Armed personnel carrier My favorite car is my parents’ 1930-something Ford. I thought it was a 1939, my birth-year, but a friend assures me it’s a 1936. It was the only automobile my folks owned until 1953 and is the first vehicle in my memory. The Ford had “suicide” doors -- the front doors opened as they still do, but the back doors opened out in the opposite direction. When both were open they made a perfect screen for tots to pee, before the state thought of “Rest Areas.” On trips from Norfolk, where my dad was stationed during WWII, to visit grandparents in North Carolina, Mama would stop for servicemen “thumbing” for rides home. I remember sailors riding the running board when the Ford was already full. They balanced on the board running between front and back fenders with arms wrapped through both windows around the middle support hanging on for dear life. Cold winds blew in as my sisters were squished by two or three scratchy navy or olive drab uniforms with two more on a sofa-style seat beside Mama up front. Prominent in my memory of the old Ford is the sprinting Greyhound hood ornament, which forged our way for all those years. He survives still as a keepsake of safer times. Linda Edwards, Morganton, Rutherford EMC
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