Folks Of Interest Veterans..Did you leave a car in someone's care when you went into service?

Although I am a young veteran as I did not join the service until 1998. I did leave 2 vehicles behind when I left for basic training. They were not at all HAMB hotrods. A '69 Dodge D-100 short bed fleet side and a '73 Dodge Dart *******.

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A good buddy and I swapped a 292 into his '53 Merc in high school. We got it running pretty well with a 3 speed and 4:11's, and he drove it for a couple of years. Then the draft was looming and he joined the Navy leaving the Merc in the care of his dad. After it sat for a few months Dad decided he'd better drive it a little bit and it scared the **** out of him. You guessed it... it was sold within a week. Rich was not happy when he got home on leave.

 

WTHS 1966 grad. I love the small world stuff. Gary

 

My dad got drafted in December of 1965. He had 2 cars a 1963 Corvair Turbo Convertible and a 1935 Chevy 3 Window. When he was gone my grandfather sold the Corvair. The 35 was apart with no motor, trans or rear axle so it stayed in the garage until he came home in 1968. When he got home and went back to work he finished the car.

 

Wow - think about how much more you would have gotten laid if they wouldn't have sold it. Maybe it was a conspiracy!

 

When I left for the Navy, I had a 66 Mustang and a 67 Fairlane GTA, but neither one was in very good shape. I came home after boot camp and I needed something dependable so I bought a 64 Belair with a 283 and powerglide, 4 doors and all. It was a grandpa car from way back, but it just might have been the most dependable car I ever owned. I really regret the night I wrecked it, driving too fast for my condition, but that's another thread.

 

Or birth control? It also had a new interior, dash and top! They always liked my sister best! Gary

 

I left my 61 Pontiac Bonneville convertible with my brother-in-law was a factory trim power he sold a lot of parts from it I never forgave him

 

Finally got some pics of my 57 later in life as a drag car, when I owned it and recently I think I may have found her again as a pro street that I started in 2001.

 

I gave my 56 two door hardtop Merc to my brother when I went in the Army in 1967. The Merc was dropped and de-chromed, all white with sea foam green top with matching interior. Was a cool cruiser, but the 312 was a pig.

 

First car I built as a kid was a '53 Henry J with a '53 DeSoto hemi and '54 Dodge 3-speed transmission. Had her running by my 16th birthday in 1963. We raced our cars on the twisting back roads along the Devil's Backbone up in the Texas hill country. Never rolled the little Henry J, but had my share of offroad adventures.

The summer of '65, my folks called me in to the supper table one evening and we had 'the talk'. They had decided that if I were to live long enough to give them grandkids, I needed a car 'heavy enough to hold the road'.

So I rode up to Austin with my Step-dad and bought a '55 Ford 2dr sedan. Brought it home, pulled the Y-block and Fordomatic and swapped in the DeSoto engine and Dodge stick shift ******. Painted it red and drove the hemi-powered Ford my seniour year in high school. Gave it to my Step-dad when I left for the Marine Corps in June of '66. Wasn't sure if I'd make it back, so gave him the car outright. He'd always done right by me even when I was out raising cain as a teenager and I wanted him to have it.



1967, Quang Tri Province, RVN. 19 years old. Just made Lance Corporal. 4th from right, standing with captured AK. They wouldn't let us keep 'em as souvenirs, though. My buddy Robert at far right, standing with M14. A joke and a smile for every occasion. KIA Con Thien.

Best regards,

Harry

 

My friend Lou put his '56 Vette in his parents garage. Lou was the only boy and the youngest child in his family. While he was away, his nephew played in it. Lou came home, the car was fine. In 2010 Lou p***ed away (figured agent orange was causing all his health problems), he willed the Vette to his nephew who is a car guy.

 

Harry, just saw your post. Enjoyed the picture of you and your buddies. I too was in Nam, in an Army Artillery unit outside of Chu Lai. I had three high school friends who joined the Corps and died in Viet Nam. I think there were 17 VN combat deaths in our community and most went to the same high school. It was not a good place for a lot of people from our generation but I am glad you served our country and made it back.
Semper Fi Marine !


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Wheelidave.
My best buddy and now cousin-in-law was with the 178th Boxcars at Chu Lai.
I'm sure they resupplied your Arty unit.

I didn't have a car (to speak of) when I went on an extended vacation courtesy of Uncle Sam.
But, my first cousin who served with the Marines at Da Nang ordered a new car before he got home.
It arrived a couple months before he did and his parents kept it under plastic cover in a good garage.

It was one of the best-looking cars I'd ever seen. A '65 Pontiac GTO convertible.
389 w/ 3 deuces 4-speed. Maroon with white interior, white top.

The best part?...He let ME drive it..... Damn

 

Thanks for your service guys!

Someone should start a thread ***led, "A Vet left me their car to take care of when then went of to war and this is what I did with it!". Maybe we'd find out why some of these stupid ***es did what they did. Man this irks me. I would never do anything but take good care of someone else's property!

 

I got my draft notice and was gone for the Vietnam fun in Feb. 1965. I stored my TE-440 Ch***is Research SBC
dragster, along with our household furniture, at Bekins Van & Storage in Richardson, Texas. When I returned in
Oct. 1969, some dirt bags had stolen the dragster. Anybody seen it?

 

Hi all.Thanks for your service.God bless ya.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

 

I burnt the trans in my 55 Buick up in Pullman Wa when I went up to visit my sister at college and left it in a wrecking yard in Moscow Idaho a few days before I went to vietnam in 1968. My 51 Merc was here at my grandparents house out behind the barn and the cows licked all of the black primer off of it while it sat there. It sat there until I pulled it out ten years later and put and engine in it and started driving it again. First thing I did when I got it running was to take my grandfather for a ride in it. I had some ******* magazines in a box in the back seat or the trunk and my little brothers got into them I found out years later when my brother narked on himself.
When I was in Vietnam I had a buddy Named Rick Danzi from Silver Springs Md. He owned an Orange 62 Impala known as Moly Orange Crate in that area in 67/68 and he left it in the family garage . His brother and a couple of buddies decided it would be great to make a tape of the car doing a big burnout in front of their home and they got out with the tape recorder (small reel to reel) and proceeded to give a play by play of the car doing the burn out. You heard the engine and pipes then you heard it rev up and launch with the tires barking and then you could hear the squeal of tires as it got sideways and went towards the ditch and the crash when it crashed and the OH **** from the guy doing the taping after it crashed. I never did find out if the car got fixed.

 

My folks had a'67 Fairlane GTA too, 390 engine, man that ****er could fly...

 

Goes back to when I was small but a favorite car memory from when I was a kid. During the Korean war my uncle Vernon Davison left his 49/50/51 Merc parked at my folks house out on the edge of the driveway out of the way while he went to Korea in the Army during the Korean war. I know it was locked and dad never drove it that I can remember. It was at our house to keep my grandfather out of it as he would have run it into the ground and left it where it died.
Anyhow Vernon came home from Korea and came out to pick up the car and I got to take a ride to town with him in it and we stopped at the skate rink in town so he could see some buddies and the battery didn't have enough poop in it to start the car and he had to get his friends to push it down the street to start. That car started my love of those Mercs and my first car was a 51 Coupe.

 

Thanks and thanks for your service, Dave! Sorry to learn of the loss of your friends over there. I reckon there were many different cir***stances we all found ourselves in and I will never understand why some of us made it back and others didn't. Guess that's something better left to G-d.

We were up near the DMZ in early '67. Con Thien. Hell of a place. Felt as if we had a bullseye on our backs up there. NVA walked artillery, mortars and rockets across our position daily. Nearly bought the farm 8 May.

After I mustered out and got off crutches, I lumberjacked, drove moving vans and worked heavy construction whilst attending night school. Kept busy, but couldn't fit into civilian life very well. So nearly 8 years later, took a military leave of absence and reenlisted. Corps didn't need 28 year old privates with a wife and 3 sons to support (out too long to retain rank), so I tried the Army. Did well on their tests and they were going to send me to school to learn to drive tanks. Unfortunately, they got hold of my medical records just before I was to swear in and that was that. I had jumped out of a few perfectly good airplanes (I don't like flying to this day) and knew I didn't want to go into the Air Force. So went to see the Navy recruiters. They needed people who could weld and fit pipe and started me out at my old paygrade of E-4, so that's what I did for the next 4 years. Quite a bit different than the infantry, but I did OK......



Yes, I am still wearing my jungle boots in that photo. Old habits die hard. More comfortable than Navy boondockers and things were pretty laid back at the sub pier. We worked long, hard hours and had our share of time at sea away from family, but they weren't too Mickey Mouse about trivial stuff.

Surface Navy in the late '70s was a different matter, though. After I worked my way into NDT (welding inspection) and made E-5, my striker and myself were sent over to 32nd Street Naval Station on TAD orders with ultrasonic gear to do a pressurizer level check in the reactor compartment of a nuke missile cruiser. This was as a favour. The way they were doing this up to that time took a lot longer and burned out at least 2 rad workers each evolution (exceeded their lifetime exposure limit).

There being no Navy pickup available, we put our gear in my Poncho powered '56 Chevy and drove from the sub pier at Point Loma to the main naval base some miles away wearing green coveralls over our dungarees and a USS Dixon ball cap with our rank insignia on it. No parking lot nearby, so I parked the '56 on the pier next to the brow and requested permission to come aboard. OOD on the cruiser went ballistic and wanted to write us up for being out of uniform. Threatened to send MAAs down onto the pier and take us into custody.

At that point, I pulled a pipe wrench out of my tool kit and respectfully told him if he tried that, I would do whatever I had to to defend myself and I expected my striker to do the same. XO had to come to the bridge and tell him to stand down. Apparently, the OOD wanted us to report in dress whites, change into working uniforms aboard and get back into dress whites again for the trip back after spending all day in his reactor compartment sweating our ****s off and getting all kinds of zoomies (radiation and asbestos exposure). Wasn't happening.

Best regards,

Harry

 

Left my '63 VW with my parents in Minnesota when I went to Vietnam in Dec 1966. After a year of slogging through rice paddies in 90°++ temperatures, I returned to The World in time for Christmas '67 and single digit Minnesota temperatures. Other than a frozen battery, the VW had come through my tour un****hed. The following spring, I replaced it with a brand new '68 Nova SS while stationed at Ft Jackson. A bit sobering to realize all that happened 50 years ago Welcome home to all my dinky-dow brothers.

 

Since there has been a couple sad notes posted above, I decided to mention this. Just about the slickest car I ever owned was a 62 Impala with a 327. It was beautiful, I had to sell it to a friend when I was drafted in 69. I grew up and lived in an Army town, and I bought that car from a Vietnam widow. And I still think about it from time to time.