The Official Newspaper for Foster County

'Member the first car you ever drove?

Do you, like me, remember the first car you ever drove?

Be it legally or illegally, some must remember like I do. It came to my attention about a month ago while I was cleaning out some files here in the office in preparation of moving from this 45-year position.

I came upon, in a box of old photos, this one above that I thought I would never find again

. . . this only pix of the first car I ever drove in my lifetime . . . a 1931 Dodge Coupe.

And, it was an illegal drive.

It all happened when I was a sixth or seventh grader at Fessenden High School. This car sat in the back of my home where Dad would park it following his daily drive from home to work. I watched him start it many times, I knew how to do that.

So it was in the fall, one year, that Dad and Mom went to the Blacksmith and Machinists Convention and left my sister and I home for a couple days.

Many times I would go out to the car at night and just start it to hear it run. One night, though, I did it. I drove it around the block when my sister was at some school function.

Wow, around a full city block without the city cop catching me . . . unheard of! We were all afraid of Cop Earl Pike.

The trip was so much fun, I did it again the same night and a couple other times, too. Kind of sneaking a drive in the family car!

And, that was my introduction to driving, although Dad did let me drive our other car, a 1949 Plymouth, while teaching me to legally drive in later years.

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What I didn't know at the time was that this would be the start of a love life between myself and old cars. A life that has been with me for most of the past 70 years as a hobby in collecting, repairing and rebuilding old cars.

So, a bit of history about this 1931 model.

Our family used this as our family car in the 1940s, as it was the only car we had until 1949 and that Plymouth. I remember taking trips to Heaton to visit my grandmother and that's another story.

See, it was only a one-seat coupe and there were four of us; Mom, Dad, Sis and me. The three of them sat in the car seat. I would lay in the ledge in front of the back window; illegal but comfortable. That was my seat, take it or leave it. That's just how we traveled.

I remember Dad telling me who he bought the car from. It was Mac Solberg, the Fairway Grocery store owner in the mid-1940s. There was a long history about the car and it was interesting.

Mac bought the car new from the Chrysler-Dodge dealer in Devils Lake. It was a special car, used for test purposes before it hit the retail market. One of the tests was for speed and the vehicle tested out at 110 mph, constant at a test track by the factory.

Remind you, this was in 1931!

So, moving forward to when I got my driver's license. Dad okayed me to use this as "my car" and keep it running. I think it was him that showed me how cars operate and what it takes to keep them running. It was him testing me.

In high school I remember pulling up to a gas station and filling some 50 cents worth of gas, on a given evening. That would buy some 3 gallons of gas, the price was around 15 to 17¢ a gallon. The big, in-line 6-cylinder engine not only was powerful, but good on gas, too.

Friends and I, could drag Main all night for 50¢.

There were times I took the '31 out on the highway, but I didn't really do it to check speed. The older steering parts bothered the control of the vehicle. At 65 to 75 mph, it cruised like a Cadillac down the highway. There was power, it was heavy and rode well.

Problems were plenty with the car, as keeping tires on it was a constant battle. With little or no money to buy new tires, I opted for used ones usually found at the dump grounds west of town. The car as shown above came with 17" tires, and there were none around. Luckily for me, Ford Motor Company came to the rescue.

Older Ford cars and pickups had the same wheel bolt pattern: 5-hole 5½ inch spacing and they fit perfectly on this Dodge. I had several Ford 16" rims, so we picked used 16" tires from the dump, repaired the tires, and drove until they blew out.

And did they blow out! You notice the spare tire on the driver's side. There was another like that on the other side. I always had to keep two repaired tires on hand for a change at any given time. Like one time, a trip to Harvey required two changes!

There was no radio antenna on the car, but there was a radio (factory) that worked just fine. There was one station that always came in, KFYR in Bismarck; AM, of course, as FM was nonexistent. On a good day, KDLR from Devils Lake popped up. Also, a very good heater kept it toasty warm in the winter.

I always had trouble with the transmission as on many occasions one tooth on the low-gear would break off. I learned to take the top off the tranny (three-speed stick on the floor) and pull out the damaged gear. Dad, being the machinist he was, would always weld a new tooth on the gear, grind to perfection, and the low gear would work for many months to come. Then, bang, it was repaired again!

One day Dad said the Dodge needed new rings as it burned a lot of oil. It smoked pretty bad and he hired mechanic Roy Hayford next to his shop to put in new rings, bearings and grind the valves. We had nearly a new engine when it was done.

But the time the car was in Roy's shop did not go to waste. Dad supposed I painted the car, which I did, with a brilliant black implement paint using a brush. Yes, I brushed a coat of paint on the car and I recall it didn't look too bad.

One thing I did to change the look of the car was to remove the back trunk lid and use the space to place a rumble seat. I built the seat out of a Ford Model A seat with a wood frame. That seat held three more friends as we dragged Main on any given night. And finally, note the parking lights below the windshield (not used as turn signals as there were none back then.)

The car, at one point, sat in Dad's shop lot until one day an airman from the Minot Air Base came to the city on the Fargo-Minot bus line and spotted the car. He came over to Dad, asked if it was for sale and Dad sold it out from under me!

The airman paid dad $75 for the car, and came later from Minot to pick it up and took it to his home in Pennsylvania.

I've watched through the years and have seen only one 1931 Dodge Coupe made into a street rod.

In my best guess today, that 1931 model should and could sell for $50,000.

So, a beginning education for me, fun while it lasted and memories I'll never forget.

Even though it was an illegal start!