The Old 1938 Pontiac

My grandfather owned an old Pontiac very much like the one above. His was dark green. These old cars were very heavy which made for a good ride. They had what some called knee action on the front wheels. This suspension was similar to airplane shocks. You could go 80 miles per hour on a washboard dirt road and not even know what a bump felt like. My grandfather didn’t go 80 miles per hour in the car but I know someone who did!

For some time this was our way of getting around, going to town and going to church on Sunday. I guess my grandparents had transportation as good as anyone in the community. Not many people had cars in our neighborhood at the time and many of them traveled in a house drawn wagon.

This old car served well for a long time. My grandparents purchased the car as a used  one and it was pretty well worn when they obtained it. It began to develop some problems of which one was the steering. At first it was not too bad but you could not turn very short because the steering wheel would turn but the wheels would not. This presented a problem and at times there was no way to turn but to get out and turn the wheels manually. This was quite a challenge for my brother and I but we managed and could get around the community because the steering worked if the wheels only needed to be turned a little. The roads were not very curvy so the little bit of steering got us where we were going.

As time went on the steering did not work at all. We still went in the car very slowly and when we got close to the ditch my grandfather would stop and  my brother and I would get out and turn the wheels slightly so we could stay on the road. I believe there must have been some small amount of steering left because we did not have to get out too often to turn the wheels.

My grandfather considered using a method of steering pioneered by one of our neighbors who had an old Chevrolet coup with the same problem. He took the steering arm loose and wired a pole to the front bumper with some kind of link to the steering mechanism. Someone would sit on the front fender of the car and pull back on the pole to turn one way and push forward on it to turn the other way. This was a good invention but I didn’t see any of the car manufacturers try to steal the invention.

People were kind of poor back then and there was not any financing of automobiles. If you wanted to buy a car you either had to have money or something to trade for it.