She hated every minute we rode in it. Not so much that it had some of the most futuristic styling of any car of the 40's-50's era. She says she hated it because it was black. and it had a weird pointy nose on it.
It was a 1950 Studebaker Commander that I bought a week before I met my beloved. And I loved it. It had a powerful six-cylinder engine, and it had a Borg-Warner overdrive that squeezed every mile possible out of a gallon of gas (Five gallons for a dollar at the time). It also had a hill-holder that prevented the car from rolling backward on a hill. We put a lot of miles on that old Studebaker and to; this day I still think it was one of the most stylish, best designed and best handling cars ever built.
But it was black.
It was the second Studebaker my family had. The first was a brand-new 1941 four-door Champion that my dad bought just before Pearl Harbor was attacked. It survived all my high school antics during the war and was replaced after the war. I hauled a lot of kids to dances and scrap paper for wartime scrap paper drives.
In the mid-fifties I was assigned overseas and I came home to find my '50 Commander replaced by a 1954 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight. I have a hunch my beloved no sooner saw me depart Chanute AFB by C-119 that she was off to get rid of the Studebaker. After all, it was black.
Over the years we got a couple more Studebakers - 1958 and 1960 Lark wagons. At best, not very good cars - the '58 six cylinder Lark lacked much power - scary in fact. The 1960 Lark was an eight cylinder car which was okay - but finally started rusting out by 1963. And neither of them was black - the '58 was white and the '60 was green -- and they were too small for a family
of six. But they were not black -- and they were a lot more comfortable than a Dodge Coronet two-door which had to hold seven of us. But that's another story.
Well, we've gone through a lot of cars since. Most were good experiences and we especially enjoyed almost 25 years of Dodge minivans which we loved. And we're still with Dodge --
bought our latest a month or two before the big financial crash. This time it's a Dodge Caliber
and we love it. Only thing is - it has a lifetime warranty on the power train - but is that a lifetime of the car of lifetime of the company?
And by the way, it's black - and she likes it.
Like I said, "What goes around comes around."
