This was our car! Dad bought it in 1952 while in the Navy in Whidby Island, Washington. He restored it in the Navy shop, then drove it home to Oklahoma to marry his sweetheart. They went back to Washington in it, made another round trip in it, then came back to Oklahoma it it after he was discharged.

I came home from the hospital in this car.

We called her merely, “The Pontiac”.

In the massive snowstorm that hit NE Oklahoma in 1962, I swallowed a whole bottle of codeine-laden cough syrup. None of the modern police cars or ambulances could make it through the snow-filled streets, and Dad was out of town on his job. Mom, pregnant with my little brother and ready to deliver at any moment, panicked, and called our next door neighbor, who asked if she had the keys to The Pontiac. She did. He said he believed he could make it to the hospital in the heavy car.

I still remember laying in my mother’s arms as she rocked me back and forth while the neighbor man drove us to Jane Phillips Memorial Hospital in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, the vacuum-operated windshield wipers flopping back, then forth, then baaaack, then forth. We were the only car on the road, and there were no ruts. The hospital workers, snowed in, were stunned as they all gathered at the large glass doors of the Emergency Entrance watching as The Pontiac – painted white by dad in 1952 – was totally invisible. All they saw were the two large teardrop headlights as they made their way up the winding drive to the new hospital.

I also still vividly remember getting my stomach pumped that night. ..

The “Pontiac” emblem under the hood ornament/opener was pulled off years ago by a service station attendant who couldn’t figure out how to open the hood (you lift up the Indian head). We searched for one for years. I found one in a salvage yard in Davis, Oklahoma in the early 70’s, cleaned and hand painted it, and mounted it there.

I learned all my basic automotive repair methods from Dad on The Pontiac.

Dad began losing his sensibilities in the late 70’s, and, sometime in the early 1980’s, he traded it to a man who owned a carpet company so Mom could have a surprise – a houseful of new carpet…she and I both cried when she told me what had happened on the phone while I was away at college.

I found The Pontiac in a small town south of Ft. Worth in the late 80’s – a fellow had bought it from the carpet guy and was going to chop it up and make a street rod out of it until he bought a 1940 Oldsmobile to do instead.

He wanted $5000 for it. Alas, as a seminary student with 2 children, I could not afford it, and he would not let me make payments on it.

He did let me take my two kids for a ride in The Pontiac before we left.

I cried as I drove away, sure that I would never see it again, but here it is.

If there is any way you can put me in touch with the present owner, I would be forever grateful.