Hello all...
Here's my contribution to combat the winter blahs. In the summer
of 1962, shortly after graduation from a well-known naval school, I was
winging my way to the Western Pacific to catch my ship, already on
cruise. After bouncing around the Phillipines for a week dodging a
typhoon, I made my way to Hong Kong where I finally caught the ship.
During the months following until we returned to San Diego in December,
I talked a lot about getting my first car. Couldn't afford a new one
(we only made $222.30/mo) so I was asking if anybody knew of any
connections to a used vehicle. One of the men in my division said he
knew of one in a little town in southern CA, so I planned to check that
one out. Wound up taking a Greyhound bus from San Diego to LA where I
caught another bus to go further north (west) to a little town named
Ojai (O Hai...Chumash Indian word), a place I had never heard of. The
young female owner of the car (50 TD) picked me up and we drove around
town so I could check out operability. Seemed OK, so a coupla weeks
later I bussed my way back to LA where I met her and her dad in the
Greyhound parking lot and exchanged my borrowed $500 for the title. I
remember on the 120 mile drive back to San Diego that it seemed that I
barely moved the steering wheel to take what curves existed on
pre-freeway Hwy 101.
Fast forward to the present...the little car sits in my garage,
almost 35 years and two wives, four kids, and a number of cars later...
in OJAI where I have lived since 1982. I dug out the PO's registration
slip that I had in the file and saw that the original address is about a
half mile from me...right next to where I used to drop off my son for
piano lesson. Strangest feeling! Somehow it seems that the car is back
home and I'm just visiting. Now if I can just get it back to operating
under its own power...but that's another story.
Wayne Francis
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