Daddy Drove Ramblers

Daddy drove Ramblers to work each day when I was a kid. I remember going with daddy to look at Ramblers that had been wrecked or didn’t run. He would buy two or three of these cars and then proceed to make one car out of two or three. Daddy had a routine. He came home from work, ate, and then he would go to the garage (which he built) and work on building his car. Sometimes these cars were a patch work of seats, door side panels and colors. Once daddy got the car working he would start driving it to work. I have no idea how many Rambler he went through. I do know that I used to drive one of the Ramblers when I started driving.... I would wreck one and he would fix it.... He always had spare parts.

Daddy told me when I was an adult that he couldn’t work on cars as a young man. He said that Grandpa Cox (Bill) never really showed him anything about cars. He said that when he was a young man he bought a car, and in Grandpa Cox’s garage in Auburn, he took the car completely apart and put it back together. Daddy said that when he said take it apart, he meant that he took everything apart down to the smallest part. He took the engine and transmission apart. He took the electrical system out of the car... Then he put it back together. He told me that he did this three times to the car. Lots of trial and error to get it right, but after he was done, he knew how cars worked. He said this helped him understand how other things worked. Daddy was a very determined type of person. Daddy was an amazing man.