Tag: old-cars

I still remember both

You’ll never relive the moment you got your first car. That’s it, that’s the highest peak… it has a lot of meaning to me” —George Lucas, American filmmaker best known for Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

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Cooler evenings a couple of days last week were a nice break from summer’s sweltering heat. But don’t be fooled. Mother Nature plays tricks in East Texas, teasing that there will actually be a real fall.

Cool breezes were just enough, however, to entice me into the garage where my ’50s vintage first-love cars spent the hot summer. The garage where I connect to motoring memories dating back some 60-plus years ago when I bought my first car.

Memories of first cars and first dates have been an American phenomenon for generations. Typically beginning with captivating garage aromas—gasoline, motor oil, chrome polish, and unique interior fabric scents lingering longer than the finest French perfume. Or at least until the fragrance worn by your first date in your first car.

Memories of my first car are somewhat more vivid than those of my first date. But that’s no reflection on the attractive young lady who first caught my eye at Mount Pleasant High School. After all, she was the first to take my mind off cars long enough for me to make a stammering attempt to ask her out for a date.

Still, I must admit that my first date memory moments pale ever so slightly in comparison to the time I laid eyes on the first automobile I envisioned as mine. That dark blue 1951 Chevrolet Styleline DeLuxe. Sitting at Rex Kidwell’s Fina Station on South Jefferson Street in Mount Pleasant, Texas.

Everybody knew Rex. The friendly service station proprietor with autographed black-and-white photos of country music stars on the walls. Most of them signed, “To Rex …”

Where customers were always greeted with a smile, gas was pumped while they sat in the car, the oil checked, the windshield washed, and the floor mats hand swept with a whisk broom, one just like every service station attendant used to keep in his back pocket.

And all that for about 30¢ a gallon.

That service was standard for everyone. Not just customers filling up with ethyl gas and getting change from a five. The “Gim’me a dollar’s worth of regular ‘til payday, please,” drivers received the same treatment.

I was no stranger to driving when the car at Rex’s turned my head. My father and grandfather had groomed me in driving skills since I was 12 years old. I made it legal at 14 by taking driver’s ed, the minimum age for becoming a licensed driver in Texas in 1963.

Stopping at Rex’s station on the way home to gas up Dad’s car that night, I saw the old Chevy. It was love at first sight, gleaming in the spotlight beside the building.

Rex was known for acquiring pristine used cars meeting his standards of ‘nice,’ and parking them at his station with a ‘for sale’ sign.

With some meager money pocketed from my after-school job at Beall’s department store and an interest-free loan from my grandmother repaid at five dollars a week, I was back the next day with the $250 asking price in hand.

If I live to be 100, I will never relive that moment of driving home in my first car during my sophomore year at MPHS.

As time and money permitted, personal touches were added. A split manifold with dual exhaust and glass-pack mufflers from Redfearn’s Automotive. Baby moon hubcaps from the J.C. Whitney catalog.

My first car got me to school, to work, to Saturday night drag races, and to church on Sundays. It was a participant in many nights of cruising fun between the Dairy Queen and “Bobby Joe’s,” aka the Dairy Mart, located at opposite ends of town.

Last but not least, it was a trustworthy mode of transportation for a Saturday night at the Martin Theater to see “Goldfinger,” the third film in the James Bond series. With my first date.

Visiting in Mount Pleasant a few years ago, I happened to see her coming out of a store where I was going in. We spoke briefly, and I wondered if she remembered that she was my first date all those years ago. Or if she remembered my first car.

I still remember both.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

She isn’t going anywhere

“Early morning sunlight cascaded from lofty windows in the old downtown Center icehouse. They bounced gracefully off timeless curves outlining an aging body. For an old girl, she was still a beauty in the dim light and in my heart.”
— Leon Aldridge, 1993

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I wrote those words 31 years ago last September. “Liz,” my grandparents’ 1957 Ford, will have been a member of the Aldridge family for 69 years come this November. She’s lived 44 of those years with me, and I have no intentions of her going anywhere so long as I’m still drawing a breath.  

My father’s mother dubbed her two-tone green ’57 Ford “Liz.” The two-door sedan became the beginning of my sporadic dabbling in old cars. Others followed. A couple of vintage Thunderbirds and a 1965 Malibu SS to start. Then some 60s vintage convertibles. But Liz never objected to being neglected while others were driven.

Tail-finned, rag-topped, white-walled, and chrome-plated glamour queens dazzled. Multi-carburetor, dual-exhaust, tire-smoking muscle cars amazed. But Liz remained. One might have surmised she actually enjoyed the peace and quiet of retirement alongside a variety of garage mates.

I still remember brushing my fingers lightly through her thin coating of dust that morning, sending particles swirling and twinkling in the morning sunlight. I opened the driver’s door and enjoyed the aroma. Old car interiors offer unique smells, often revealing age, make, or background.

The seat springs groaned lightly beneath my weight. ‘Not bad for an all-original car,’ I thought. I scanned the metal and chrome dash, then gazed across the expanse of the big green hood. I touched the ignition switch, but on this morning, I let Liz rest, choosing peaceful silence in the warehouse over that of her V-8 motor.

Liz was born at the Garland, Texas, Ford assembly plant in the fall of 1956 and was titled in my grandfather’s name in November at Travis Battles Ford dealership in Pittsburg, Texas. For a quarter of a century, she lived in a white frame garage at the corner of Cypress and Madison Streets and ran errands to town, to work, to visit. On many of those trips, I was a youngster in the back seat, watching my grandmother drive and listening to my grandfather caution her. “Watch out sister. There’s a stop sign ahead.”

When age and illness confined him to a bed, Liz sat in the garage while my grandmother stayed home to care for the man she loved. When he died just days before Christmas in 1967, Dad and I went to the garage to “awaken” Liz. She had traveled only 17,000 miles in her ten years. A new battery and fresh gas brought her back to life.

Granny and Liz were back on the street, going places neither had dreamed of in a while. The old Ford with the little old lady peeping over the steering wheel was once again a common sight around town.

Granny eventually gave in to the desire for the luxury of power steering, an automatic transmission, and air conditioning. “You still want Liz,” she called one day to ask.

“You know I do,” I replied. Liz was soon headed for a new home in Center. As I drove her south that Saturday in May, late evening Spring breezes smelled of freshly mowed grass through open windows. Memories flowed. Driving lessons with my grandfather on shifting a “three-on-the-tree.” Cruising the Kilgore College campus when Liz subbed for one of my ailing hot rods. Smiles when names came to mind while recalling dates when Liz provided transportation.

Once home, a gentle push on her door brought the usual solid ‘click’ as it closed and latched with ease.

As that early morning remembered a few years ago was ending, I walked a few steps, stopped and looked back at Liz sitting majestically in the corner. Bidding me goodbye with a gleam in her chrome. She knew it would be a while before I came calling again. She also knew I would return to recall secrets the old car and I knew about each other.

Liz comes to mind again now with my decision to thin the herd. Too many to care for at this point in life. But Liz knows she’s family, and when her more glamorous and valuable garage mates have moved on, she will remain.

She also knows she will be the last one to leave the ball when the lights are turned off for the last time.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.