Just starting out
Linda and me leaving our wedding reception, driving away from her parents' home on Bunkers Cove Road that Saturday afternoon, June 29, 1957. Linda 20, Tom 21!!
My brother Walt took the picture, as I recall. I had left the car hidden at my parents' house so it wouldn't get all painted up with "Just Married" signs, shoes and cans tied to strings dragging along behind. During the reception I gave Walt the key and asked him to get the car and drive it to the Peters' home for us, and Walt did that.
It was a new 1957 Ford Thunderbird, red with white removable top, borrowed from a friend who worked at Cook Ford.
Six months later, after I'd graduated from OCS and had been commissioned the U S Navy's newest ensign, we were home on Navy leave for Christmas vacation, bought our first new car from Cook Ford,
a 1958 Ford Custom 300 two-door sedan, just like this one. Nice. Blue and white.
It lasted us until the Sunday afternoon in Norfolk Virginia when we fell in love with an orange Opel Rekord and traded our Ford. Our car was worth more, and the dealer offered us $125 to make up the trade difference.
The next morning my ship, the destroyer, sailed, and Linda was left for two weeks to drive a German car with standard transmission, three-speed stick shift she was not accustomed to.
A couple years later we moved from Norfolk to Jacksonville, where I was assigned to Mayport Naval Station, and we bought Linda her own car, a Rambler station wagon, almost just like this one. Our first station wagon of many over the years. This car was interesting in that to start it, you lifted the gearshift lever toward you.
At the time, Rambler was a model of the Nash line of cars. Rambler was the "compact car" brainchild of George Romney, my hero, who was head of American Motors for a while. He served as governor of Michigan and then was a frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 1968. His campaign faltered and he served in Richard Nixon's cabinet. Brilliant and a good man, he'd have been a superlative president. And there would have been no Watergate.
For love of Romney, our next car was another Rambler station wagon, our first air conditioned car. We drove it to Ann Arbor, had it there while I was in the MBA program at Univ of Michigan.
In one of my business classes, the term paper was to do a practical project, and I did mine on shopping for a new car. My paper got an A and we had a new 1963 Chevrolet station wagon,
the car we took to Japan when the Navy transferred us there, July 1963 to July 1966. A lovely dark green car with a V8 engine, it was far too big to drive on the roads in Japan. In fact, it would have been too long and too wide to park in the spaces in the garage here at 7H.
RSF&PTL
T