A Half-Timbered Car

A lovely blog entry by my friend John Naughton about his family's first car, a Morris Minor, bought by his father:

On Maundy Thursday he set off for Dublin, having deposited us with our grandparents in the one-horse town in Mayo where they lived. He had decided that he would drive down in the new car (complete with a ‘Running In’ sign) the following day. The roads, he explained, would be quiet.

Good Friday dawned sunny and warm. I was up early and I spent the day on the street waiting with mounting excitement for the arrival of this marvellous new acquisition. The town slept in the sunshine, like a Mexican backwater in siesta time. Not a creature stirred, except for the odd dog. The clock crept round to 3pm, when we would be dragged off to church by my (ultra devout) mother. No sign of Dad. Never had the doleful rituals in the church seemed so interminable. But eventually they came to an end. We came out into the late afternoon sunshine. And there, outside the church, stood Da, next to his gleaming black car. It was the kind of moment one never, ever forgets. And to this day I can remember that strange ‘new car’ smell.

Read the whole thing here.

My own childhood experience was entirely different. My parents' first car, bought in 1970, was a Morris Traveller. Six years later it was the car I learned to drive on. Three things I remember about it:

1) It was the car with wood on it. When we took it to Sweden, crowds used to gather in the street to stare at it, touch it, to see that it was real. The Swedes were keen on wood and keen on cars, but didn't believe in mixing them.

2) When we travelled to Sweden we took a ferry from Newcastle. Getting the car on to the ferry involved each car being lifted into the hold by a crane. It took a long time.

3) Changing gears on the Traveller, I had to learn a special skill called double declutching. It's not a skill that I've needed to call on much in later life. (I couldn't believe there'd be an entry on double declutching in Wikipedia, but there bloody is.)