Car from Childhood

[Steve Shauger]

It started in the spring of 1967 while on my way to elementary school. I heard this car tearing down the back roads of suburban Philadelphia. The tone of that exhaust, the lope and sound of the solid lifter camshaft left quite an impression. It was a white with black stripe 1967 Camaro. I found out few years later that is was a friends cousin's 67 z28. The owner used to race it on front street in Philly, and was stolen in 1969.

[njsteve]

Experts say that the first memory children have is tied to the first acquistion of language - in other words if you don't have a method of classifying and storing the information in your brain, you wont have a way to retrieve it either.

I would disagree with that premise as my first car memory was when I was 6 months old (yes, that's right). I remember being held in the baby sitter's arms, opening my eyes, looking up, and seeing her "ample bosom" and then hearing a large crashing noise. It was my dad driving our white, 1958 Oldsmobile station wagon loaded with lumber sticking out every open window and being chased by a gaggle of neighborhood kids. It looked like a scene from Moby Dick with a fleet of whaling boats following the harpooned white whale.

This was the day he was going to build the gaint A-framed tree house that would stand for 20+ years in our backyard in Orange, Connecticut.

My parents could never understand how I could recall that car at such a young age but after some research it turned out that they only had that car for one summer in 1963 and sold it shortly thereafter. There was no way I could have known about it without seeing it firsthand.

(They also thought I was autistic because I wouldn't talk to anyone til I was about 4 or 5 years old, but I could name any car that drove by from age 1, onward.)

So basically my first memories are of big breasted women and cars. Some things never change.

[COPO CARTEL]

WOW.... flash back to 1972.. my dad had a 67 GTX with a wild paint job by Juan Parker here in Columbus and a 426 wedge motor stuffed under the hood...that was not my wow factor car but this car was....my dad raced a guy named Karl Kirk who had a 70 red/white automatic Hemi Cuda after 2 races both my dad and Karl had to have each others cars so they traded...so the Hemi Cuda became my mental gateway to being car crazy...I actually cried the day my dad sold that car and i have tracked it ever since. It currently resides in Alabama.

[Pulnaway]

My father has always been a 50s custom guy, although he has had a bunch of early 60s musle cars. The first car I remember was his 1939 Ford custom conv. It had a 50s Olds engine with 2 4s, chopped with a carson top and a Nash grill. The guy who puchased the car has had it stored in a barn since the mid 70s. ( I plan to get it back if the guy will ever sell ) The first cool fast car was one of his many 64 Galaxie 500 XLs. All of them were black with red interior, but This one was a 4 spd. and had big and little cragers. It was a 390 with 2 4s. He would grab second gear whenever I asked! I always knew when he was coming home because I could hear him before he ever came over the hill.