The story goes that my father bought a 1937 DeSoto from a garage/junk yard in Binghamton, NY. He got it home and started to work on it until he eventually was able to get the car drivable. This was around the time he was 18 years old which would have been in 1960.
Over the years I’ve heard several stories about dad’s adventures with the DeSoto. The first is when he drove it to the Thousand Islands with four friends, one of which was Jerry Walker. Last time I saw Jerry, I asked him why they took that trip to the Thousand Islands. I told me the reason was one of their friend’s uncles was sick. He also told me about the car and how cold it was that they closed the rumble seat to keep warm but still froze all the way to the Thousand Island. I also asked him about the car. I wasn’t surprised to hear that dad had place a piece of wood over it so people could ride in the rumble seat. Jerry didn’t seem to remember what color it was inside or out. I also asked My Aunt Sue about the car. She remembers it being a dark green color, but also didn’t remember what the colors were on the inside. I’ve seen an 8mm video of the car and some pictures from when dad was driving it. The color in the film and pictures was a light blue (almost Robins egg blue). We still have the film, but the pictures are missing.
The second story is about how when it started to rain, he would watch other people having trouble with their convertible tops, but he would pull the top over faster than everyone else. I never saw the car with the convertible top on it, so again I have no idea what colors the car was.
The last story is about the seats from the DeSoto. When I turned 18 years old, I started to work on the car. I picked up the body and set it on homemade sawhorses out of wood Grampa Hine had. I used three jacks to pick up the body and pushed through 4×4’s to holds it up. Dad and I worked on the frame for about a year. During this time we started to think about putting the car together. At the time all we could find is the back to the rumble seat. Dad had mentioned serval times that the seat was in the woods behind the house we lived in that burnt down. Years later we did go look for them, however we never did find them.
Unfortunately, I was my time to leave and figure out what I was going to do with my life. I left for college in 1993 and started my first job in 1998. The car sat in the exact same stop for almost 30 more years. I bought a Porsche 914 and sent it to a body shop to get some work done on it.
I had looked at one before I went to college, but dad said there was no way I was going to buy it. But I was almost 40 years old at the time, ready to take on my first project. I got the car back and started to prep it for paint. This would be the second time I tried painting a car. For some reason I always paint them green…
The car came out looing great for an amateur painter. I took the 914 to the body shop again and Jim, one of the owners, said I did pretty well. When I picked up the 914 the second time, Jim and I had a conversation about the DeSoto. This is where things get interesting…