I'll Never Forget My First Car: Stories from Behind the Wheel

Geoff Cragg is a tenured instructor in the Faculty of Faculty of
Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary in Alberta.

The latest book by Bill Sherk, the well-known columnist and automotive
historian, offers an anecdotal and informal snapshot of the experiences
of young Canadian drivers and their first cars. The almost 60 chapters,
told in the voices of their submitters, span the years from 1905 to
1975, but most are set in the early 1950s to 1960s, and tell the stories
of a generation for whom the car was a major part of the transition to
adulthood.

The starting point for the anthology is, appropriately enough,
Sherk’s first car, a 1940 Mercury convertible. The cars range from
sedate family sedans to flamboyant hot rods, but I’ll Never Forget My
First Car is as much about the owners and their memories as it is about
automobiles. It offers a portrait of growing up in Canada at a time when
the car was the dominant technology of popular culture and teenagers
were busily trying to create their own subculture—one in which the car
gave them autonomy and space. Many of the stories offer insight into a
more open, less-regulated, and possibly more dangerous but also freer
world, in which people compensated for poverty with ingenuity or just
ignored the problems. Few of us now would try to meet the demands of a
cracked engine block by mounting a supplementary water tank on the
car’s roof, but this kind of story is common in Sherk’s collection.

The volume makes no attempt to be comprehensive or representative; it
is simply the stories of people who first took to the road as drivers
about half a century ago and have the enthusiasm to share their tales.
I’ll Never Forget My First Car is entertaining, varied, and well
supported by personal photographs, reproductions of car ads, and many
other period visuals. Sherk’s latest work should find a wide and
appreciative audience.