Car No. 2 couldn’t survive a trip through Wyoming

I suppose I left you hanging after last week’s column where I told you of my very brief romance with the 1940 Buick and ended with “and that’s another story.” Well this is the story.

The Buick really was a beautiful car, and in the hands of a more mature, careful driver, it would have probably furnished many thousands of trouble-free driving miles.

I was able to trade the Buick in on a 1941 Chevrolet, a two-door sedan it was, and as homely as the Buick was attractive.

The bottom half of the car was painted with just gray primer. Whoever unloaded it must have decided that the primer was good camouflage. It would have covered a multitude of sins — on the outside of the car.

I didn’t have a clue of what was going on under the hood. It did start after a few turns of the starter, and seemed to shift OK. At least I had wheels.

You know, I probably should have taken the little “Sanitized For Your Protection” sign off of the Buick, but you know, to look at the Chevy you could tell it would take a lot to sanitize it.

It was near the end of summer 1954, and I had to leave Casper, Wyo., and return to school in Payson, Utah.

Usually, I would be riding along with my dad, in his 1947 Mercury “woody” station wagon, but this trip was to be my first solo voyage.

Wyoming highways in the 1950s had lots of areas between the small towns, with miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. Some areas were truly desolate. It was nearly 500 miles of pre-interstate highways. It usually took a full eight hours to make the trip.

I recall Dad telling about the time he was driving home to Payson for Christmas, and was caught in a snowstorm between Rawlins and Rock Springs and had to spend the night bundled up in it the car, occasionally running the engine long enough to warm up.

He was mighty glad the next morning when a snow plow came along and freed him.

At least I didn’t have to worry about a possible snowstorm.

The morning I left, I checked the engine’s coolant, oil, tires and anything else I thought might give me problems.

Just before I left, Dad handed me the “water bag” he used on his car, just in case I got thirsty.

For those of you too young to remember them, they were linen canvas bags suspended on a short rope handle, that would hold possibly a gallon of water, and after being filled were hung on the front bumper of the car, where the wind generated by your car, would cause the moisture that wicked out to the outside of the bag to evaporate, cooling the water inside. It would be very drinkable and cold in less than an hour.

The Chevy wasn’t a car that I wanted to test for top speed. I just hoped I could coax it up to 60 mph for the next 500 miles — without any problems.

Things seemed fine for the first half of the trip, I wasn’t breaking any speed records, but it seemed like I wouldn’t have to be hitchhiking to finish the trip — or so I thought.

It wasn’t until I reached Green River that things began to unravel.

I had been listening to the engine sounds as I drove, and at that point I began to detect a ticking noise from under the hood.

At first I felt it was nothing to worry about — but that changed as the noise soon took on qualities I had previously heard emanating from the Buick. I slowed to 50 mph and prayed I’d make it home.

A few hours later I limped into Payson, the car making enough racket to announce its arrival to all within a several blocks radius.

The Chevy was really “toast,” I sold it for junk — and that’s the rest of the story.