My Dream Career – Abandoned!

Anyone who knows me knows I am nuts about cars. Annoys my wife when we’re out walking and an impulsive comment about some vehicle or other that catches my eye passes my lips. It’s hard not to do that after a lifetime fixation on ‘cars.’

It all started when I was 9-yrs.old and in Grade IV.  We lived ‘up north’ where we never saw cars. Then, we moved for a few months into our great grandmother’s former home when she moved to a nursing home (as they called them then). The house was on one of the main drags of the town so there was a constant parade of cars going by. This was in the mid-fifties when colour and chrome were really beginning to take hold. First there were two-tones and then even three-tones. Car colour choices nowadays are so poor compared to the variety of solid and pastel hues available then. 

Maybe my love of vehicles did predate all this as I remember we were already at the time collecting Matchbox and sometimes Corgi miniatures. The latter were of better quality – they might have ‘shock absorbers’ and ‘glass’ in their windows. Dinky toys were too expensive, and also too big to correspond with the others when we wanted to play with them in our make-believe scenarios of streets we drew on the backside of our kitchen table ‘oilcloth’ tablespread!

I began to draw cars. Something in me even made me design something for the future – a ’57 Plymouth to be exact. My grandfather had a Dodge at the time so I was a bit partial to the Mopar line, as it came to be called. Then, it was the new Forward Look. Remember the two sideways overlapping vees? I must say, my memory of the drawing was that it was not that far off of what did come out for 1957.

I also became very good at recognizing car makes and models, including by year. I remember my uncle Darcy Loewen and his brother Don’s amazement at how I would name off the cars we met on the road as we drove along when they helped us move from the south to a new home in Loon Straits when I was 10-yrs. old. This is something I still keep abreast of somewhat, although with so many more choices nowadays, and so little difference between so many, it’s harder to do. Car makes were much more distinctive in those days.

My car drawing continued. I also began to collect pictures of cars from newspapers and magazine ads and paste them into scrapbooks, which were a popular form of collecting at the time. Somewhere between that time and when we moved to Winnipeg in 1963, or maybe it was only then, I began to collect pictures and arrange them by year and make of car.

My brother and I then also began to build car models, another common hobby at the time. We had made friends with a couple of Kehler brothers in Selkirk whose father worked for Manitoba Hydro in Grand Rapids, where we had once lived, and they introduced us to AMT models. They were the real thing. You could ‘customize’ them with included optional parts. We began painting our models too.

Moving to Winnipeg brought other opportunities. Shopping for models became easier, especially as we first lived very near the new discount Topps store in Polo Park, now long gone. I began to use my allowance and other income to buy car magazines such as Car & Drive and Motor Trend, especially the fall issues featuring the whole line-up of new cars of the coming year. The big bonus was the annual car show, then held in the Winnipeg arena. We three older boys went regularly and collected as many glossy brochures as we could. The dealers who advertised were not too concerned about such in those days, although they did sometimes begin to look askance at us young kids walking off with bags full of their promotional materials! I guess we did not look like potential customers – at least not any time soon!

I must admit I then became even more obsessive about collecting and arranging these pictures in my scrapbooks. If I could not get a photo of a certain model I sometimes drew one to enhance the completeness of my catalogues. I also continued to draw cars of my own imagination, even naming them by my own made-up make and model line names.

Now, if you have not gathered by now – my interest in cars was about the body design, the art and creativity of that, not so much the mechanical. To be sure, when I later got automobiles of my own I did learn to do basic maintenance and minor repairs – oil and filter changes, light bulb replacements. My brother-in-law Dave, who taught me much of this, even thought I was somewhat obsessive about the upkeep of my cars. Of course, when computers entered the auto world, much of that changed. As the engine space become more compact and condensed, oil and filter changes sometimes became more difficult too. Now that I live in a condo, all of that is out of the question. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The big change occurred about this time. I was graduating high school and moving into college. I had even applied to a nearby auto dealer for a salesman job when I graduated college, but that never happened. I had also by this time subscribed to my favourite magazine, Car and Driver. It had the most interesting and somewhat subjective features and columns. I looked forward to its arrival in the mail every month. However, my faith values nagged at me. I concluded that designing cars was really a somewhat frivolous career for someone with my beliefs.  It was all about planned obsolescence and appeal to the senses, even to pride. Now, homes were another matter. They were more necessary. I could justify using my creative aptitude as an architect.  So, I chose to abandon my dream career of being a car designer. It was not taken from me. I even knew already by that time that California was the place to go to study this.  

It just so happened that I decided to move provinces at the time too, going to Saskatoon to get my Bachelor of Science. My family had all moved to that province and I was also interested in a young lady whom I had dated (once!) in college who lived there, but that’s another story that ended. By this time, I had also received a call I considered from God to medicine. Not even architecture. Hence the switch to a pre-med science program. As part of this move, I tossed out all my car scrapbooks. I have not really regretted it. When I left home, all my car models somehow stayed there and I have no idea what happened to them.

I have never totally been able to shake the allure of the car though. Again, because of my values, I have never bought a real sports car, nor a luxury model, much as my human nature might like to. I do not change my cars often. Our current sedan is thirteen years old. I still occasionally draw them. I did buy more models, but not many. I still sometimes went to car shows, but more of people’s prized old and custom vehicles. I would take pictures of my favourites, not infrequently even when I spotted a cool vintage vehicle on the road or in a parking lot. I know I am not the only one who does that. There are Facebook pages for such. What I did get into collecting, although that’s now also pretty much a thing of the past, were books on cars and die-cast models when they became commonly available. The latter required no assembly and were so realistic, what with opening hoods, doors and trunks, and often even turning steering wheels in some cases. 

But even all of that somewhat bothered my desire to live a more humble and simple Christian life.  I have even at times asked elders in the faith what they thought about all this but no one seemed to think what I was doing was a big issue.  That never really satisfied me. I think we are all, in our Western affluent society, more at ease with such things than perhaps we ought to be. I think at some level I wanted them to say, yes get rid of all that too. Those are your idols. Are they? As the old saying goes, “the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

As my wife knows, I still pay attention to cars. My response: “Would you rather I look at other women?”