"I think that car's an eight."

Always before, my father had only bought cars and trucks from his friend and classmate Bubber Nelson, with whom he had played football at Bay High. Mainly in my memory are the 1935 Chevrolet

my parents had when I was born and for the first six years of my life, and the 1942 Chevrolet bought just after Pearl Harbor. It was the dark blue of the top car below, and the body style of the two door Fleetline Aerosedan:

But having grown up with his father in the fish business, that was my father’s business too, and for that he had trucks. The first truck I remember is the 1941 Chevrolet, dark blue with black fenders.

It was parked behind our house, just outside the dining room. A small boy loves a truck, and one of my early memories is the sadness of seeing it driven away by a stranger the evening my father sold it because he was being caught up in the service during World War II.

After the war my father went back into the fish business and ordered another truck from Mr. Nelson. For several years vehicles were scarce, in great demand and hard to get, and he waited well more than a year. He finally gave up and went to Karl Wiselogel at W&W Motors, the Dodge-Plymouth dealer, and bought a Dodge truck, a new 1947, bright red with black fenders. That, somewhat to my dismay the following year when it came time to replace our 1942 Chevrolet sedan, introduced competition to the new 1948 Buick Super that my mother and I had our hearts set on.

As it turned out, the dark green 1948 Dodge sedan that my mother and I chose between the blue one and the green one while they were still on the box car down at the BayLine train depot, was in the family ten years, ending up as my car my senior year at the University of Florida, and the first car Linda and I had in our marriage.

My grandfather Walter Gentry had always driven Chrysler products, Plymouth, DeSoto, Chrysler, Imperial, never a Dodge Brothers for some reason, maybe the Dodge-Plymouth dealer in Pensacola wasn’t a Baptist, I don’t know. Anyway, after we got our 1948 Dodge, my car loyalty, which was an important part of my being in those day, shifted from General Motors and Buick to Chrysler products, a MoPar Man as later some would call it. So, lusting after the top of the line, my dream car became Chrysler. But there was no Chrysler-Plymouth dealer in Panama City, I had to -- indulge -- in Pensacola. Every other Saturday morning for several years I rode the Greyhound or Trailways bus from Panama City to Pensacola to visit Dr. Bell, the orthodontist, about my braces. In those days, the Pensacola bus station, which today is the office of our Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast, was just a block off Palafox. On Palafox, up near Christ Church, was located the Chrysler-Plymouth dealer where my grandfather bought his cars. Every two weeks without fail, I went in there either on my way to or from Dr. Bell’s office, sat in the cars in the showroom, and checked the brochures to make sure I had the latest ones.

The only new Chryslers I remember offered for sale in Panama City in those days, were in the W&W Motors showroom on Harrison Avenue. And since, with cars from there, and three Dodge trucks in my father’s fish business, I could manage to be there often -- plus walking down Harrison Avenue on my way home from Bay High School -- I had many visits to those two Chryslers. The first was a 1948 Chrysler Crown Imperial sedan, an enormous seven passenger car with jump seats. I knew that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of my father buying a car that looked like Mr. Astor’s limousine, but I sat in it anyway and imagined.

However, in 1950, there showed up in the W&W showroom what was to me the ultimate: a beyond gorgeous medium blue new 1950 Chrysler New Yorker sedan. It was the car of my topmost lust, and my mother wanted it too.

We wheedled about it. Or at least I did, to any extent I dared wheedle my father as only my brother Walt would understand. The last wheedling was actually right there in the showroom. My father was into six cylinder vehicles only, and I had done all in my power to keep him from realizing that the car was not a six but an eight, it had a flat head eight cylinder engine. I asked my father to come look at the car and sit in it. He stared at it for a moment and said, “I think that car’s an eight.” And that was the end of it. My dream balloon popped, burst.

But all was well that ended well. Shortly after that, he bought a demonstrator from W&W Motors, the 1949 Plymouth woody wagon

that was our dating car all through high school and college.