March 15: A boy and a Ford

What's up with this? A plain Jane 1957 Ford Custom sedan? Looks like the start of a blog that only one person would want to read and that's the blogger. But wait, give me a minute, it's story time.........

I grew up in Saint John, New Brunswick, a blue collar, lunch bucket town. As a kid, I was always interested in cars, but SJ was a bit of a barren wasteland for fancy wheels, all we ever seemed to see were plain old workaday sedans. I remember an extra special introductory showing of the new '57 Chev and it was their least expensive model. Another time, a Corvette driving Texan was in town for a few days, so the local dealer talked him into putting his 'Vette in the showroom and they advertised it in the local paper.

Anyway, back to the Ford above. I was visiting my uncle Dyson, who always had company cars. Knowing my interest in cars, even at my ridiculously young age, he took me to his garage and there was a sparkling  new 1957 Ford Custom similar to the car above, but in a boring light green. Boy did this make an impression on me, as it was probably the very first new '57 in town and the first that I had seen (and I went to all the new car showings). So when recently this car was introduced as a plastic model kit (why I don't know), the CMC and I just had to build Uncle Dyson's Ford.......

Accurate down to the boring old light green paint

Even has New Brunswick licence plates

Go figure, that the first car to make an impression on little Barry's very impressionable young mind would be a plain Jane Ford sedan. Maybe that's why my personal cars ever since have been much fancier models? Am I striving to compensate for a lack of great cars in my youth or is there something else at work here?

Not surprisingly, the Car Modeling Cat was not too impressed and longed to get back to building more interesting (to her) models. What does a cat know anyway?

Until next time.......