A current TV commercial sponsored by Cadillac catches my eye. In rapid progression they show many of the models they have produced through the years. It sounds like Ringo Starr singing the background vocal, the sound of which drew my attention to the ad in the first place. I've never owned a Cadillac and don't plan to, but the ad makes me reminisce to the cars I've owned. I wonder if I can even remember all of them. My first car was a 1948 Chrysler four-door sedan. That was in the days when the teens were customizing their Fords and Chevies. Mine stood out in that crowd, but it was a solid, comfortable automobile with a fluid drive that let me drive with the recent disability I had acquired. It sat and rusted in the last owner's pasture, and when I inquired about it to go take a last look, he told me it had just been crushed and hauled away.
Next I drove a '53 Chevy with a mismatched dark green hood, a replacement for the one the previous owner had damaged somehow. It got me where I wanted to go until I graduated from college in 1964 when I felt flush enough to buy a '62 Ford Galaxy. Next was a '66 Impala that took me up the Alaska Highway and back down to Colorado long enough to get me through graduate school in Greeley. Money jingled in my pocket from my high school principals's salary in Wyoming, and I traded my '66 for a new 1970 Buick Skylark. This sporty two-door coupe was one of my favorites, and I put lots of miles on it.
From this point the models are mostly unremarkable: a '73 Volkswagon Super Beetle; an American Motors Hornet, the year of which I don't remember but was undoubtedly the worst car I've owned; a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass; a big, used Pontiac; an '82 Buick; a Chevy Lumina; and most recently a string of three Ford Tauruses. We'd settled on the Taurus model as a good one, and now the company has announced it will no longer be in production. There are a couple of cars I wouldn't mind having again, such as the 1965 Ford Mustang that Mary brought to our marriage, but they all need upkeep and proper storage space. I've still got my memories.
