Dad's first car was a Nash Rambler Station Wagon

 

This photo is NOT of Dad's car; it is a photo I found on the web and is as close as I could find to match what I can remember of those early years. The color is (likely) different but the luggage rack, trim, and shape are pretty much the same. Dad's car had a manual column-shift (AKA 3 on tree) transmission instead of an automatic. Dad's car was probably a lightly used 1956 but the vintage could have been 1955 - 1956; we moved to the suburbs around May / June of 1956.  My older brother had gone to kindergarten in Chicago but Mom was insistent that her three kids (and a fourth on the way) would not be raised and schooled in the city.

For our few years in Chicago's Hillbilly Haven (actual moniker used by the Chicago media) Dad either walked the distance to Bell & Howell in Lincolnwood or he and Mom would empty their respective pockets / purses to scrape together enough "bus money" for him to take public transit during cold and / or rainy weather.  I recall one conversation when Dad wanted to take the bus and Mom said there would not be enough money left for her to buy milk for the kids. Times were tight back then; if there were any public assistance programs available for low income families they didn't know about them.  My folks skimped and saved and made due, but I tell ya that, even as a toddler, I could feel their anxiety; it was palpable.

They managed to bank enough money for down-payments on the car and a suburban Eisenhower era ranch home (the first experience Mom and Dad had on applying for credit).  

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Mom and Dad

😎

I promised you both that I would not forget

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/Z@X