My Cars. An Automobilebiography
People are up to games on Facebook. One that I like is showing the cars they have owned in chronological order. It seems like mostly guys doing this. I think cars are a bit more important to guys than gals...but I could be wrong. Just a general thing.
I thought I would do this, but use GAW blog so I could add comments about each ride.
1975. First Ride:
My first vehicle was when my dad found this 1962 pickup truck I bought from one of the shop teachers, Mr. Combs for $200. It didn't look this nice. But, it was white. I got it before I was 16.
I used to drive it around in the field behind our house to master the three speed on the column shift.
My friend Stats came over one day and we worked on spiffing it up by cutting house carpet up to cover the floor board. It had a radio. But the radio only played country music stations.
1976 'THE THING"
In my Junior year my parents bought me a car. It was a VW 'THING" . My dad put a roll bar/cage
in it cause I guess he didn't want me to get crushed if I happened to roll it.
This car was so cool. The doors could come off and the windshield put down. Like a combat vehicle. Me and my gang used to 'cruise' on weekend nights like the Rat Pack. It was great fun!
1977
My memory is a bit foggy about how I transitioned in cars my senior year. It may be that this was my
brother's car but I got to use it for dates with my girlfriend or something. A 64 Thunderbird. It had a huge engine...a four barrel carburetor and my GOD!!! it would flat out fly (even though it was a heavy vehicle). Really classic 60's cool. Rolled leather back seat. A 'swing away' steering wheel and electric windows. Just totally classic.
We sold this awesome car for a pittance. Never should have let go of it. (Something I can say about a few of my rides)
1977-78
My dad bought this somewhere and it was a family used car. We sort of switched rides around in the late seventies. So, when I went off to college I 'inherited' this awesome little american sport car.
I loaded it up with two cardboard boxes and a suit case of clothes...plus...my mom's 'care' package and headed off to college in August 1977. My mom's care package consisted of the following:
- one jar of generic brand peanut butter
- one box of saltine crackers
- two tins of sardines
- a package of generic brand 'oreo' like cookies
- a box of instant hot chocolate packs
- a device to heat up a mug of water
1979
The second half of my sophomore year at college (in Indianapolis) I pretty much had a bad attitude about school and spent most of my time just hanging out with my friends and my girl friend at the time. My ego was still pretty smashed from having been dumped my freshman year by my highschool sweetheart and I messed up my academic scholarship. I came home that summer and got the letter that Butler had revoked my scholarship. I didn't even care. I went to work as a union laborer working construction gigs all over southern Indiana. Most notably worked at Marble Hill nuclear power plant project and then, at the end of the summer, went to work on the re-installation of the 'victory' oil pipeline that went from Texas to the East Coast and through Orange and Scott counties. Me and my friend Stats worked this job together right before going off to spend the late fall and Winter tramping in Europe. These were some great days. At this time I got my dad's 1970 pickup truck. It was a ford and had cab running lights. Here is a picture of what it looked like. Except, mine was all red and didn't have a black cab top. Two other things....for some reason the cab lights made a little 'jingle' sound and me and my dad installed a wench on the front bumper. I used it
a few times too!
1980
When I got back from Europe I started driving this little badass. It was a lot of fun and looked cool. However, mechanically it was a disaster. I learned for real the reason for the saying "Fix It Again Tony" and after owning this I swore off Fiats forever!!!
Me and my buddy Stats took a rode trip down to Florida in it. It put us afoot in Forsythe Georgia where we spent the night in a garage waiting for a crucial part to be sent down from Atlanta. Just another adventure!
1981
The next year me and Stats spent the summer painting houses. It was good money. We set our own hours and made plenty for what we needed. Then he went back to college at Wabash and I enrolled at the University of Louisville...as an English Major. (LOL). I had decided that part of why I had crashed and burned at Butler in Indy was that I wasn't studying what I was really interested in. I had gotten rid of the Fiat and was living as cheap as possible during the next couple years. During the next few years I drove a car my Dad (again) helped me find. (Though I paid for it. It cost about $600 as best I can recall.) A 1972 Ford Custom sedan.
This sucker was HUGE. Mine was a two door white sedan with a blue interior. Automatic. A real monster-boat of a car. A friend of Guin's who was into 'PUNK' at the time (Charles Schultze) looked at it snearingly and said "Very po lice like" Which, to him, was a maximum put down.
Any way, I drove this behemoth through the last two years of college, then for one year before I started law school and then all through law school.
It never let me down. Once, on Derby day some drunk crashed into the driver's door and once some jerk stole the battery out of it. But actually the car itself never let me down. Just because I spent a longer time with this one...and a lot of memories of a sweet time of my youth, I am including a Neil Young tune to honor the old Custom. Oh...and by the way Charles ...if you happen to read this "F you!" ( BTW Charles was trying to get Guinever...but she picked me and my 'police vehicle' LOL)
******************************************************************
1986
So, I graduated law school. I was working as a clerk at the great Frank Haddad's office and he offered me a job. (which I am eternally thankful for) but, it would have been being a more of a glorified law clerk and my law school buddy, Larry Wilder knew I wanted to get right into the courtroom. He scouted me to the Clark County Prosecutor's office. I interviewed and got the job.
For the next two years I had a salary, benefits and had to wear lawyer clothes. Clearly, I had to upgrade my ride. I wasn't ready for a luxury ride or anything but, for the first time in my life I bought a new car. It was a 1986 Toyota Celica Hatchback. Very sporty (for me) and well engineered.
It had a stereo radio and tape player. I had moved to Hibernia Indiana and a little farmhouse out in the middle of the corn and soybean fields. It was fun driving this little coupe to and from the job
in Jeffersonville.
@1991
Now coming up is the first time I bought a second car. I had left the prosecutor's office in 1988 and went into private practice as a 'junior' partner at Clary, Hess, Guilfoyle, Thomas and Wilder law firm.
Fun days. My 'draw' was $300 a week. In 1990 I went out on my own...again following Larry Wilder and rented an office in with Jack Vissing and Greg Read. Now I was making whatever I could make. There was no 'safety net' of a draw...but I figured I could do better than $300 a week.
I saw this advertised in the 'want ads' in the Courier Journal. A guy on the south side had it in his garage. He wanted 5,000 for it. I think I had just settled a personal injury case and had extra cash.
I bought this classic 1958 Porsche 356. It was a very cool car...but you could 'feel' those 33 years.
I wound up selling it for the same money I paid for it a couple years later. Guin and her friend Mary were leading a class for U of L in Paris, France and were going to be there for about 5 weeks. So, I sold this beauty to some guy from Colorado to finance my trip to go with her.
1994
Time to upgrade...but I stuck with the Celica...this car was even cooler (IMO)
But, the next year I bought a second car. Saw it had just arrived on the car lot in downtown Jeff. It had not even been put out for sale. I just drove in and bought it. ($2,000) It was a MGTD 'kit car'.
but, get this, it was an actual MG made body designed to mount to a Volkswagen chassis. It was a blast! A "just for fun" car.
I LOVED this fun car.
1995 or 96 (can't exactly remember)
By this time me and Perry McCall and some other PDs had formed our own law firm It started as Carmichael, Mosley, Stonebraker and McCall. Perry and I bought a building at our present location at 332 Spring St. and Vicki became a judge. Stoney became chief PD and the firm became "Mosley, Bertrand (Jennifer was now with us) Jacobs and McCall" Or MBJM for short.
I walked out one day and my regular car...the red Celica (above) was VANISHED!!!
It turned out it had been TOWED as part of the REPOSSESSION process!!! I had been coming to the end of my lease on the car and the dealership had told me I was good....but apparently they did not communicate this information to the finance department of their dealership LOL and old Dave Mosley was put afoot again! Well...one result was that I was mad and damned if I would get another TOYOTA!!!
There was some kind of thought that I needed to get a more "mature" and "respectable" ride. So, I wound up buying this. It was a used, Mazda Millenia sedan. It was a perfectly fine and reliable and smooth ride. But, all in all...pretty boring! I recall Guin and I were down in Florida and visiting her cousin and his wife. He is a Urologist and they had a Mercedes. I recall his wife, Jill, taking an appraising eye look at my Millenia...."yes...we looked at a Millenia when we were in the market".
LOL ! Sort of a back handed snipe there Jilly poo!
This car served me well until it was totaled. Guin and I were visiting our friend Michelle Finn
and as we were leaving her subdivision, found a purse that had been tossed out on the road. Opening it, we found identification paper that showed it was from a home in the neighborhood. We drove to the house to return the purse. We were driving up a long gravel drive up the side of a hill when all the sudden a pick up truck came head on at us. Suddenly I was BLIND. It was quite a shock for a few moments until I realize that what had happened was the truck had collided and folded my hood up like a card totally obscuring my view ! Apparently the owners were venturing out to find the lost purse and were in a hurry!
When I got my insurance money...I went out and bought another Millenia...almost exactly like the one I'd had. BORING! (even the same boring color).
2001
By this time, Guin and I had gotten married. In September, the world was shocked by 9-11 and I was 41 years old. I was doing pretty good and was fed up with the Millenia. I had decided to get just what I wanted, and what I wanted was a Porsche Boxster. I know a lot of people kind of look down on the Boxster. But, to my eye it was perfect. I preferred the way it looked to the 911. To me, it was the perfect car. Here is what I wanted to get.
I was about to go for it when one wonderful day in October, Guinever told me we were going to have a baby. I was going to need something besides a two seater!!! So, here's what I got instead of my beloved Boxster.
This is a 1998 BMW 318i and damn...what a fine car it is. (I still have it) First, it drove like a wizard. Finest driving machine I have ever had. It was reliable and of first class quality. It has served me very very well. Today it has about 190,000 miles on it. Isabel has inherited it from me and she loves it. Its a five speed and she learned how to drive a stick. (keeps her from texting while driving!) I drove this for a long time. But, after eleven years, I bought my brother's BMW 3
series. I like this car a lot and it is smooth as silk. This is what I am driving now.
2013 to the present:
I am thinking about getting into a new car. Who knows what it will be?
I thought I would do this, but use GAW blog so I could add comments about each ride.
1975. First Ride:
My first vehicle was when my dad found this 1962 pickup truck I bought from one of the shop teachers, Mr. Combs for $200. It didn't look this nice. But, it was white. I got it before I was 16.
I used to drive it around in the field behind our house to master the three speed on the column shift.
My friend Stats came over one day and we worked on spiffing it up by cutting house carpet up to cover the floor board. It had a radio. But the radio only played country music stations.
1976 'THE THING"
In my Junior year my parents bought me a car. It was a VW 'THING" . My dad put a roll bar/cage
in it cause I guess he didn't want me to get crushed if I happened to roll it.
This car was so cool. The doors could come off and the windshield put down. Like a combat vehicle. Me and my gang used to 'cruise' on weekend nights like the Rat Pack. It was great fun!
1977
My memory is a bit foggy about how I transitioned in cars my senior year. It may be that this was my
brother's car but I got to use it for dates with my girlfriend or something. A 64 Thunderbird. It had a huge engine...a four barrel carburetor and my GOD!!! it would flat out fly (even though it was a heavy vehicle). Really classic 60's cool. Rolled leather back seat. A 'swing away' steering wheel and electric windows. Just totally classic.
We sold this awesome car for a pittance. Never should have let go of it. (Something I can say about a few of my rides)
1977-78
My dad bought this somewhere and it was a family used car. We sort of switched rides around in the late seventies. So, when I went off to college I 'inherited' this awesome little american sport car.
I loaded it up with two cardboard boxes and a suit case of clothes...plus...my mom's 'care' package and headed off to college in August 1977. My mom's care package consisted of the following:
- one jar of generic brand peanut butter
- one box of saltine crackers
- two tins of sardines
- a package of generic brand 'oreo' like cookies
- a box of instant hot chocolate packs
- a device to heat up a mug of water
1979
The second half of my sophomore year at college (in Indianapolis) I pretty much had a bad attitude about school and spent most of my time just hanging out with my friends and my girl friend at the time. My ego was still pretty smashed from having been dumped my freshman year by my highschool sweetheart and I messed up my academic scholarship. I came home that summer and got the letter that Butler had revoked my scholarship. I didn't even care. I went to work as a union laborer working construction gigs all over southern Indiana. Most notably worked at Marble Hill nuclear power plant project and then, at the end of the summer, went to work on the re-installation of the 'victory' oil pipeline that went from Texas to the East Coast and through Orange and Scott counties. Me and my friend Stats worked this job together right before going off to spend the late fall and Winter tramping in Europe. These were some great days. At this time I got my dad's 1970 pickup truck. It was a ford and had cab running lights. Here is a picture of what it looked like. Except, mine was all red and didn't have a black cab top. Two other things....for some reason the cab lights made a little 'jingle' sound and me and my dad installed a wench on the front bumper. I used it
a few times too!
1980
When I got back from Europe I started driving this little badass. It was a lot of fun and looked cool. However, mechanically it was a disaster. I learned for real the reason for the saying "Fix It Again Tony" and after owning this I swore off Fiats forever!!!
Me and my buddy Stats took a rode trip down to Florida in it. It put us afoot in Forsythe Georgia where we spent the night in a garage waiting for a crucial part to be sent down from Atlanta. Just another adventure!
1981
The next year me and Stats spent the summer painting houses. It was good money. We set our own hours and made plenty for what we needed. Then he went back to college at Wabash and I enrolled at the University of Louisville...as an English Major. (LOL). I had decided that part of why I had crashed and burned at Butler in Indy was that I wasn't studying what I was really interested in. I had gotten rid of the Fiat and was living as cheap as possible during the next couple years. During the next few years I drove a car my Dad (again) helped me find. (Though I paid for it. It cost about $600 as best I can recall.) A 1972 Ford Custom sedan.
This sucker was HUGE. Mine was a two door white sedan with a blue interior. Automatic. A real monster-boat of a car. A friend of Guin's who was into 'PUNK' at the time (Charles Schultze) looked at it snearingly and said "Very po lice like" Which, to him, was a maximum put down.
Any way, I drove this behemoth through the last two years of college, then for one year before I started law school and then all through law school.
It never let me down. Once, on Derby day some drunk crashed into the driver's door and once some jerk stole the battery out of it. But actually the car itself never let me down. Just because I spent a longer time with this one...and a lot of memories of a sweet time of my youth, I am including a Neil Young tune to honor the old Custom. Oh...and by the way Charles ...if you happen to read this "F you!" ( BTW Charles was trying to get Guinever...but she picked me and my 'police vehicle' LOL)
******************************************************************
1986
So, I graduated law school. I was working as a clerk at the great Frank Haddad's office and he offered me a job. (which I am eternally thankful for) but, it would have been being a more of a glorified law clerk and my law school buddy, Larry Wilder knew I wanted to get right into the courtroom. He scouted me to the Clark County Prosecutor's office. I interviewed and got the job.
For the next two years I had a salary, benefits and had to wear lawyer clothes. Clearly, I had to upgrade my ride. I wasn't ready for a luxury ride or anything but, for the first time in my life I bought a new car. It was a 1986 Toyota Celica Hatchback. Very sporty (for me) and well engineered.
It had a stereo radio and tape player. I had moved to Hibernia Indiana and a little farmhouse out in the middle of the corn and soybean fields. It was fun driving this little coupe to and from the job
in Jeffersonville.
@1991
Now coming up is the first time I bought a second car. I had left the prosecutor's office in 1988 and went into private practice as a 'junior' partner at Clary, Hess, Guilfoyle, Thomas and Wilder law firm.
Fun days. My 'draw' was $300 a week. In 1990 I went out on my own...again following Larry Wilder and rented an office in with Jack Vissing and Greg Read. Now I was making whatever I could make. There was no 'safety net' of a draw...but I figured I could do better than $300 a week.
I saw this advertised in the 'want ads' in the Courier Journal. A guy on the south side had it in his garage. He wanted 5,000 for it. I think I had just settled a personal injury case and had extra cash.
I bought this classic 1958 Porsche 356. It was a very cool car...but you could 'feel' those 33 years.
I wound up selling it for the same money I paid for it a couple years later. Guin and her friend Mary were leading a class for U of L in Paris, France and were going to be there for about 5 weeks. So, I sold this beauty to some guy from Colorado to finance my trip to go with her.
1994
Time to upgrade...but I stuck with the Celica...this car was even cooler (IMO)
But, the next year I bought a second car. Saw it had just arrived on the car lot in downtown Jeff. It had not even been put out for sale. I just drove in and bought it. ($2,000) It was a MGTD 'kit car'.
but, get this, it was an actual MG made body designed to mount to a Volkswagen chassis. It was a blast! A "just for fun" car.
I LOVED this fun car.
1995 or 96 (can't exactly remember)
By this time me and Perry McCall and some other PDs had formed our own law firm It started as Carmichael, Mosley, Stonebraker and McCall. Perry and I bought a building at our present location at 332 Spring St. and Vicki became a judge. Stoney became chief PD and the firm became "Mosley, Bertrand (Jennifer was now with us) Jacobs and McCall" Or MBJM for short.
I walked out one day and my regular car...the red Celica (above) was VANISHED!!!
It turned out it had been TOWED as part of the REPOSSESSION process!!! I had been coming to the end of my lease on the car and the dealership had told me I was good....but apparently they did not communicate this information to the finance department of their dealership LOL and old Dave Mosley was put afoot again! Well...one result was that I was mad and damned if I would get another TOYOTA!!!
There was some kind of thought that I needed to get a more "mature" and "respectable" ride. So, I wound up buying this. It was a used, Mazda Millenia sedan. It was a perfectly fine and reliable and smooth ride. But, all in all...pretty boring! I recall Guin and I were down in Florida and visiting her cousin and his wife. He is a Urologist and they had a Mercedes. I recall his wife, Jill, taking an appraising eye look at my Millenia...."yes...we looked at a Millenia when we were in the market".
LOL ! Sort of a back handed snipe there Jilly poo!
This car served me well until it was totaled. Guin and I were visiting our friend Michelle Finn
and as we were leaving her subdivision, found a purse that had been tossed out on the road. Opening it, we found identification paper that showed it was from a home in the neighborhood. We drove to the house to return the purse. We were driving up a long gravel drive up the side of a hill when all the sudden a pick up truck came head on at us. Suddenly I was BLIND. It was quite a shock for a few moments until I realize that what had happened was the truck had collided and folded my hood up like a card totally obscuring my view ! Apparently the owners were venturing out to find the lost purse and were in a hurry!
When I got my insurance money...I went out and bought another Millenia...almost exactly like the one I'd had. BORING! (even the same boring color).
2001
By this time, Guin and I had gotten married. In September, the world was shocked by 9-11 and I was 41 years old. I was doing pretty good and was fed up with the Millenia. I had decided to get just what I wanted, and what I wanted was a Porsche Boxster. I know a lot of people kind of look down on the Boxster. But, to my eye it was perfect. I preferred the way it looked to the 911. To me, it was the perfect car. Here is what I wanted to get.
I was about to go for it when one wonderful day in October, Guinever told me we were going to have a baby. I was going to need something besides a two seater!!! So, here's what I got instead of my beloved Boxster.
This is a 1998 BMW 318i and damn...what a fine car it is. (I still have it) First, it drove like a wizard. Finest driving machine I have ever had. It was reliable and of first class quality. It has served me very very well. Today it has about 190,000 miles on it. Isabel has inherited it from me and she loves it. Its a five speed and she learned how to drive a stick. (keeps her from texting while driving!) I drove this for a long time. But, after eleven years, I bought my brother's BMW 3
series. I like this car a lot and it is smooth as silk. This is what I am driving now.
2013 to the present:
I am thinking about getting into a new car. Who knows what it will be?
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