Twenty bucks and a can of gas

My good friend Easy Go Dave sent me this photo that he took last Saturday in central PA.  He and Val were on the way to see their son, Josh, in a bike race and noticed this old car parked in the field.

A while back I told Easy Go and the boys about the summer when I was 12 years old.  Mark Lowe, the kid that lived across the street, and I scrapped together $20.00 (mine was lawn cutting money) and purchased an old Studebaker that still ran.   It had a three speed lever on the steering column and was built like a tank which limited the damage we could do to ourselves.  The original bench seat was up front, but the rear seat was missing so we scrounged a few lawn chairs for our ride-along buddies.  They tended to tip when we turned the car which added to the fun.

We spend the summer running the dirt roads and fields on Mark's family farm.  Since we could not drive on the paved roads we pulled a little red wagon to the filling station with several 5 gallon army surplus jerry cans when we needed gas (more lawn cutting money).  Passing cars tooted and we grinned our way back to firing up our sweet steel beauty.

By the next spring the old Studebaker was running rough and we did not have the resources to keep her going.  I'm pretty sure we all had a tear in our eye as we pushed the car down a bank into the gully that was the old car graveyard at the back of the farm.

Thanks for the reminder Easy Go.  That was a sweet summer for a 12 year old boy.