1951 Cadillac

A friend sent me a connection to a YouTube video “Parking a 1951 Cadillac.” Maybe the link will open:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCrmbIC6mVM

A California inventor rigged the spare tire to lower from the car’s trunk (boot) and roll the rear end of the car in and out to maneuver into close spaces. The video is nostalgic, a period newsreel, with other 1950s cars on the street and the “perfect voice” of the trained newscaster of that era. More than that though is the car itself, and the nostalgia it stirred in me for those days.

During my Bay High years there was a used car dealer directly across from the school, northwest corner Harrison Avenue and 12th Street. For some weeks during 1952, it would have been my junior or senior year, there was a yellow 1951 Cadillac Series 62 sedan sitting there for sale, yellow with a black top. It was perfect, practically zero miles, and it’s my second memory of a car that I lusted after to the point of obsession, checking it out every afternoon as I left school to walk home. 

It was this model

but this color.

And yes, Bubba knows the differences in a 1950, 1951, 1952 and 1953 year model. We actually had a car of that model, a 1952 Cadillac Series 62 sedan that we bought from an Air Force officer while we lived in Japan in 1965. It was beautiful. Two-tone blue, and I paid $100 for it.

One must be a certified car nut to understand that sort of lust. In my seventy-six years there were only half a dozen or so. One of these mornings, maybe a blog posting will list and picture all of them at once. 

Nothing holy about this posting, so no + today, it's just me.

Tom