12. Dating Couple Buy a Car for their Honeymoon - 1955
In 1955 I asked Bernice Chase to marry me and she said yes. Shortly after that the car that I had, a 1949 Ford died. We had no car for our marriage and honeymoon. We both were quite poor in those days and tried to decide what to do. I saw an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle advertising cars for sale that sounded like our answer. The ad stated, "100 cars under a $100." We both agreed it sounded good. A friend drove us over to San Francisco. They had cars priced at $8, $18, $28, $38, $48 and all the way to $98. They had Cadillacs starting at $8. Most all cars had dead batteries so if you found a car that you wanted to test, they would bring out a charged battery, hook it up and away you went. We first tried a 1933 Plymouth Coupe priced at $38 but the clutch slipped too bad to consider it.
We next saw a 1948 Oldsmobile that had been in an accident. The front was pushed in but it looked OK otherwise. We were both intrigued by the fact that it had an automatic transmission. I had never even driven an automatic. It ran good but we had a problem. We only had $50 between us. I had $20 and Bernice had $30. We talked to the man and said we couldn't afford $88. He said how about $78? I started to silently figure how I could not pay some bills and come up with the additional $28. There was a silence for a bit while I was figuring. Pretty soon he said $68. That was easier and I started to figure again. After some silence he said $58. I then just pretended to think while I waited. Sure enough after some silence he said $48 and we said we would take it. We had $2 left over for the transfer of title. We drove it for about 15 months until a trip to San Francisco up a steep hill it threw a rod. We then sold it for $25 to a garage man. I told Bernice if it ever quit running on our honeymoon we would leave it where it sat.