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Teddie Jordan
Beau, I bought my first car, a '55 Chevy 2 door sedan, pretty ugly green and worn out interior, for $250 that I made at the grocery store the summer before our junior year. After 2 weeks, I had saved up enough to have the body completely straightened, and five coats of enamel baked on by Perma-Bake south of downtown on Fannin ($170). Color was Colonial White, and it was beautiful. Two weeks later I had saved up enought to have all new interior including carpet and headliner done ($150) by an old gentleman named Cotrone down on Washington, he was a real craftsman. Red naugahyde with white piping. Two weeks later I was driving my mother up to Bartlett, Texas on a Sunday to visit her dying mother, and between Ledbetter and Giddings on 290 I blew up the engine. The engine was a 265 V-8 and it had been losing alot of oil out the rear main seal. When my dad drove up there in his truck to get me and tow it back home I could tell by his look that he had something to say to me. After we got back to Houston he sat down and said, "We need to talk about priorities. I've been watching you since you bought your car. First you had the body work done and a beautiful paint job. Then you had a new interior installed. All the while you knew that the engine needed repairs. You had your priorities screwed up and backwards." He didn't raise his voice or anything, he just stated the obvious. I hung my head because I knew he was right, and I remember that lesson to this day. It IS all about priorities.
In a couple of weeks I had saved up enough to buy a used engine from Ozmun's junk yard on Shepherd. It was a 283 out of a '58 station wagon, and I paid $150 for it. After pulling my old engine and installing the new one and getting everything hooked up, I learned another painful but valuable lesson. That engine was completely frozen up, wouldn't even turn over. I pulled it back out of the car and took it back to Mr. Ozmun, and he gave me another 283. You can bet I checked that one before I left to make sure it turned over.
I then drove that car the rest of my high school career, including pulling it up in front of the Shamrock for our prom. And I drove it that first semester of college at Sam, and drove it home every Friday with a car full of guys who each paid me $1 for the ride home and another $1 for a ride back on Sunday night. And you and I and Jimmy Stockton all worked a long day each Saturday at the store to make a week's spending money.
That is the car I totaled toward the end of that first semester up in Huntsville, right on the main drag, with Robert Knox in the front passenger seat beside me. But that is another story.
I've got a picture of that car somewhere around here and I'll try to find and post it. I owned two more '55's after that one, and the last one was a real beauty, but that's another story too.
Now let's hear from everybody about their first car, or favorite car, or ugliest car,whether it was your parents car or one you borrowed or whatever. You girls too because we all started driving and terrorizing northwest Houston at about the same time.
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paula murphy set the womans speed record in 1964 at 161 mph in an avanti
