My First Car

I left to buy my first car at 14 years of age with money I had earned from 2 paper routes, and came home driving a Fiat 600.

Return to the daze of my youth.

I bought my first car at 14 years of age with money I had earned from 2 paper routes.

Unlike the car in the photo it had a dark green Earl Scheib paint job, and didn’t have those foreign license plates on the rear. As a matter of fact, it didn’t have any license plates front or rear.

I first saw it on Sykes Ave parked in front of a house now owned by one of my brothers. After having delivered my last paper I spotted the tiny car with a cardboard sign in the back window indicating the car was for sale for only $25.00. See, in 1970 one could still find lots of running used cars for less than $100. I stopped and walked around the car checking it out.

When I got home I asked my mother, “Momma, when can I have a car?” She looked at me as if very annoyed by the question.

“Like your daddy and I told you, you can have a car when you can buy it with your own money,” she answered, not knowing anything about the car parked just one block away. Out the door and up the street I went as hard as I could run.

I knocked on the door and a young man not much older than me came to the door. “Does it run?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “but all it needs is a valve adjustment and it should run just fine.” He went on to explain how he had attempted to adjust the valves, but only made matters worse before giving up. Believing every word he said I handed him my $25.00, and as his mother happened to be a notary public, she notarized the title for free. I pushed the little car a few feet then jumped in and coasted down the hill towards my house. The car came to a stop about fifty feet short of our driveway.

I got out to push the car while shouting for my three younger brothers, and the four boys next door to help me push it up the driveway and into the back yard as my mother stood on the porch as if she was in shock. “What are you doing with that?” she asked.

“You told me I could have a car when I could pay for it with my own money.” I answered.

“But you don’t know how to drive a car,” she exclaimed in disbelief. “You haven’t taken driver’s ed and you won’t be 16 for 2 more years.” I just laughed as did the other seven boys who had helped me push the car. Momma was the only one who didn’t know Daddy had been letting me drive his tractor-trailer for 3 years, and I wasn’t about to tell her.

My daddy didn’t seem the least bit concerned when he returned home and found the broken down car and piles of his tools laying on the ground behind it. Truth be told I had no idea of what valves were or where they were located, much less how to adjust them. The tools were just there because it seemed like the thing to do.

I studied the giant old Motors manual that Daddy had bought several years before but it made no reference to a ’62 Fiat 600. It made no reference to any Fiats or foreign models of any kind as if they didn’t exist at all.

A couple of weeks passed and several of the mechanics in the neighborhood — all friends of my daddy — all proclaimed the car impossible to repair as soon as they opened the trunk in the front and discovered the engine was in the rear. It was agreed by Daddy and all his mechanic friends that I had been hoodooed and that should teach me a lesson about buying a pig in a poke.

But I hadn’t completely lost hope and one day a neighbor who worked on fork lifts for a living came by to shoot the bull with my daddy. I showed him the car and he went straight to the rear and opened the hood. “Will it turn over?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Spin it over a few times so I can hear it,” he instructed.

After he listened to the car turn over he explained to me that it might be lose valves or something worse. Then he explained to me how to adjust the valves using a matchbook for a feeler gauge before returning to talk with Daddy.

The first problem I ran into was that all the nuts and bolts were metric and no one I knew had anything other than SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) tools. With Vice Grips, adjustable wrenches, and pliers I finally managed to reveal the rocker arms and the tops of all 8 valves.

As it turned out all the valves were over-tightened so doing exactly as Mr Florez had instructed me I found top dead center and started adjusting the valves. Then I talked my daddy into jump starting the now dead battery with the family station wagon. The little Fiat roared to life as soon as I turned the key so I pushed it into first gear, and took off for my first lap around the yard before discovering the car had no brakes. The hard way.

After crashing the car into a pine tree and prying the fender away from the right front tire with a 2x4 I discovered the failure was due to a bad master cylinder that was leaking brake fluid as fast as I poured it in.

A couple of weeks later I had saved up enough money to buy a rebuild kit and learn how to repair the master cylinder.

Oh the fun I had in that little car… But maybe I shouldn’t tell everything.

Have even more fun by reading Popcorn Stuffing.