my old man had a 442 before i was born... not sure what happened to that car. And a lemans (poor mans gto) that i remember watching get towed away when i was like 4 because the floors were rusted through. my mom used to call it the flintstone car because you could literally move the car with your feet through the floor. heh Junk yard gave him $50 for it i think. He then signed up to be the van driver for work. So, he drove the car pool van for many years. 10 or 12 until the company stopped doing it and 'easy rider' or whatever it is van company came in.
It was a good deal. he basically got free use of a vehicle, personal mileage was docced at like 2 cents a mile. His commute was free, and all wear/tear/gas on the van was provided by the fleet care at the office. All he had to do was hit up two parking lots which were on the way in anyway and pick people up, and be on time every day.
I remember we loaded wood for the new deck in it, went camping in it, went to the drive in movies, etc.... It was our truck that took people to work
Somewhere in the middle of this, he bought the '88 blazer. the 2.8 manual s10 blazer. lol the car i learned to drive on during saturday morning paper route. I was 12.
Dad would help me sat mornings as that was the day the circulars came out in the local paper back in the day (there was no sunday paper back then, and thursday flyers were rare too. So, sat paper was 50x bigger than the rest of the week and was impossible to carry even with 2 bags on a 45+ customer route.) Basically it was a race. Who ever got back to the truck first got to drive it up to the next group of houses/section. I busted my ass.
One morning, it was still sandy from the winter. my route was on a big ass hilly road.
I left a 50' one-wheel-peel burn out at 6am when i was 13. Dad still laughs about that one. I kept saying it was the sand. He thought i was going to wake up the whole neighborood and he was going to go to jail for letting a 13 year old kid drive, recklessly, alone. heh
Of course, I did it on purpose.
But, we'll still blame it on the sand.
I guess that was one of the defining moments when I knew I was into cars and driving. And that automatics sucked.