Backfire

In December 1953, I entered the United States Air Force aviation cadet program for jet pilot training. My last phase of training was in Laredo, Texas, from November 1954 until June 1955, when I received my wings and commission. Sometime in the late fall of 1954, I went to San Antonio with a classmate on weekend leave, and while there I saw — and purchased — a 1953 Corvette from a dealer’s lot. It had very few miles on it, and I think I paid $2,300 for the car. That was still a lot of money for a 21-year-old, about-to-be second lieutenant jet pilot in the USAF. The Corvette had a great little motor but a lousy transmission, and it leaked rainwater like a sieve. If it rained hard enough, so much water would collect in the footwells that you could keep goldfish. The paint began to bubble on the hood and crack at the fender seams, and Chevrolet repainted the car. It took two men and a crowbar to put the top down or up without tearing it, but the worst part was the hood latches. Fortunately, the hood was hinged at the front, as the latches would vibrate loose and the hood would fly up so you could not see the road. You had to stop periodically and push the hood down. Other than these flaws, it was a great little car and it did get a lot of attention.

After I graduated my first assignment was in Turkey. In July of that year, I drove to New York to travel overseas and had the car shipped to Istanbul. I flew to Adana, Turkey, stayed there until fall, and then went to my assignment in Ankara. Around the same time, the car came to port in Istanbul aboard the . When I went to pick it up, the transmission had been trashed and someone had walked across the hood and scratched the paint. Turkey was in hard economic times and auto parts were not available, so I had my family order parts and ship them to Istanbul. This took some time, and I was unable to get the car until February 1956. The highway from