Saturday, November 1, 2008

The Little Crosley that Could


(Could hold a large bunch of kids inside it)!

This is a really deteriorated photo of another "famous" car that was a familiar sight in Baldwyn. Billy Wayne Houston was it's owner for several years. It was seen everywhere there was any activity that was fun - Blue Mars swimming hole, "dragging" main street, Chris' Cafe, etc.

Pictured is (I believe) Herb, Charles, Ellis, Grover, Billy Wayne, Dean and some others. Is that Sue Downs in the open window? Really hard to tell due to the poor quality.

There were several times that this many kids and more would fit themselves into the tiny car. Many Sunday afternoons we would play hide-and-seek with our cars. The skinny Crosley could go places others couldn't and Billy Wayne could be "found" and beat the seeker back to the home starting point very easily. The only player that could go where he couldn't was Roy Glenn Copeland on his motorcycle.

John M. Duke related some time ago that occasionally Billy Wayne thought that the school playground needed plowing up, and he would do it with the Crosley - around and around, spinning in circles and removing all the grass he could until Mr. Baker appeared on the office steps and waved to let him know he should stop it.

One Halloween night it looked like a battleship going through town with roman cannons being shot from all the open windows.

Any other stories you can recall about this car?

10 comments:

  1. I believe the first person is Joe Grissom,,I could be wrong..Herb,,is that person you?

    Wallis

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  2. looks more like Herb to me.

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  3. And then there was the time we came out after school and some of the guys had picked the back up and sat it down on concrete blocks with the tires bout 1 inch off the road--- that was fun-- AND another time we put it so close to the wall of the school building that it could not be turned to move it away --

    John Melvin

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  4. Some of you may remember that Arch Young had a blue Closley also, it had a bad habit of pulling to the right and was hard to drive, so we let most of the air out of the left tire and it would go straight down the road, only thing was, we had to hold it in gear.

    John Melvin

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  5. Wasn't this car sort of green with yellow wheels?
    RC

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  6. The first person looks like Joe Grissom to me.

    Herb

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  7. That car and the Nash Metropolitan that belonged to a teacher (Miss Kesler?) was always being used as a weight lifting contest device. Only 4 or 5 seniors including Dillard and "Dump" were used to pick them up and set them in odd places.

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  8. Who made the Crosley cars? Waddn't they sold in Sears stores and by mail order from them?

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  9. 3;25PM:

    Sears Roebuck and Co. did sell cars. They were designated the "Allstate" name after their line of other products. The car was built by the Kaiser-Frazier Corp. and was known there as the "Henry J", after the first name and initial of its' founder, Mr. Kaiser.
    It was one of the first successful compact economy cars.

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  10. Yep, I too believe that the first person on the left is Joe Grissom.

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