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Location: The Mile High City | I finally found an image of the Eastons - although not with the De Soto - still trying on that one. This is from the July 15, 1964 edition of the Denver Post. Marion Easton is behind the wheel of the Paige towing her husband Orville's fire engine! In this image, Marion would have been about 40 years old and Orville would have a month shy of 46 years old. He purchased the De Soto when he was almost 40 years old.
I knew the Eastons some twenty years later. They had a cabin in Grand Lake just two doors away from Mom and Dad's cabin. One of Orville's good friends was John W. Smith, who's grandson is one of my best friends.
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Location: The Mile High City | Here was a fun little project:
1) I bought a 1958 De Soto ownership certificate on eBay. It looked like it was in pretty good shape and it came with a Macmillan 3-year warranty on all lubricated parts - never heard of it, but it came as part of the deal.
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Location: The Mile High City | 2) I scanned both sides of each document and electronically removed all of the writing and typing. I placed the edited scans in a word document so I could print each of them double sided and get a fair to decent replica of each document in a blank form.
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Location: The Mile High City | 3) I know Orville Easton was the original owner. I was able to find his old address on-line and combine that information with the build sheet information I received from Chrysler Historical. I also found the address for the original selling dealership, Shane Motor Co. in Denver. With all that, I was able to put it in the typewriter and fill out the blanks in some semblance of what Orville may have originally had in his desk or the glove box at one time! I had no idea what date the car was sold, so I chose August 19, 1958 - Orville's 40th birthday! Ivan Richard Calvin Jones, the second owner, was kind enough to validate the warranty. 
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Location: The Mile High City | 4) now I have a fun little glove box piece 
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Location: The Mile High City | Interestingly, Orville and Marion's old address is no longer in Littleton - it is now in Centennial! The house is still there and was recently sold.
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Easton House.jpg (104KB - 250 downloads)
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Expert
Posts: 1287
| Mike --
Very interesting.
The first owner of the Big-Tailed Beast was a rancher by the name of Frank Collard who lived in Como, Colorado. He traded a '54 Chrysler for the car and paid the difference in cash after he made a few bucks at the Grand National in February,1960. He saw it on the showroom floor at Bill Goodro Chrysler-Plymouth on Colfax, plunked 500 bucks on the table and said he'd be back in a couple of weeks with the rest to take delivery. His nephew, Dave Collard, inherited it and sold it to me. With Frank being a rancher, and ranching up there in Park County being a 24/7 operation, I initially thought the car probably never left the state, but I was mistaken as I recently met a gentleman who knew them both and he informed me that Frank did take the car as far away as Wheatland, Wyoming (a few miles east of Cheyenne) to visit his brother a few times. Since it had only 43000-odd on the clock when I got it, he must not have gone very often.
Ol' Moby Dick II was initially purchased in Helena, Montana, by Max Wellton Brays and his wife, R. Bonnie. Max was the son of Cornelius ("Cornie") Brays who was one of the some 50 millionaires who made their fortunes in Helena's "Last Chance Gulch" in the 1880s. Max was born in 1886 and served a volunteer ambulance driver in France in WW I with songwriter Cole Porter, and after the war bought the Early Dew Ranch in Falls, Montana, where he pioneered the raising of Llamas, Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos (because of the similarity of the climate there and Peru and Chile. He married Bonnie (his third wife) in 1957 and bought her the "C" as a wedding present. After Max passed away in 1958, Bonnie sold the car and moved to Florida. I bought it from Jim Black who acquired it from the man to whom Bonnie sold it.
While I did visit Jim Black and Dave Collard, the residences of the other "first" owners are very isolated -- Frank Collard's ranch house is located just about a mile from the mail box, but there is talk of making the Early Dew Ranch in Falls a national registered landmark.
Joe |
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Location: The Mile High City | Very nice, Joe! Cars are nuttin' without people. I like hearing the human history associated with our cars - that's what makes 'em great. I imagine there are quite a few cars out there where the human trail is lost in the not-too-distant past. We are lucky! Finding images of the old owners has been quite a challenge! |
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Location: Parts Unknown | Mikey,
Were you ever able to ask anyone why he chose a Firedome and why red ? I often
wonder about these things and why people bought what they did. Was it simply "what
they could afford ?", or was it more a statement of personality of the buyer ?
Another question, .... why did people hang on to these cars when they were in the
"out of fashion" phase ?
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Expert
Posts: 1287
| Lads --
The pyschology of merchandising is interesting and it is an art indeed. Tremendous effort goes into determining what will strike the potential buyer's fancy and some trends vary from era to era while others change almost daily. For example, up until the mid '50s, reliability was an important consideration for a buyer, but with the more affluent society of the late '50s and early '60s, styling became a selling point. When the Baby Boomers came into the market in the mid 1960s, muscle and pony cars were the rage, but the gas and insurance crisis of the '70s ended that suddenly. When women began entering into the workforce small, easily-operated, and economical cars became popular. And so on.
Within those parameters, generally John (or Joan) Q. Public shopped for a car that appealled to them and was within their budget. Generally, colors were secondary except to a few aficienados who went after a specific model and style to actually make a statement. As in the case of my current Big-Tailed Beast, Frank Collard saw it in the showroom window and bought it whereas when I special-ordered my '65 Sport Fury 2-dr h/t, I wanted the 426-S (and special suspension and brake package), 4-speed, power brakes, tinted glass, no radio, and precious little else. I was struck by the Medium Red Metallic vert in the dealer's brochure, so it had to be red (chick bait). Of course, tradition plays its part in colors as well as "All Corvettes are red; the rest are just mistakes," the British racing greens, the silver Porches, the red Frerraris, etc.
Joe
Edited by Sonoramic60 2016-07-02 10:23 PM
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Location: Parts Unknown | Back in the FL era, many cars were special ordered to the specs of the buyer, who
then waited for their car to be built and delivered. Today, that is a tall order and
pretty uncommon. Most are ordered as dealer stock by the dealer, with options and
equipment put on them based on what their buyer knows to sell well. This was the
case in the 50's too, but many were special ordered back then as well.
I am always fascinated by the backstory on unusual cars, be they convertibles or
strippers or go-fast mobiles .... who checked the build boxes to build THAT car and
why did they check those boxes and not others ???
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Expert
Posts: 1287
| Yup, things were more interesting then as dealers would more readily work with customers on special orders for cars. We in the hot rod set didn't want power steering even with those big, and heavy, old MoPar B-Series engines up front because it robbed a few horses from going to the rear wheels. Similarly, A/C definitely was a no go even in the high 90 summer temperatures in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, so my first '60 ram Fury, my '65 Sport Fury, and my '67 R/T (375HP/440CID) did not have P/S or A/ C. Not having options like that definitely was no big deal then, but can you imagine trying negotiate similar equipment (or deletion of equipment) on the cookie cutter cars nowadays?
I personally can't really address situations other than muscle-type cars, but I do know there were even "Special" special orders at the time of the Forward Look cars -- the famous "999" code. Use of that code got "Uncle Tom" McCahill his 300F with the New Yorker trunk lid without the "bird bath" or "toilet seat" continental kit and someone else the sole 300F in "Moonstone Blue" (I think; some similar blue, anyway -- that car still exists). In addition, sometimes there were even dealers who provided special MoPar parts such as fitting single 4V carbed '59 361 "Golden Commando 395" mills with '58 2X4V carbs and air cleaners (the NHRA didn't buy that) or sold off stocks of those old wire wheels on '58 and later cars.
As I said, things were more interesting back then.
Joe |
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Location: Parts Unknown | Like I said, that backstory is often every bit as interesting as the unusual car. In
the past few years it has occurred to me that my interest in finned cars comes from
a desire to really get my head into a space that existed when I was a kid. It's a
subtle concept of putting the cars into their original context and paradigm, as opposed
to the rewritten history most people today see them through .... sort of an American
Graffiti, juvenile point of view of hamburger stands, sock hops, and rock-n-roll, as
opposed to the reality of who was really buying these cars, their lives, their careers,
their tastes and choices in a world so different than today. |
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Location: The Mile High City | My understanding from Mr. Easton's son is that his dad wanted a '58 De Soto convertible and had two choices at Shane Motors - a black Fireflite convertible or this red Firedome. According to the son, Mr. Easton was a firefighter through-and-through - it had to be the red and white car. To this day, all the docks around Mr. Easton's cabin are lined with spent fire hose from the Littleton Fire Department. Mr. Easton's brother was the first Fire Chief in Littleton. It must have run in their blood.
I don't think this car was any type of special order car. From what I have heard, it was just a car Easton picked out on the lot. Denver was just a cow town back then (my how times have changed), and I can't imagine that there was a plethora of De Soto convertibles to choose from.
If you allocated the 1,075 long wheel base De Soto convertibles built in 1958 evenly among the 48 states, there would be about 20 cars per state. I imagine places like California, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida got a bunch more than places like Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Montana, and Nevada. How many came to Colorado, ten? Denver: six or seven? Three Firedomes? Two Fireflites? Maybe a single Adventurer? For guesswork, it is probably not too far off. |
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Location: Parts Unknown | I wonder if the "Fire" in "Fireflite/dome/sweep" held special amusement for
Mister Easton ? |
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Location: North Australia | This is an interesting thread.
I don't have any connection to the USA (or forward look cars), I am an Aussie but I ended up with a (The!) 60 Imperial after looking for 7 years.
No 1 reason I wanted a 60 Crown 2drht, was I saw one for sale in Australia, and decided it was an exceptional car. No Imperials were ever imported to Aus bu Chrysler that I know of.
The more I looked and researched this model car the more I wanted one. I found my car in San Fran, I bought it off the original owner.
With the car came with lots of documentation of maintenance, and the original owners manual and all the dealership paperwork. When the owner, (Kenney Johansen) took me and my mate for a test drive (in Pacifica in 09), he told us a few story's about the car and himself, and when we got back to his house he showed me a small black and white pic of his deceased wife with the car on the day they got it. Kenney is gone now too, he died last year.
Fortunately Kenney Kids are still going and I really hope I can one day get a couple of pics of this car back in the day. I have learned a lot about the car from his eldest daughter Janice.
For some reason the history of this car is important to me, I often think of the car as Kenneys car.
I get a lot of satisfaction recalling the story of the car to anyone who asks!
Now I also love all the FL Mopars and looking and posting on this site. I read almost everything.
I must be a sentimental old fool before my time. (Or weird?)
Steve.
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Location: Parts Unknown | I am with you on that history. I am missing a couple links in the history
of my FL cars, and it drives me nuts.
I am stumped by what the corporation did with my car from Jan. 1958 to
some time in 1960, when the first non-corp owner bought it. It had had
some major collision and rust work done prior to 1960. From there, I know
it lived a normal daily driver life until 1968, when it was put in the garage
and didn't move again until 1983. It then entered the old car hobby.
The Plaza sold new in ABQ and lived its life between there, LA, and Arizona,
being left for dead there in 1964 with a smashed-out windshield. I have
tried unsuccessfully to contact the original owner, one Barbara Parrish.
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Expert
Posts: 1287
| Lads --
I couldn't stood it no longer so I gotta fess up that I wuz funnin' ya about my 300C.
Regarding Ol'MD2, I just want to quote an old Scottish song: "Maxwellton's braes are bonnie, where early fa's the dew. . . ."
Actually, the real story is not very interesting at all. The car was built on January 19, 1957, and shipped from Detroit to Northwest Motors, Inc. , 516 Fuller Ave, Helena, MT, the following day, January 20, 1957. The gentleman who sold it to me is a lifelong resident of Helena and he remembers the car being new and driven on the streets there by the girlfriend of the owner of Northwest Motors. On December 8, 1958, it was sold to a Bruce Hamilton who kept it until July 1, 1999 when, he sold it to Jim Black and I bought the car from Jim on September 27, 2006. As I said, Jim has lived in Helena all his life and he first saw it in the dealer's showroom shortly after it arrived in Montana. Like me, Jim was a snot-nosed kid then so he couldn't get into the showroom, but he loved it from Day 1. That is why he kept track of it and was able to get it for himself, since it never really left the town (except for short periods).
In the cases of both the Fury and the "C", both cars had only two private owners, so their histories were easy to track. My Vette, on the other hand, had about six previous owners prior to my acquiring it in 1988, but I was able to track them down to establish ownership, though I was unable to contact the first owner, only to obtain his name.
Also, there is some mystery about the Fury as it is an early car with the early SonoRamic ball-joint carb linkage but not have the removable fender well panels of later ram cars. But though it has the attributes of an early car, it wasn't shipped from St. Louis until October 25, 1959 (to Goodro) and wasn't sold until February 23, 1960, which seems a long time for a high performance car to sit on the lot. In discussions with various Chrysler officials, the late shipment may have been due to two factors: one, that the car was damaged at the factory and not shipped until repaired or, two, that it was a "mule" or production test vehicle for a period and then shipped. The problem of the time between the shipping date (10-25-59) and sales date (02-23-60) may well have been because the car was assigned to a corporation representative during that time (which was a common practice).
Sorry about that first tale about the "C", but I had a moment of weakness and just couldn't resist. However, I now have let you know the real story about it and the rest about the Fury and the Vette is factual.
Joe |
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Location: The Mile High City | Joe! You ol' stinker! I should have known! Born in 1886, got rich in the 1880s when he was 4. Died in '58 at age 72 just as he gave the keys to his third wife!
Reminds me of a tall tale Steve Hobby (a FL forums member) posted years ago. At least you pulled the plug quickly. He did not. |
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Orville and Marion Easton
