Random Thoughts and Interests: Family history with cars

I was just out washing my car and I was thinking what would my father think of this car? One of the few activities I remember doing regularly with my father revolved around automobiles, whether it was just going someplace in the car and shifting for him when I was small, going to watch a race someplace, or working on a car. Even in his last days in his most coherent moments we would talk cars. I guess since the covered wagon my family's always been a Ford family except for a brief stint with Fiats. We did not exclusively own cars beginning with the letter F. We owned a Dodge/Chrysler Omni/Horizon, the GM car, and my parents had a Datsun (you now know them as Nissan) and a Volkswagen at one time.

Back to my second point -- the covered wagon. As I was told my grandfather on my father's side was born a covered wagon. You may remember from your high school history classes that when the Oklahoma territory was settled there were a group of people that slipped ahead of everybody else. 1889 Unassigned Lands were offered to settlers through a series of horse races - many people arrived early for Land Opening / Land Run and these were nicknamed the 'Sooners'¹. My grandfather was born in a covered wagon in what would later become Oklahoma. Now bringing this back to cars, my grandfather's first car was a model T. a Ford.

Talking about cars with my father. He seemed amazed my Mustang GT could have 300 hp stock. He used to say that he's never driven anything near that powerful. And he seemed somewhat impressed and concerned that I would bring it to dragway.