to go home. He did and I bought his
half of the truck. It served me well!
