I remember my Dad driving out to Detroit (from PA) with a friend to buy our new family car... a '
57 Chevy base-model (150) two-door for $1800. Six-cylinder, three-on-the-tree, steel wheels with hubcaps, dark blue in color, minimal chrome, no air conditioning.
I have fond memories of that car. We used it for our first trip West in Fifty-Nine or Sixty. Dad had built a camping tent-trailer on a military-surplus frame he got from the local Army base. The tent portion was also military surplus-- that extra-heavy olive-drab canvas with water-proofing treatment. I remember struggling with that heavy tarp dust cover and tying it down with ropes to metal rings along the bottom edge of the camper.
That trailer didn't have a pop-up lift. The tent portion was held up by 1-1/2" wooden poles in lengths assembled via metal sleeves. The bed platforms were simply pieces of plywood folded out on the sides and propped up by pieces of wood cut at 45-degrees on the ends. Stove and lantern were the classic Coleman white-gas models and the ice-chest was the classic Coleman.
The trailer looked a lot like this:
Family Camping Trailer - Popular Mechanics, May 1954 (click on the page numbers at the top to see more about it)
Our trip came about because Dad had to attend two weeks of training in New Mexico for his job. Some vivid memories as I write this:
- Finding ice on the surface of our water bucket (inside the trailer) while camped at the base of Pike's Peak
- My brother and I having our photo taken with a Real Indian Chief at Disneyland
- Leaving our Las Vegas-area campground at 2 in the morning because it was too hot to sleep ("We may as well drive", Dad said.)
- Carrying a canvas water bag on the front bumper of the Chevy so we could cool the water a bit in the desert
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For some reason that year 1957 stuck with me (I guess). In the early Seventies I owned a '57 MGA ($500), two '57 Chevy wagons (I think I paid $200 for one. The other had a blown engine and a friend sold it to me for $5). At the time my new bride and I were living in a '57 Schult mobile home I had bought for $1000. (That $1000 for the trailer may sound cheap but I had to pay $42 lot rent EVERY MONTH).