The areas behind seedy gas stations are good places to find old cars! (Gas station in Whippany NJ which no longer exists).
From the time I was 5 ’til about the age of 16, one of my favorite “free time” activities was riding my bicycle (either by myself or with a friend or two) around my hometown. I was always looking for new streets and interesting hidden places to explore, and yes that included old cars as well! In 1977, I had gotten my copy of Tad Burness’ American Car Spotter’s Guide 1940-65 so I could identify anything from that era due to many hours of studying that beautifully organized scrapbook. My favorite model years were 1955-62, and even at this time, finding a car of that vintage was something of a rarity.
I lived on Cross Road in Hanover Township, N.J. which is about 30 miles west of New York City. The Township consists of three “Communities”: Morris Plains, Cedar Knolls, and Whippany. Because I also had a Hanover Township map, I knew nearly all of the streets and had explored most of them.
That’s me, taken in the Fall of 1978.
Girl next door, Tammy Lee.
Street map of Hanover Township, New Jersey
The following account is intended to show what kind of old cars were still around and within biking distance in the late ’70s as I recall them. So come, let’s do some exploring! Mom says to be home by 5 p.m. What will we see?
My friend Dave and I are ready to explore! (Dave is wearing his Local I.B.E.W. Union T-shirt).
I made a chart to keep track of my old car finds.
Gotta stop at Sam & Jane’s store on Ridgedale Avenue. Get some Archie comics, water pistols, and snacks!
First stop: “Trailwood”, a.k.a. “The Big Woods”. This was a large wooded area of about 100 acres between Horse Hill Road and the end of Countrywood Drive. It was a maze of winding dirt trails, with dozens of stripped, abandoned cars of the ’40s and ’50s scattered throughout: Chevys, Fords, Pontiacs, Plymouths, Dodges, and who knows what else. Most of them were peppered with bullet holes, and shell casings were everywhere. Let’s pick up a few and bring them home–red…yellow…green. Besides the cars there were stoves, washing machines, mattresses, 55 gallon drums, and other interesting castoffs. Who dumped all this junk here? Didn’t these people listen to Woodsy Owl on TV? (“Give a hoot, don’t pollute! Never be a dirty bird…”)
Only known photograph of abandoned cars in what later became the “Trailwood” housing development.
Typical shotgun shells we collected.
In the early ’80s, the woods were bulldozed for a housing development, christened “Trailwood”. What happened to all the junk cars? The story I heard was the developer simply dug holes and buried the cars in future back yards. I hope the homeowners don’t dig too deep or they’ll hit a rusty hot water heater or the roof of a ’53 Chevy.
Treehouse we built in the woods.
1959 Edsel. On Pine Boulevard there was a beat-up ’59 Edsel sedan that never seemed to move. One day I was at the small Foodtown on Ridgedale Avenue, and I saw this white, battered hulk pull in. It was the Edsel, and I was happy to see that it actually ran. I went up the elderly man who was getting out of the driver’s seat, and told him I liked his car. He asked me if I knew what it was, and I replied with some authority, “A ’59 Edsel Ranger.” His jaw dropped wide open. He couldn’t believe that a kid like me would know what an Edsel was, let alone the correct year!
The Edsel I saw at Foodtown looked a lot like this one.
Morris County Mall, farther down Ridgedale. We’ll stop at Leisure Land, play some video games (25 cents a play)
Renault Caravelle. I went to a garage sale in town with my parents, and you never know what’s hidden behind garage doors! The typical merchandise was laid out in the driveway, but in the garage was a strange looking car. My father identified it as a Renault Caravelle from the early ’60s. He knew this because he always thought the Caravelle was a beautiful car, and he had considered buying one new, but purchased an MG 1100 instead. I said to Dad, “Here’s your chance! Let’s buy this car and restore it, and we’ll have a Caravelle like you always wanted!” Dad said he wasn’t interested. I haven’t seen a Renault Caravelle since.
Renault Caravelle hidden in a garage.
1961 Dodge Lancer. On Mountain Avenue, there was another old bomb that didn’t move. I identified it as a 1961 Lancer, Dodge’s version of the Plymouth Valiant–a real odd duck. I saw a man in the yard, so I got off my bike and asked him about the car. The Lancer had heavy front-end damage on the passenger’s side. I asked the man what happened and he said, and I quote, “I was driving down the road and a telephone pole ran into me.” That’s the last time I saw a Dodge Lancer.
Reasonable facsimile of the Dodge Lancer I spotted.
Really Old Trucks. On a dead end off South Jefferson Road (an industrial thoroughfare), there were these very old trucks that looked like they were from the 1920s. On the radiator cover it says in fine script, “White”. They have solid rubber tires and what I believe are spark advance controls on the steering wheel hub. I had never seen anything like them. Maybe someone on CC can tell us more about these trucks.
1955 Packard Clipper. Eden Lane was a winding road that passed by the sprawling Whippany Paper Board Company factories–a hellscape of sooty, irregularly spaced industrial buildings, smokestacks, and sheds that were erected helter-skelter as needs arose beginning in the 19th century. On the other side of Eden, up a long, mysterious driveway was the Whippany Soap Company. This place stunk up the whole area with an odor that I can only describe as smelling like boiling dog food. So of course my friend and I had to ride our bikes up the driveway and see what was there. When we got to the top, there was a rather plain industrial building, but what I especially noticed was a worn looking black sedan from the 1950s of a kind I had never seen before. What was perplexing were the chrome identification scripts on the hood and fenders: “Clipper”. Also there was a ship’s wheel emblem, like on Gilligan’s Island. This was before I had gotten my “Spotter’s Guide”, and I had never heard of a car called a “Clipper”, nor did I know that it was made by Packard. While we were checking out this weathered artifact from another time, a black man dressed in what appeared to be janitor’s clothes came up to us. It was his car, and he was rather amused and surprised that we were taking such an interest in it.
This photo reminds me of the ’55 Packard Clipper I saw that day.
Driveway of the Whippany Soap Co. the day the land was cleared for condominiums. (Photo from “A Place Called Whippany” by Leonardo A. Fariello)
Hanover Trail Steak House on Route 10 was abandoned. Now Hanover Marriott.
Used car lot, Route 10, Whippany NJ. You’ve heard of the cars in the “back row”–well, this one was so far back it never sold. Then the weeds took over. The property is now Lexus of Route 10.
“All original. Just needs some TLC.”
We often visited Bee Meadow Pool on hot summer days. Here’s Dad & my brother.
Mom at Bee Meadow Pool.
Me jumping off the high dive. The high dives have since been removed.
On Reynolds Avenue on the way to the pool, we always passed a blue 1960 Imperial like this one parked in a driveway. The fins stood out like nothing else. For years it was there, then one day it vanished without a trace.
On the corner of Malapardis Road and School View Drive, there was a Craftsman style house owned by an elderly couple. In the driveway (and sometimes the garage) was a 1958 Buick Special, just like this one, in really nice shape. In their living room, they also had a 1950s Philco television which was the only TV they had. It was the oldest TV I’ve ever seen in actual use!
Now you may be asking, “Steve, all these cars and places you describe are long gone now. Is there anything left? Are there any old cars that you saw then that are still around?” Yes–yes there are!
My next door neighbor at the time, Don, had an interesting collection of cars. These included a copper colored ’59 Corvette that always sat in the garage, and a very nice ’69 Camaro, light green with black racing stripes (although a ’69 wasn’t considered a really old car at that time). He also had a rusty blue ’62 Chevy Bel Air wagon parked outside, which also sat for years, not moving. (We used to call that one “Super Blue ’62”). Well, I am happy to report that in recent years, Don (who still lives in the same house) has made great progress restoring his Corvette, and while it is not a completed project, it is roadworthy and very fast. Super Blue got junked, but donated its engine to someone restoring a ’56 Chevy. The Camaro still looks great and is very original.
Don checking out the 1959 Chevy Biscayne I bought in August of 2018.
Now I have questions for the CC audience: Are there any young boys or teens today doing what my friends and I did then? Are they riding their bikes long distances without adult supervision, exploring secluded and shady locations looking for old cars? Do they have their Tad Burness Spotter’s Guides? Do they know the difference between a Dodge and a De Soto or how to tell a ’57 from a ’58? And do they even care?
I Love your Biscayne and the blue imperial. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Thanks for this great article! I grew up in northern NJ in Bergen and Passaic counties, doing exactly this in the late 80s early 90s until my family moved to rural NEPA. My friends and I would leave our bikes at the bus stop and after school ride around until dark. Exploring old gas stations, industrial parks, the backs of shopping centers and strip malls, and old city dumps no longer in use such as Trailwood. We found all kinds of stuff. My dad’s parents lived in Ramsey, NJ and when we went shopping at the Foodtown there, I spent my time checking out the neighboring Ford dealership’s ever changing back 2 rows of old iron. It got to the point where a few techs and salesmen knew me by name and let me roam freely, knowing I wouldn’t mess with anything. Then my folks would come get me after they loaded our 1976 Dart and thank the guys for “babysitting”, usually giving them a few C&C brand colas. I was 6-10 yrs old during these times and I guess the freedom I had then wouldn’t fly today.
I’m the same age and grew up on Long Island
I did the exact same thing disappearing on my Schwinn Stingray all day and had to be home when the street lights came on. The 70s and 80s were a great time to be a car kid!
A post I can relate to.
I’m approaching 70, not 17, and rediscovered cycling in a major way about 20 years ago. It’s likely the best way to see, & stop for, CC’s resting on the street or lurking in driveways & garages around town. And just to enjoy your community and nature in general, assuming there are reasonable cycling options.
My bike enthusiasm also comes from the unrestricted freedom of childhood in a small town (Rothesay, New Brunswick, in the 1950’s). A bike was a rite of passage from the age of 5 or so, and you were basically free to explore as far as your legs, or nerve, would allow. When I see kids being driven to school and their multiple activities I feel a pang of regret for the loss of that element of freedom in their lives. Although more young adults seem to be discovering bikes later in life, in what is thankfully a bike-friendly city (Vancouver, BC).
I still get a thrill by venturing out of the city to more rural areas (sometimes with a short train or bus ride to start), and a greater thrill in longer trips in other countries. That kind of experience represents ‘freedom’ to me now, in a way that cars used to from adolescence to perhaps my 40’s. Old passions do linger of course, which is why I’m also a CC fan. 🙂
My bike in grade school was my ticket to freedom and exploring the world in and around Iowa City in the early 60s. On Saturdays and summer days I’d head to various car dealers, and hang out. On summer weekdays, I’d just walk into the service garage, and poke around, from one mechanic’s station to the next. i’d be under the cars and inside them, and hanging into the engine compartment. Nobody gave a hoot. I got to know one of the mechanics at the Ford dealer pretty well, as he was friendly and showed me what he was doing. It was my first exposure to this world, as my father never touched anything to fix it.
Lots of other bike adventures too, all over town. I could go as far as my legs would take me. I had a single speed 26″ Dunelt British bike, stripped down to its basics, and I could get pretty far on that.
Thanks for reminding me of some memorable explorations.
What great memories those are! A bad case of childhood asthma prevented extensive bike adventures as a youngster although I did have a few. Being in a very rural area helped with that.
You make a great point about biking among adults. I started riding my bike to work a few days per week this past summer and loved it. While the bike trail I used wasn’t conducive for car spotting, it was certainly terrific for enjoying the sights and sounds of nature. With blasted fall and soon winter setting in, I find myself really missing it.
Wait, you aren’t really the guy from Hawaii 5-0??? Sorry, been waiting for months to get that outta my system. I will let myself out.
No, that picture dates back to ancient times here at CC when I used a pen name. I haven’t seen any reason to change it as the similarities in our appearance are startling.
That said, Jack Lord and I do have a thing for full-sized Mercurys from the 1960s and 1970s.
I rode my bike everywhere as a kid in Germany (same time period, last 70’s), all over town, to different towns and in the woods. Then in the early 80’s in Los Angeles a friend and I explored most of the metropolitan area via the RTD (the bus). Looking back on it that was perhaps not the best idea but certainly interesting. Nowadays my kids don’t ride very far from home and aren’t super interested in cars (unfortunately) but my youngest (9) is a huge airplane buff, especially passenger jets, always wants to go anywhere where we might see a plane and can identify a plane and its branding at a quick glance of the tail (Copa? Turkish? No problem.).
Thanks for the great shots and info about the cars in your community and adventures!
I can confirm that i did the same thing with my heavy CCM mountain bike as a kid in Winnipeg in the 90’s. Couldn’t find too many friends as weird as me to look for old cars so I had to drag my brothers around sometimes. My friends and I would explore the outer reaches of town, always looking for abandoned buildings and new places to explore.
I still love exploring new areas here in the BC back-country be it on foot, skis, snowmobile or dirtbike. I’m always amazed at how many abandoned mines and machinery you find if you veer of the beaten path.
Here’s a pic of a 50’s International dump truck that was taken out by an avalanche in 1969 (still has license plate) and pushed into a creek. The story goes that it broke down on the way out of the mine in the fall and an early snow prevented a return trip to fix and retrieve it. It’s hard to tell from the pic but much of the body parts are scattered around as repeated avalanches and poor weather have been pretty hard on it.
Great fun! I was never as organised as you were, but I knew where to find a ’38 Chevy, a ’49 Dodge, a fifties Mercedes 300 sedan, a Lloyd Alexander, a Borgward Isabella and all manner of forties and fifties British cars, all within a five minute walk from home. There was an elderly woman who drove a ’30 Model A Ford roadster, and seemed to go shopping in it once a week – I never did find where that car lived.
I did a lot of exploring on my bike as a kid (late ‘60’s – mid ‘70’s) but other than the odd junked car in the woods, there wasn’t much to see where I grew up. It was just great to get out of the house on a nice day and find a new trail or a new place to hang out. I rediscovered biking in my late ‘20’s and have seen more of the city I moved to back then (Toronto, Ontario) than I ever have with a car. I’ve come across plenty of great old cars in my travels over the last twenty-five years, on two and four wheels, and I find it more satisfying to explore when moving under my own power. Thanks for a good read – it brought back some good memories.
It’s not just the kids who are overly fenced now, it’s the places. Around 1990 I went back and visited the places I had explored by bike in the ’60s. Most of them were tightly fenced and inaccessible. Casual junkyards had been cleaned up and sanitized. A modern kid who wanted to do the same kind of exploring wouldn’t have any destinations to explore.
Not many Chryslers on your list.
I was 16 in 1978, I grew up in central Victoria (Australia) and my mates and I would go exploring on our bikes a lot, mine was a Malvern Star with a 3 speed Sturmey Archer.
An old car dumped in the bush was always a thrill. I remember finding a mid 50s Dodge and a DeSoto, side by side in the middle of nowhere, I rode all the way home to get some tools, rode back and removed all the badges and identification plates.
I remember another trip to a wrecking yard, and I was all over a 67 or 68 Dodge Phoenix Hardtop, I wanted so much to buy it,
We had some great times on our bikes back then, it was beautiful place and time to be a teenager
I had a 3 speed bicycle with the planetary gear hub from Sears…with a speedometer/odometer. *My sister had a Sears Spaceliner, which I still have 51 years later). I used to bug my uncle when I told him I had more miles on my bicycle than he did on his (then new) 1969 Ford LTD hardtop. I rode it to school 4 times a day (we went home for lunch) which was several miles away..lots of cars I used to go by on a regular basis, plus some I saw on a rare basis but they stood out in my mind (such a Citroen, old 2 stroke Saabs, and a ’61 DeSoto).
I also had a copy of Tad Burness’ Auto Album, which was my spotters guide for some of the ones I couldn’t figure out…it didn’t have all the cars, but quite a few of them. Some of the regulars were a ’64 Lincoln Continental, a ’67 Pontiac Executive, and a ’67 Dodge Polara. My best friend’s parents were Mercury fans as they had a ’63 Comet and a ’68 Park Lane. Another friend had a ’61 Ford Wagon with the floor rusty enough that we used to watch the road pass underneath the car while lying down.
My own parents initially had one car (Olds F85 Wagon) but started to become affluent enough for my Dad to buy a used ’59 Beetle…really rusty, but when a neighbor’s son ran into it with his car and totalled it, my Dad replaced it with a new Renault R10…which was a pretty unusual car even back then, but since we lived not far from Quebec, they were probably more of them in the area than most.
I was born in Pompton Plains and after a few months in an apartment in Wayne, my parents bought a house just off that map on Park Road in Morris Plains. There were all kinds of woods to explore, including some with Indian campgrounds that I hope aren’t all housing projects now. We moved to Bergen County in 1977, but I remember Morris County well.
I did a little bit of exploring my town as a kid, but mostly we didn’t leave the immediate neighborhood. Then in the summer of 1969 I spent $75 from my paper route savings, and bought a “ten speed”, a Schwinn Varsity, and rode 10-50 miles a day all summer (it had a speedometer/odometer). I only have one CC photo from that era … a real obscurity that I should post up and see if any of the CC cognoscenti can identify it. I never have. Thanks for a wonderful read!
Yes I did very much the same in Towson MD in the 1950s and early ’60s. I rode all over with my next door neighbor friend Dennis, often to the car dealers within range. My favorites were Towson Dodge, when it was behind Hutzlers, Dulaney Chrysler Plymouth, just below Hutzler’s a block E of York Rd, and Brooks Buick, Berger Olds, and Towson Ford, all on York Rd. We liked to prowl the back lots, at least until the salesmen or lot guys chased us away. Towson Dodge was always a special favorite of mine as their back lot always had derelict DeSotos way in the back that had been traded in on Dodges and sat there unsold for ages, and the salesman was friendly and didn’t mind if we sat in them! I fell in love with their way-out styling, and this probably led to my owning 4 ’58 and ’59 DeSotos over the last few years!
Also right over the hill from our home in an old field and woods down a steep slope from Joppa Rd rested about 20 long forgotten cars from the ’20s and ’30s. I can recall an Essex, Graham, and a few other makes long gone, mixed in with Model As and ’30s Plymouths and the like. Hard to imagine that these cars were themselves only + or – 30 years old at the time. They were rusty hulks but pretty complete, and there was no one around to see if we played in them or pulled parts off, and we did! Around 1964 or 5 it was all cleared out, the wood cut down, the fields leveled, and “The Colony”, a very nice development of ultra modern ’60s garden apartments, was built. No more cars to play in, but by then at 15 other interests were beginning to prevail!
I grew up in a small town in Kentucky and my friends and I would ride all over the place on our bikes. I suspect that if our parents knew the extent of our travels they might have put an end to it, but maybe not. I was allowed to catch the city bus and ride it downtown to the public library from the time I was 10 years old. My theory on this freedom is that our parents, having survived the depression and then WWII, didn’t worry so much about the small stuff. I don’t have any children but I know that my siblings’ grandkids are seldom, if ever, allowed to do anything without adult supervision.
Unfortunately I can only remember a couple of the cars we saw on our bike rides. There was a pre-war Cadillac Sixty Special nosed into a garage a few blocks south of the downtown area. It was pretty scruffy but it must have still been a runner as it always seemed to have a valid license plate. The other one I remember was a Cord 810/812 that sat on blocks in a yard near the high school. This car had belonged to a relative of one of my good friends who apparently drove it every day through the early fifties. Finally something broke on the Cord that either couldn’t be fixed or wasn’t worth the cost and it basically given away. By the time I started high school (fall of 1965) the Cord was gone; I hope it was restored and didn’t end up in the crusher.
We did the same thing only a few years before you. There were some abandoned cars in the fields near home that we used to check out regularly. Next to the 40 Mile Creek there were a couple of old wooden boats that were dragged out of the water and left to decay. We had great plans to refloat them one day if we could only find some pieces of wood long enough to cover the holes. When my friend would visit from out of town his mom would give him time limits where we had to come back and check in so she knew we were still alive. We always missed the deadlines and he would set his watch back and say we made it back on time according to his watch. I remember his mom telling him if he set his watch back any farther it will be yesterday.
There was a trail at the end of our street that led up the Niagara Escarpment. Near the top if you left the trail you could find a variety of old cars wedged in the trees just below the cliff at the top. We called these the accident cars. The reality was that when the farmers at the top got tired of looking at them they simply pushed them over the edge. Problem solved. There was not much left of them the last time I was up there. You couldn’t sit in them and work the steering wheel like we did when we were kids. They have been gradually returning to the earth and what’s left is sliding down the slope to become part of nature. They were really hard to spot ten years ago.
I used to ride bikes with a variety of friends, we ranged all over Stoney Creek and Hamilton, with a radius of about 10 miles. Lots of old cars in fields and alleys.
One day my mom was driving down the 4 lane Centennial Parkway cut up the escarpment when she spotted a kid bombing down the long hill, in traffic. She thought “what a dumb kid” and then realized it was actually her kid. I got quite the tongue lashing when I arrived home.
Our ranges may have overlapped. Home base was the west end of Grimsby near what is now Grimsby Hyundai and out as far as Fruitland Rd. and east as far as nearly Beamsville. Ten yrs old in ’75 we didn’t get out to Hamilton until much later. Been down #20 hill many times. Shhh. Any route up or down the mountain was fair game. Fifty rd being the best for it’s long runoff at the bottom. Did you carry matches to re-light the eternal flame on Dewitt Rd? If you smelled rotten eggs the flame was out.
Our favorite hang out was Fifty Point Conservation Area. It still is for me. We hung out when they built the point from the dirt they dug out from the marina. That was way cool for a couple of kids to see. We always snuck in the back way. Usually across the beach behind the berm at the “Riffley Ranji” What is a riffley ranji anyway? And what’s all that noise? To me it will never be a Rifle Range.
Mom still has the house there with the big old maple tree I used to climb. Planted the year we all moved in. It’s the only part of that area that hasn’t changed much.
I grew up during the early 1960s in Oakland Ca. During the time that I was in the 4th. through 6th. grades we rode our bikes all over the greater neighborhood. East 14th. St. was lined with used car lots. For longer trips Downtown we would ride AC Transit. We stopped riding the bus with our Mom when we were in the 2nd or 3rd grade. The same rules always applied, be home by dark. Even though we lived in the flatlands which were starting to get rougher. We would go out into the crowds on the street when there was something going on. Back then kids were generally left alone by the bad guys, unfortunately that code doesn’t seem to apply anymore.
There were several old or abandoned cars near my home growing up. We used to “pretend drive” in them. One was a ’67-ish Electra 225. It had leaks and the seats were damp and smelly. We didn’t care. There was a 60’s Stepvan which was fun. There was some kind of an Opel station wagon with the roof removed. Of course it’s seats were often wet. It was a stick and I kind of knew how it worked, and would correct the other kids when they “shifted” wrong. Yeah, I was that kid. Lemme see now… There was an original Mustang that for some reason I pretended was a Camaro. A big Chevy C60 tree cutting rig that was pretty cool was behind a house so we had to sneak into it. I used to bring my little tape recorder with my ahead-of-my-time tapes (that I recorded by putting it next to a radio) along with me on my “drives”. I bet they sounded really good! (Remember I was around 10.) I think that’s all of them. I had more fun pretending to cruise than the real ones that came eventually. But the audio quality got better later, and at least the seats were dry.
To answer your last para question poindexter, it seems not. My four boys, 12-17, barely know a car from a toilet seat, (and clean either about as often). I suspect at least one won’t even get a license.
Kid (10y.o.) next door, whose dad is car guy, he spots cars, but alas, only newbies. A nephew, also 10, can I.D. cars, but again, only new ones. Two other nephews, 24 and 27, have never got a licence and don’t seem in any rush yet.
Frankly, I was a bit odd in my growing up (about the same era as poindexter) for having any interest in old motors, even compared to any car-fancying mates, who’d get bored when I rode my junkyard un-geared too-big-for-me-therefore-ball-crushing bike off to look at something old and wondrous.
What sweet, nostalgic and open post this is. Lovely sir, definitely the sort of stuff that makes CC great, and I thank you for it.
Oh my yes. I lived in relatively new suburbs, so there wasn’t a lot close by. I met a new best friend in the fall of 1972. The summer of 1973 we began exploring our city of Fort Wayne. The only bike he had access to was a 3 speed Schwinn Tandem and we rode that stupid tandem everywhere.
There was the 60 Lincoln Premiere that never moved from a driveway and a 59 Ford Galaxie sedan that almost never moved. These cars were only maybe 15 years old but seemed ancient then. And I’m glad to no longer be the only guy here who has admitted to complete befuddlement at a 55-56 Clipper.
You took pictures while we collected the hubcaps and wheelcovers that could be seen in ditches and along the berms of potholed roads. I’m sure my mother loved the way we cleaned each new prIze in her kitchen sink before it went into the box in the garage.
Poindexter, your post really struck a chord with me. We here at CC are car nuts, and many of us grew up when exploring on your bike was okay, and wouldn’t subject your parents to a visit from Child Protectives. We didn’t take pictures of cars we spotted. There were no cell phones with cameras, and the family Brownie was a little too bulky to take along for the ride. I am 70 years old, and my first adventures in the city neighborhood where my mother grew up involved riding around the block. My best friend (my Mom’s best friend’s son) lived around the corner, and that city block was the limit of my world of exploration. At the far end of my street sat a Model T roadster, always parked at the curb. Since World War II was a recent occurrence, pre-war cars were everywhere. A lot of them were 1941 and older Fords. When I was six, in 1954, we moved to the suburbs, and my leash got a bit longer. About a quarter mile from my house, on the other end of my street, sat some marshland near a river bank not far from the river’s mouth at Lake Ontario. In that marshland were some abandoned junked cars, not really that old. The most memorable was a 1949 Ford sedan, on whose stoved-in roof we happily jumped on many occasions. The cars eventually sank into the muck, and are probably still there today, properly entombed for eternity. About a mile from my house was a small Dodge dealer, where we always tried to get a sneak peek at the next year’s models. Our biggest coup came in the summer of 1961, when, as 13-year-olds, we managed to score brochures for the all-new downsized 1962 Dodge Darts ahead of their release date. It saddens me that today’s kids, with their play times orchestrated by iPhone, have neither the interest in cars nor the freedom to explore for the sake of exploration. There should be more to life as a kid than soccer practice. Then again, the automotive offerings, far from being exciting and ever-changing in appearance, are optimized transportation devices ready to stop themselves any time our distractions while driving prevent us from seeing what is going on outside our vehicles. Maybe that’s even more sad. Thank you, Poindexter, for relating your exciting discoveries which led me to remember some of my own. These CC memories are life-long treasures to be remembered and shared with those of similar interests.
Reading this post as well as the comments was quite fun for me. Thanks for the memories!
For me, our neighborhood was too new of a subdivision, so much of our car spotting was that which occupied peoples’ driveways. We did enjoy exploring areas that were being developed, as you never knew what they were going to unearth. There were a few old cars, and even an old bus we found in the woods before the bulldozers arrived.
As to the bikes? BOTH of the bikes I had for my adventures were mentioned above; one by LTDan and the other by dman:
Between 10 and 11 years of age, I got a brand new ’71 Stingray for Christmas that I rode all over the neighborhood, eventually logging 1500 miles. Then at 17, my Dad got me a ’77 Varsity (I guess I was a Schwinn guy before becoming a Ford guy ;o). On the latter bike, I logged about 780 miles before mothballing it for many years. My stepson has since fixed it up and rode it for quite a while before buying a few much more modern bikes and mothballing it again. He still has plans to do a full frame off restoration of the Schwinn Varsity for a nice retro ride. It’s currently in my shed staying nice and dry for him for when he wants it.
Sadly, the whereabouts of Stingray are unknown. And those bikes are actually worth something now. Mine looked like the one pictured below. My Varsity is also in that color.
And I agree with many of the posters above. The kids today are really missing out on the whole “Come back when the street lights come on” thing. The freedom to explore your world was part of what it was to be a kid when that right of passage in the form of a bike came your way.
Great story! I hope there are some young kids who spend time exploring on a bicycle , not sure that is the case.
I’m a couple years younger – I have great memories of exploring by bicycle. My first bike was purple Sears Spyder with high rise handlebars & banana seat (my parents were too frugal to get me a Scwinn Stingray). When I was in my teens I had a hand-me down 26” Peugeot 10 speed with a leather saddle, which I referred to as the “French torture”. I spent many hours riding around,which lasted through my adulthood. Until a couple years ago when a doctor gave me Cushing’s Sydrome I was riding about 360 days a year (even in the snow).
My town was a suburb of Madison with around 10,000, for many years it was the fastest growing city in Wisconsin with a present population of 30,000. I recall a house that had a large collection of 2 stroke engine Saabs. Another yard had a collection of 2 generation T-Birds, with a 1960 Thunderbird being the daily driver. There was also an early to mid ‘60’s collector of Studebakers.
My favorite place to explore was the slightly seedy industrial south side of town with it’s circa 1911 Train Staton, an old Grain Elevator, and a group of older cars ranging from a ‘59 Edsel, ‘57 Imperial convertible, Corvan Greenbrier, and a ‘66 Thunderbird.
While I didn’t have a list of cars, my brother and the neighbor’s kids kept track of out of state license plates. Thanks to a US Air Force housing development we were able to finally captured Alaska & Hawaii!
I did the same up until me and my cohort were old enough to drive. I would have been riding between the late 1960’s to the mid 1970’s in a small town in Ohio on the Pennsylvania border. Most often it was just idle summertime kid stuff, ride our bikes to the fishing hole or to the vacant lot to play baseball or football all summer long. Once I got big enough for an adult sized bike, I took longer and longer rides. Sometimes one or two friends would tag along, but most often it was just me. This is where I developed my love of bicycling.
It’s kind of funny to think about now, but back at the time no one really found it odd that folks would take a functioning (or semi functioning) vehicle to the middle of a field somewhere and just abandon it. I think now there would be more repercussions in doing so, but it did make for some fantastic adventures.
Oddly, my biggest abandoned car find was not on bike, but during a hunting trip. There was a large, abandoned farm near our home who’s ownership was tied up in the courts. The children of the farmer were fighting over who got what, and as a consequence, the land hadn’t been worked in 20 years. The land was open to hunters, well kind of. It would have been incredibly hard to police that area so most of the locals just hunted on it, without permission.
About a mile off the road there was about a 60′ loose circle of trees. Within the circle of trees were a collection of mostly 30’s and 40’s cars, mostly GMs and a few others, again arranged in a circle. They’d been there a long time as they were firmly in the dirt. One or two had smaller trees growing up through hoods or trunk lids, etc. Most of them were in decent condition, i.e., no bullet holes and most had all of their glass. No one in our hunting party (mostly our dads and uncles/older brothers) knew why or how the cars got there, they were just there.
As far as I know, they were still there when I moved away in my late teens. One weekend, I came home to visit my family and noticed that the very southern end of the property had earth movers on it; the land had been sold to the county and they were going to put low income housing on it. From there, the county fenced off the whole area and put up No Trespassing signs, but I wasn’t that interested in going on the property.
The county only ever built Phase I of the buildings announced which only took up about a quarter of the farm. The rest of the property has since been sold to others, but it has never been developed. Every so often I think about that circle of old cars and wonder if it’s still there…
Grew up around same time, and also preferred 1955 + era cars. To me, cars before were rare, but just seemed “so old”. It’s pure personal taste. and generational.
My Dad could name most cars from 1946-54, but to him after he “lost track”. 😉 Could only tell well known ones like Mustangs and Monte Carlos.
Great memories parallel to my own from the 70’s . One of my favorite examples of gems auto hunts was a 1966 Chevelle coupe that sat in the same driveway on Vauxhall Rd in Union NJ and didn’t move from 1978 or so until last year when the house was vacated. If was kept under a car cover for years till it became tattered and was replaced with a series others. Look to be a stock car or drag configured effort. Next was a 57 DeSoto Adventurer that was abandoned at the bottom of the railroad tracks near my home. When I was 13, I set out to explore it and retrieve some artifacts which I still have 43 years later!
Near you–this ’54 Mercury was recently pulled out of a garage in East Orange. The inspection sticker is from 1964, so it’s probably been sitting in there for 50+ years!
The license plate starts with B so that’s from 1959 or ’60.
Thanks! Came across a 55 DeV hidden in a garage in Trenton that had just seen the first light of day in 40 years last year. Shoulda stopped !
As kids (early ’60’s) we would visit the used car lots around 82nd and Powell/Division, the cars were almost always unlocked and had key in ignition, ready to go. We sometimes would sit in the cars in the back area, if we felt really brave we would play the radio or even start the engine for a second or two. Sometimes a salesman would walk up and ask what we were doing, “beat the heat” was the standard answer, they always let us stay. There were a couple of old junkers in the field that used to be there to explore as well. If anybody is familiar with this intersection today its quite different now, though BHPH lots still exist there.
We had a little mom and pop store in the neighborhood that rented Schwinn tandem bicycles by the hour, this was a very popular thing to do. My sister and I would rent one and ride up to Mt.Tabor, a steep climb but lots of fun on the downhill ride back.
Walking and biking the neighborhood looking for old or unusual cars, or visiting repair shops and car dealerships was started when we moved to SoCal in ’67, this was about the time cars began to interest me. Our new apartment overlooked a Pontiac dealerships service department. I enjoyed exploring the dealership, looking at new cars And watching the mechanics work. I would sometimes get suspicious looks or be asked what I was doing when checking out cars on the street, not as laid back as Oregon was. Never took pictures or wrote charts, though! I hope this time my post doesn’t get the dreaded “your typing too quickly” and vanish.
Reminds me of myself at that time. I used to set off on my bike in the summer and be gone all day. We lived in Traverse City, Michigan at the time and I would ride from our house a mile or two south of the city limits as far as the tip of the Old Mission Peninsula. Along Garfield, my usual route, were Chet Swanson Olds-Cadillac and Grand Traverse Auto VW-Audi-Porsche. Both were regular stops. 14 year-old me was even addressed as “sir” at Chet Swanson. I still have the brochures I collected during my visits. The Porsche brochures are particularly nice and I still find it hard to believe they handed them over to a kid on a bike.
Sometime around 1969, I made a hobby of collecting hubcaps from all of the old cars scattered about. Like you, I remember dozens of future classics sitting forlorn behind gas stations and every empty field or forest. I knew what a Clipper was, and once of my finest hubcap adventures was stealing the ones off the abandoned Packard patrol car parked alongside the police station. In broad daylight no less.
It’s hard to believe that the cars I saw laying about in fields are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I even found an abandoned 50s Ferrari on one of my treks. I presume that most of them suffered from little more than a need for a new head gasket as they were complete and unrusted save for the patina that is so prized today. People were better behaved then, and there were no taggers.
Hi I grew up and still live in Cedar Knolls. I love the pictures you shared, especially Sam & Janes. It was different before your time. I think when they made Ridgedale Ave wider, Sam & Jane lost a lot of frontage of their store. The old cars are great too, Hanover Steak House and the mall are great memories. Thanks so much for sharing!