The first car that my paternal grandfather owned that I remember as a child was a duplicate of this '48 Kaiser. My Papaw Ray stood about 5'-3" and he looked like a gnat sitting in the cockpit of this behemoth. I hated this car. Even though my friends and I were only in elementary school, we declared the color of this car to be "duck butter brown". I'll let your intuition figure out what that really meant. Did I mention I hated The Kaiser?
Papaw Ray came home one night with a new 1957 Ford Fairlane Coupe with the lower half in peach and the upper half in pearl white. He'd traded in The Kaiser for a swanky new Ford that made me drool. I kissed that Kaiser goodbye without remorse. That '57 Ford Fairlane Coupe was the first car that made me understand what a classic car could do to a young boy's heart! I rode shotgun with my grandfather as he puffed on his Homemade Cigars with the windows down and felt like I was king of the world.
And so as fate would have it, I spotted this Kaiser at a local car show, and the memories flooded back instantly. The exact Kaiser in "duck butter brown" that I so despised. Despite my dislike for The Kaiser, nonetheless, I could see my long gone 5'-3" grandfather behind the wheel and that made me smile. But more than that, I remembered the day we said goodbye to The Kaiser and replaced it with the car of my dreams, the '57 Ford Fairlane Coupe!
