It is Throwback Thursday so I decided to dig back into some old pictures and find a theme.

The theme that my mind wandered to after looking through several folders was car memories.

I have some great memories of riding around in our Falcon station wagon when I was a kid. Here I am with my sister and next youngest brother. Not sure why we are parked in the front yard. Maybe we were packing for a trip to go see our grandparents.

I remember riding in the back of the station wagon. We never wore seat belts when we were kids or sat in safety seats. It is a wonder that we survived 🙂

This picture is from the same time period. I have some good memories of my uncle’s Pinto. I remember how I would sit on his lap and he would let me steer the car. Here we are with our uncle and two of our cousins at the park in Ottumwa. See my post Fun at the Park for pictures of us playing in the park.

I have never liked working on cars, but sometimes I just had to. Here I am helping my dad change the fuel filter on our AMC station wagon. Of course, the mechanical abilities I learned helping my dad do things have come in handy as I teach engineers how to work on medical instruments.

Here I am with my first car. I bought this Renault Fuego when I was at college in Dallas. Not the best decision in my life as I had a lot of trouble with it during the years I owned it. It has been the only car with a manual transmission that I have owned and that will most likely never change.

It did have a nice sunroof, but then it didn’t close very well. Finally when I was about to graduate from college I bought my first new car.

Here I am with my Saturn SC which is the car that I owned the longest. During most of the time I owned the car I had a company vehicle so I didn’t put a lot of miles on it. I drove this car for more than ten years. I have a lot of memories of this car. It also sat across the street from me for another four to five years after I sold it to my neighbors. It was a sad day when it was donated to charity and towed away.

Since then I have owned only two cars, but Old Blue has traveled a lot of miles so it is only a matter of time before I start looking again.

Steven