The Word - Vol 101

They Called it "A Baby Austin" 🚗

The family car. It all started with a “Baby Austin.” The year was 1951 and that’s me at the wheel.

A baby Austin was the nickname given to that little car, mainly because it was little and had a very small engine to match. In the days before muscle cars, you didn’t need to go fast, and you weren’t going to drive very far, so a baby Austin fit the bill, and had a price to match. I don’t know how long it was the family car, but as soon as I was born it was too small. There was room for the driver and the passenger and that was it! Bring on another Austin! And we did get another Austin. I think we bought it at the Gordon Brothers dealership in Vancouver who were known for their line of British cars. At the time I guess Mom and Dad had a thing about Austins? What I remember about that car was the wonderful smell of the leather seats, and there was a switch located just above the horn on the steering wheel that operated the turn signal that lit up and popped out of the door jam!

Every Sunday we would go for a drive in the family car. We’d leave our home at 24th and Blenheim in Dunbar and drive to Southwest Marine Drive and head out to the border of New Westminster, and that was it, that was far enough for us! Aside from a few trips to see the cousins in White Rock, the border of New Westminster was as far as we’d go. On the way home, we’d pick up scraps of wood that had fallen off the lumber trucks heading out of the sawmills along the Fraser River. You see, we had a wood-burning furnace and Dad was always looking for fuel for the fire. That was one of the chores in the winter. Dad would get up early, head down to the basement, and throw more wood into the furnace to heat the house. We later bought a house that had switched over to furnace oil, which made heating the house a whole lot easier. But I digress.

The Sunday drive became quite a ritual for a number of years, and something that’s hard to imagine these days with the amount of driving people do on a daily basis. I guess our car sat outside the house the whole week, waiting to be driven on that one special day. And, I think that’s where the old expression “Sunday driver” came from. If you only drove the car one day a week, you sure didn’t get in much practice!

Our two early cars didn’t have a radio, which prompted a lot of singing in the car. Mom and Dad seemed to have a catalog of tunes to keep us kids entertained. I can’t imagine how many times we sang “99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall.” Another favourite was “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.” I think of those days every time I watch that scene from the movie Christmas Vacation and Clark Griswold and his wife try to lead the family in a singalong! Haha.

Those tunes and more were sung on our one and only car trip vacation that took us halfway across the country. By this time the family car had been upgraded to a 1950’s Vauxhall. Now for a family that only drove on Sundays, and only went as far as New Westminster, this was an amazing trek. It must have been my Mother’s idea because the purpose of the trip was to visit two of her sisters. One lived in Saskatoon and the other lived in Flin Flon, Manitoba. We packed the car with suitcases and kids. My youngest sister was one year old, my next sister was 4 and I was 10, and how my Dad ever agreed to this trip I’ll never know. It must have been a horrific adventure.

I have very little memory of the trip, like where we ate, and where we slept, only the vague memory of staying with my aunt in Saskatoon and staying with my other aunt in Flin Flon. Before we got to Flin Flon, our car broke down just outside of La Pas, or The Pas, Manitoba. Mom, my sisters, and I got a ride into town from a good samaritan who happened by, and once in town, we sent a tow truck back for Dad and the car. We sat in a hotel lobby waiting for Dad and the tow truck to arrive and while we were there, we had ringside seats to two guys having a fight that started at the top of the hotel stairs and ended with them tumbling down into the lobby. Quite a welcome to town for us and one that I remember 65 years later!

Our time in Flin Flon wasn’t as memorable except for the sidewalks. Flin Flon was possibly the only city in the world that didn’t bury its sewer lines because the city is built on masses of near-impenetrable bedrock. The sewer pipes were surrounded by a wooden casing and ran above the ground, which is probably more than you want to know about Flin Flon! That memory and a drive out to the golf course is about all I remember, but hey, I was only 10 years old!

I have no idea how long we were gone or how long it took to get home, but it must have seemed to have taken an eternity because it never happened again.

When we got home the car was parked and left to wait for another Sunday drive.

Till next week…
Wayne