Cars and Girls: My 1949 Chevrolet Convertible

There were a couple of cars between the 1956 Rambler and this car but they did not play as big a role in my life as my 1949 Chevy convertible. Two of them were cars my parents let me drive – two Plymouths, and one was a 1958 Chevy with broken windows a rescued from the Rochester riots, and one that belonged to the mother of a girl I dated at Monroe Community College – a Thunderbird. I will write about them later since they did enter and exit my life and involved girls in one way or another.

After spending what would have been my sophmore year at MCC in Rochester, I returned to Alfred University to finish my degree work. As an upperclassman I could have a car. I lived off campus in a fraternity house and one of my fraternity brothers was selling a car I coveted. It was a ’49 Chevy convertible. He was from New Jersey as was the car and he had done a lot of body work on it (Bondo) and repainted it what I called “Piper Cub Yellow.” It was not the original pale yellow but bright yellow, if you have ever seen an original paint scheme on a Piper Cub you would know what I mean.

This car was wonderful. It was a standard shift that my frat brother converted to a floor shifter he made himself. It had an electric top, hand choke and hand throttle, and everything worked. The top was black and the car looked pretty cool. My frat brother was very honest about the car’s shortcomings which included low compression and the home made floor shift that hung up in first or reverse due to excessive play without ever a warning. I would be about to shift into one of those gears and the levers under the car would lock up, requiring me to get under the car and manipulate the mechanism until it freed itself. This was rather inconvenient, especially on dates because I never knew when it would happen. I kept a pair of gloves and an old blanket in the trunk so I could crawl under the car whenever the shifter locked up in either first or reverse. It was one of those things that endeared the car to me. I eventually bought a “real” floor shift and installed it, which eliminated the problem – I did not do this immediately and suffered the indignation to having to crawl under the car many times. But it was definitely a cool car and it was a chick magnet because it was a convertible and had “class.” Oh it didn’t have the class of the Porsche owned by one of my wealthier frat brothers but was nevertheless “cool.” I think it was the oldest car in the fraternity house parking lot.

As I mentioned, my ’49 Chevy had low compression. If it failed to start because I couldn’t afford to replace the battery, I could push the car 10 feet and then hop in to pop the clutch and it always started. Alfred was very hilly and I often parked on a hill so I didn’t have to use the battery to start the car. I would just start the car rolling and I would pop the clutch and bingo it was running. The not so good aspect of this low compression was cresting a seriously steep hill on a two lane road on the way to Alfred. This was a hill 18 wheelers had trouble with and if you got stuck behind one of them it meant a slow climb. For my ’49 to make it up this hill at 25 mph, I had to hit the center of the hill going at least 50 mph. When I got near this part of the trip, I always prayed no trucks were crawling up the hill. God forbid a slow truck in front. If that happened, I would have to limp up the hill on the shoulder.

One Christmas holiday break I took a female classmate home who also lived in Rochester. We had a few dates that went nowhere but we shared many classes and the same major, so I saw a lot of her. The route I used to get home took us along the shore of Conesus Lake, one of the Finger Lakes. On this particular trip it began to snow and turned into a blizzard along the lake. I could not see anything in front of us until we got right up to another car or truck and the red tail lights came into view. I guess it was one of those lake effect snows. My Chevy had snow tires and we crawled along hoping not to run off the road. Actually, I looked out my window and my passenger looked out her window to tell me if I was getting too close to the shoulder. Honestly, visibility out the front was zero. Snow was coming straight at the windshield. The road was snow covered so I could not even see the center line. Once we got past the lake, which seemed to take forever, the snow let up and we could move ahead at a decent pace.

Because I was a poor college student, even the cost of a new battery was beyond my meager means. Given the cold western New York winters, my poor Chevy had trouble starting most of the time. So to keep the engine warm when I had to park it, say on a movie date, I covered the engine with an old heavy quilt and lots of newspapers. Despite the fire hazard, this seemed to work well enough. I never came back to a burned out hulk and the car always started when so swaddled. My Chevy served me well the final two years at Alfred.

When I finally graduated on the five year plan, I sold the car to another Alfred student and have no idea what happened to it after that. I truly loved this car and wish I had it today – fully restored and properly painted. The ’49 Chevy convertible is and always will be one of my favorite cars.