I got on to old Cars and other old Machinery pretty early.
1957, we moved to Palmdale California for six months...somewhere around then ( I was four ) I had become keenly aware of old Cars and Trucks and Busses and Motorcycles and GE Monitor Top Refrigerators, and all sorts of other stuff, and, was always eager to see the next one, which in those days, did not take long.
Somewhere back around that time, may have been on the drive from Texas to California, toward dusk, on Route 66, we were in our brand new ( boring as all get-out ) 1957 Rambler, us doing 60-ish or so, and, passing us up, doing probably an honest 75, was a 1930 or maybe '31 Big-Series Marmon Sedan.
It just took my breath away, and, I was bit!
I had asked my dad "What was that?"
He said "Looked like a '30 or '31 Marmon..."
Ohhhh, golly, kids now never get to see stuff like that, just in daily life, with a great big giant 'Who Cares?" around it now-a-days...but, I cared, man, that Car was just majestic, and just seemed so serene and enchanting, and passing us like that.
The year before that, I got all transfixed on a really huge Steam Traction Engine, sitting forlorn up in Iowa somewhere or other, some secondary Road we got on to, on the way from Texas to Chicago...I made a huge fuss for us to stop, and, we did stop a few minutes so I could admire it.
The best thing about the 1950s, and 1960s, and less so every decade since, was that there was still a lot of totally cool old stuff just innocently still 'there' more or less, or still in use. None of it was 'worth' anything much, and no one made a big deal out of it.
I got real good at telling the narrower-set, 'straw colored' Headlights at Night of older on-coming Cars, from those of Jeeps...Lol...
