Wednesday, June 4, 2008

The Summer of the Cars

Butler Family about 1963
back: Tom - Don
front: Jim - Lou - Leona - Lou, Jr.

By the fall of 1965 the family home at 1605 Alexander Circle could have made good use of a revolving door, as the parents and teenage sons were coming and going at all hours of the day and night. Lou, Jr. had returned to Pueblo after a year at Ricks College and he and Jim, who had just graduated from high school, were attending college in Pueblo. Twins Tom and Don were juniors in high school and their days began with early morning seminary and continued well into the nighttime hours with school and church activities. Lou Sr. was the principal at Parkview School as well as the Bishop of the Pueblo Ward. Leona was teaching at Belmont School and because the rest of the family was gone so many evenings, she enjoyed some of her alone time playing "conversational" bridge with a group of fellow teachers. (That's a game of bridge with a lot of talking and a little card playing!)

In an attempt to simplify the transportation issues, in August of 1965 they bought THREE cars - at one time - and all Volkswagens! Louie and Jim took one car to college, Tom and Don had another for high school and Lou had the other. Leona didn't even have a set of keys or a gas card, relying on Lou to get her to and from work every day - but at least she didn't have to drive kids around.


This was the brand new car - a 1965 Volkswagen with a sunroof!

1963 2-door

1964 sedan

Can you imagine how excited Salesman M. Stillman was that day?


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

3 Cars in one shot? Wow! It's hard to imagine since many today can't even pay for one car at a time. I'm just looking at the cost of 3 vehicles and thinking about how much gas is today--the purchase price is close to the persent day gas budget! ha! What a great memory--thanks for posting! --MBC