A 'Swenglish' journey through family photos, notes and postcards
from the early 20th century.

2025-07-05

Old Cars - Sepia Saturday 782

 In one of my many envelopes, I recently found this photo, which I can't recall having made its way into any of the family albums:

This is the car my parents had in my early childhood. The photo is from my paternal grandparents' yard, and was probably snapped by my grandfather Gustaf when we were about to leave after a weekend visit. My grandmother is leaning into the back - probably saying goodbye to little me. 

Another photo of the same car, on an icy winter road. Sweden had left-hand traffic back in those days (until 1967). Whether my dad stopped on purpose just to take this photo, or the car stopped by itself, I don't know. I'm probably in the back seat here too. We lived around 100 km away from both sets of grandparents, and did quite frequently drive to visit them on weekends.

In summer, my paternal grandparents Sally and Gustaf liked to go for a drive and have a simple picnic outdoors. 

Before my parents bought the Volvo - probably in connection with little me coming into the picture - they (or my dad) had an older car, which they called Patrick. 

In this very blurry photo he's doing something with it in his parents' yard.



This I think is my parents setting off on their honeymoon, in 1954. 

A couple of years before they got married (I think they had just about started "dating"), my mum was a teacher in a small countryside school, for a small number of pupils of varying age. There weren't many books for the youngest, and my mum then made some of her own (with her own illustrations). One of them is about a young troll getting a lift by an old car called Patrick (with a tendency to sometimes stop "for no apparent reason").



I've used some of these photos before, in older Sepia posts:


Linking to Sepia Saturday 782




2 comments:

  1. How glad I was to see you also went with old cars (is this a Sepia Saturday post?) Well, I loved the story with Patrick the car. And wonder if your parents named their other cars. I have named most of mine.

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  2. Patrick is definitely of pre-WW2 design. If it was still around in 1954, it must have been at least 20 years old. Speaking of product quality! And I admire your mother for making school books for her pupils!

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