MY FIRST CAR

I was 21 when I bought my first car. We lived on the outskirts of the small town of Willoughby Ohio which was about 3 miles from town & around 20 from Cleveland where my mom & I were working at the time, & my sister was away at college.

I was during the long walk home from the Greyhound bus during a bad thunder storm that I made this huge decission that I needed to buy a car.
To say that I was scaired walking home that evening with the thunder crashing & the lightning flashing, was an undrstatement. We had been getting some bad storms & had received a lightning strike on a previous occasion when lightning struck our wire metal clothesline & wrapped it around the tree in our side yard.
It also dug a deep hole in the ground. This same storm had brought the neighbors who lived behind us over because lightning had traveled inside through the pipes to the bathroom tub which they said was glowing in the dark.

There was only one small obstacle with my car purchase idea, neither I nor my mother knew how to drive, but being a confident 21 year old female, I wasn't going to let that stop me from buying a car.

I don't remember whether my mom went with me or not to the car dealership in Cleveland, but I put myself in the hands of the sales person & asked him to help me pick out a reliable car, & as all of you know car salesmen are honest, hard working etc people. I bought a 39 Chevy which I think was a 4 door.
It had a stick shift on the floor. It had a really good engine, much better than the body, I was to learn later. The dealer agreed to deliver the car & we were in business. The next step of course was to learn to drive & this was solved by my next door neighbor's dad who agreed to teach me. Since we both worked the lessons were at night. Once I was proficient enough, I went Solo & eventually obtained my Ohio driver's license. This is not to say that some difficulties had to be overcome, like snow & icy roads that first winter. There were a few times that I went off into the ditches which were on the sides of the road & I had to be recued by some good Samaritin who could pull me out of the ditch.
When You are 21 years old everything is a big adventure. It wasn't long before I was driving into the big city. As I previously mentioned the engine was better than the body. I had had the car quite awhile though before part of the running board fell off while driving through a prestigeous part of the city. My black beauty also received a dented fender when my sister hit the tree in our front yard while I was teaching her to drive. To me though it was the most beautiful car in the world, & even my mom was glad to have a better kind of transportation.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS?

Since the purpose of my Blog was to let my grandkids know what life was like growing up, I know I need to post more than I have lately.

One of the big differences was in the small town where I lived between ages 4 & 11, Doctors made House calls. I remember many visits from the doctor when we lived in Freemont Ohio. I don't remember this happening in Cleveland where they probably had clinics.

As a small child, if it was a disease, we caught it, & would generously share it with each other as siblings do. We had among other things, Chicken Pox, which I got in Kindergarden & brought home to my younger sister, who had it much worse than myself on every part of her body. We had both kinds of Measles, what was called then as 3 day measles, & regular measles the hardkind which lasted longer & made you really sick. One of the worst ones was Whooping Cough because you cough so hard & have a problem catching your breath. My sister contacted Scarlet Fever,
& our house had a sign on the door which read "Quarentine" which ment no one could come in or out during the time the sign was there. Daddy had to go to his mom's house.

The doctor would come to the house carrying his little black satchel which contained a thermometer, & stethescope to listen to our chest, & I don't know what else was in there.

As a small child I had very bad nosebleeds & I can remember several visits by the doctor when this happened. He must have had an office downtown though, which was quite a distance from where we lived.
One day I was taken there to have my tonsils & adenoids(whatever they are) removed. This was a very frightening experience & I remember being angry with my mom about it.

The anasthetic they used was Ether. The Nurse put the cone shaped thing over my nose & the Ether was dripped over it from a bottle I think. It was horrable smelling stuff. I'm not sure how long I was there but I was groggy & my throat hurt afterwards. I think I went home in a Taxi which was driven by one of my older cousins who carried me out & then into the house when we got home.

There were good things about growing up during that long ago time, bu childhood diseases which we now have shots to prevent, & modern anesthetics are a big improvement as well as our modern well equiped hospitals make this a good time for my little grandkids to be growing up in.