My First Car: '37 Plymouth, Harold Englander, 90, St. Petersburg

'37 Plymouth

My first car was this 1937 four-door Plymouth sedan that I purchased new for $728. Equipped with a radio and heater, I put $200 down and financed the rest for 12 months. The envy of my East Bronx, N.Y., neighborhood, I babied that car and even had it garaged every night for $12 a month. Sometime in 1941, I received my draft notice and had to leave my treasured sedan in the care of my father. After the war I returned home and asked him about the car's whereabouts. I was told that it was sold to a gentleman from the neighborhood who owned a furniture moving company. The very next time I saw that car it had a sofa tied to its crushed and flattened roof. Although it broke my heart to see it then, I quickly put it in perspective, just happy to be home and resuming civilian life. To this day, I laugh at the irony of all those great memories of the car and then seeing its ultimate demise.