"Come Away With Me Lucille".....................

.........in my merry Oldsmobile"......as the song went, shortly after the Oldsmobile car was first being built way back in 1901, (even before Henry Ford).

My dad was an automobile mechanic most of the years of his life, and even as a little kid, I could look out the window from the back seat, and could tell you what every kind of car out there was. Of course, they weren't "cookie-cuttered" back then, and you COULD easily tell a Chevy from a DeSoto. One car didn't look like the next!

Dad worked hard but didn't make a lot of money, so we were basically a "chevrolet" family. One of the "hidden benefits of being an auto mechanic is that sooner or later, you turn a wrench on ALL of them, which naturally gave you a pretty good idea of what was GOOD out there, and what was BETTER. Back then, craftsmanship in automobiles was very high, and you got what you paid for. In 1955, a new Cadillac El Dorado would set you back about $6,286.00..........a LOT of money back then (my dad didn't make that much in a YEAR!).

But it was also a LOT of car..........a "REAL" Caddy.....not some down-sized thing with a Cadillac nameplate on it. That same year, a Chevrolet 4-door Bel Air sedan sold for $1,932.00. The Cad & the Chevy represented the top and bottom of the General Motors line, with Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick filling in the price gaps in-between.

Ford also had Mercury and Lincoln in THEIR lines, Chrysler products included DeSoto, Dodge & Plymouth.

There were still some independents out there like American Motors (Nash, Rambler & Hudson), there was Studebaker, Packard.............Everybody built full-sized station wagons and most everybody built pickup trucks.

Big V-8's crammed with plently of horsepower & torgue, ran smoothly on 104 Octane we used to call "Ethyl", at around 15-20 cents a gallon.

The cars had fins, they had chrome, they had fender skirts, they had two-tone and in some cases, even THREE-tone paint! They were made of STEEL and were nothing short of "rolling sculpture."

In the mind of this 7-year old, the prettiest of all was the Oldsmobile. It was sleek, nicely-designed and FAST. The California State Police used a lot of them, so they HAD to be fast. At seven, I didn't have any MECHANICAL knowledge yet, so when I saw the Oldsmobile commercials on TV or in a magazine, and they touted it's "Rocket engine", I remember actually thinking the car WAS powered by a real "Rocket" which was why is was so fast compared to other cars. Silly notion............but when you're seven, trying to make it to eight.....

In reality, Oldsmobile's first overhead valve V-8 was introduced in 1949, and because of the valve configuation, head design and other forgings unique to the Olds block, that motor really cranked out some get up and go, compared to anything else in the GM line. As a "selling point", based on its performance, Oldsmobile called it the "Rocket V-8"......a name that remained all the way up through the musclecar years of the 4-4-2 and the Toronado.

There was also a several-year stretch where the Olds had become the "expreimental division" of GM. Any concept that might be a vast improvement was installed in the Olds first. If it worked well, it might be added to other GM cars next year..........if not, and Olds sales dropped---no biggie----GM was still making plenty of money off of its other four makes.

The "Jetaway" automatic transmission was pioneered in the Olds. The front-wheel drive we all know today, was built into the first Toronados when THEY were first introduced in 1966. (With that big block Rocket 425 under the hood, that was a pretty STOUT front wheel drive too!)

But......we'd be going somewhere on a Saturday in our little 6-cylinder Bel Air, and invariably somebody would whiz by us in an Oldsmobile. I'd always get excited when I watched one going by, the beautiful chrome and colors, and those "bullet-looking" tail-lights that you never got to see for very long, as he left YOUR family car in the dust.

Well, by 1958, Dad was turning wrenches for Hertz Rent-A-Car on Jones Street in San Francisco. He was making a little more money now, and in 1960, he was able to send our 54 Plymouth "down the road" and bought a 55 Olds. Two-tone red & white. I was 12 now, and could see well under the hood. He'd be under there adjusting something or fine-tuning something else, and there was that big V-8, painted in "Olds-green" and there on the valve covers in embossed yellow painted lettering..........."Oldsmobile Rocket"

I couldn't drive yet of course, but just riding in it, you could really tell the difference. San Francisco is nothing BUT hills for the most part, and that car would take a hill like it wasn't even there! On the freeway, WE were doing the passing! What a great car.

By the time I was part-way through high school and ready for Driver's Ed', Dad had traded the 55 off for a 60. It was a "Super 88" 2-door hardtop, light copper in color with a darker bronze roof.

The fabled "Rocket engine" by this time, had grown to 394 cubic inches, with a big Rochester 4-barrel carburetor that flushed fuel through the venturis like water through a toilet............but MAN.....would that thing RUN!

I got to learn to drive in it, but Dad would never let me take it out by myself. (Only a fool would turn a TEENAGER loose in the streets with that much horsepower on tap!)

That was ok...........one day I'd have an Olds of my own.

Like Dad, my early adult years didn't make me rich, so I TOO was a "Chevrolet guy" for awhile, but in 1970, I bought a 59 Olds, "plain-jane" white, 4-door hardtop. It was an "88" series------------(back then, Oldsmobile made three series' of cars......the "88", "Super-88" and the "98".......priced accordingly to your pocketbook).

This one was just the "low-end" 88........it had a radio & heater. The "88" also had the smaller engine, you didn't get the 4-barrelled "394" unless you dipped into your wallet for a higher-end Olds.

Well, Oldsmobile's idea of a "small-engine" was the big-block "371" with a Rochester 2-barrel..............still PLENTY of power, and bigger than anything I had owned to date.

It had the coolest speedometer too........a tape-looking thing that spanned from one end of the dash cluster to the other, and changed colors as it went! "0" to 35, it was green, then it turned a yellowish-orange up until about 60-65. From 65 to 110 it was red, and then turned sort of a gray color beyond that. Great-riding car too. In all these years, I've never ridden in anything smoother, (and I've owned 63 cars in my lifetime so far).

I drove that car for quite awhile, until they laid a bunch of us off where I was working. I found another job, but it didn't pay as much, so I had to sell the Olds and go back to a more fuel-efficient little Chevy. But over the years, during my Air force career, I would own a lot of different old cars, including a few more Oldsmobiles, but my "secret desire" had always been to own one like I remembered as a little boy riding in the back seat of my Dad's old Chevy........one of the old "Fifties Rockets" They were/are getting harder to find, and when you find one today, they're just a bit "pricey".

I'll tell you about my "Mountain Home Rocket" of today.....in part II, which I'll post later this afternoon!

(Donna's working the early shift today and her lunch break is at 9:30, so I'd best get up there and pick her up----------Part II of this story after I get back!)