A red 4 door '76 Comet was the first new car my folks bought after a '66 2 door Comet in yellow IIRC...it had been sitting on the lot for a long time and they got a good deal on it because it didn't have power steering. I can still remember my mom grunting as she tried to get that thing to turn at low speed, but it was a big improvement over walking to work like she did for a couple of years. My folks had severe financial troubles while my dad didn't work for several years in the early '70s, but things slowly got better after he took a 2nd shift job as a janitor...poor mom worked 3 jobs to keep us going before that, secretary during the day and two waitressing jobs nights and weekends. Dad's big old Merc had broken down and the '66 Comets was the only working vehicle in the family for a long time, after dad started working again mom had to walk until they saved up for another car. You'd think dad could have at least dropped her off in the morning even though he worked 2nd shift, but he and mom rarely spoke and I guess sharing a ride was something neither one of them was interested in.
Dad also picked up a '76 Nova two door in silver and a mid '70s Maverick two door in something like white or beige after the '66 Comet bit the dust and the latter car had severe rust issues...I swear dad was out applying bondo to it every other week. These were all pretty crummy cars, but I drove the Nova if I was given a choice and ended up taking it to Dallas with me after college when dad let me take my pick of the three. The '76 Comet mostly avoided the rust bug, but even I didn't like dealing with the manual steering...I don't think I ever drove the Maverick as it looked like it might fall apart at any time. I remember stripping the driver's side window crank on that Comet while I was driving to hang out with friends who were meeting up a long ways from my home, the window was stuck partway down and it was a cold, windy Chicago day....man, was I freezing! I thought dad would be mad at me the next day, but he told me that he had done the same thing several times and fixed it within hours. I was dropping the window to pay one of the infamous Chicago area tolls and tried to raise it too fast because I was already freezing just from that.
Dad ended up buying a used Mercury Marquis (not Grand) after I moved away and he thought that thing was the cat's meow...it had some kind of loud hiss coming from the steering column that freaked me out, but his hearing was pretty bad by then and he just ignored me when I told him about it. Dad eventually had a stroke and couldn't drive anymore (and my sister never got a driver's license so it was no good to her), but he couldn't bear to part with the Marquis for years and eventually he let his sister have it towed away when I wasn't able to get it to back out of the garage while I was visiting. Don't know if my aunt ever drove it, but my guess is it went straight to a junkyard.
Pretty bad cars, a mix of good and bad memories...I do remember how happy my mom, sister, and I all were when mom first took us out to dinner in her red Comet, that was a nice night.
