When I was 15 in 1965 and at a “hormone overload”, the only thing that could divert any of us from that obsession was fast cars. Since this was about a year before getting the “Holy Grail” i.e. a driver’s license, I started looking around for my own car! I “heard though the grapevine” about an old ’55 Ford on Tennant Rd., which was the next road over from me and was for sale by Jiggs Slocum, whose son Buzz was a classmate of ours. I went over to look at it and instantly knew that was the car for me! Hey, ANY car I first saw would have been the one for me! It was multicolored, probably from the addition of many junkyard replacement parts and the rocker panel was replaced with old license plates. To me it was the most beautiful car I had ever seen!!! He wanted $35 for it! To me, then, that was a whole heap of money! I told him that I would take it!!!!! I can’t even remember if I test-drove it, probably not since I was only 15 then and had no driver’s license yet. However, if I had wanted to take a test drive, the fact that I had no license yet would not have detained me for even an instant. I did start it up and WOW! It sounded GREAT! It had dual glass packs and had great “Back Off”! (Click the link about the back off story if you’ve forgotten).  It also had a 289 V-8 and it was FAST!!!! At that time our mother worked at the Citizens National Bank in Norwalk and she made an appointment for me to talk to the loan department for a $35 loan. SHE could have loaned me the money I’m sure, but I figure it was her way to teach me about one of life’s responsibilities in dealing with business people in the real world, etc. And besides, if I “welched” on the payments, I would have feared that the “Bank Police” would break through on our door in a raid at 3 AM some night and drag me of to debtors prison or something! Hmmm, some lesson in life’s responsibilities! It must have worked because so far I have never been late for a payment of anything in my life! (Probably that same fear about the “Bank Police”!) I finally got the money and ran over to Jigg’s place on my bike to pay him. On the way there I was picturing never having to ride a bicycle to go anywhere again since I would have my very own car! Through odd jobs, I finally paid off the loan and also the constant fear of the “Bank Police”. Since this was quite sometime before I was old enough to get a driver’s license, my swell car sat in the driveway! However, each day, or several times a day, I would go out to start it and rev it up just to hear the cool ”back off”! I probably used several gallons of gas over the 1 plus year until I finally got to drive it! Well, to make a long story short, having finally reached the ripe old age of 16, and finishing Driver’s Ed. and passing the test for my first driver’s license, I was all set to zoom back with my mother in her 1961 Opel and jump in my car and take the first solo drive!!!!! When I got back I was in for a very shocking surprise! My mother said I could not under ANY circumstances drive my car until I had insurance!!!! AHHHHHHHUUGGH, what a bummer! NOW I had to find more odd jobs to earn enough money for auto insurance! I got a temporary job for the dance studio I took modern jazz lessons from (Hey, Carolyn, you were a long term student there too at the Mayley Waite Dance Academy). Ahhh, even more story material. I finally earned enough to pay the first quarter auto insurance from Caribin Insurance in Norwalk, where I still have my auto insurance to this day, for sentimental reasons, I suppose. Thus, was the start of my driving career, which unlike the last several years, was really fun in those days! Eventually, I did some bodywork with good old “Black Magic” bondo and painted it Midnight Blue. I can’t find any pics after I painted it, but I have a few below before I did! I was constantly speeding to about 60 or so, then downshifting to make the dual glass packs “back off”! If we really wanted to be cool in those days, we would unhook the vacuum line, which caused it to backfire too! Since I rarely had any money, I had to get gas be clandestine means from our farm gas barrel. When Uncle Ned caught me too many times, I had to scrape up money anyway I could for gas at Heckleman’s Sohio at the corner. I usually only had a quarter, which was for school lunch money, and I skipped lunch many times to buy gas. In thoses days, it was much more fun to “hotrod” around the roads than eat! I would stop at Heckleman’s and get 25 cents worth of gas! Bill Heckleman always teased me and said, “Should I put it in slow?”  A quarter’s worth of gas would get me to school and back for at least 2 or 3 days. Now days, it wouldn’t even make you smell like gas if you dumped it all over your head! This car served me well for several years until it had a much-unsophisticated end that you can re read in the previous stories: MY “HOT” CAR  and in another story “FORWARD IN REVERSE”., which talks about the floor shifter I put in it.