Linda and Larry Ewing

1950 88 Deluxe 4-Door Sedan (click on thumbnail for larger image)

Three views of Nellie, the Ewings' name for their 1950 88 4-door sedan. At the Bethel Church show (right photo), Larry Ewing (in cap) reintroduces the car to it's former owner, Jerry Casellini, who had not seen the car in about 25 years.

Larry Ewing writes ...

I took my ‘50 Olds 88 Deluxe 4 door sedan to a car show in Redwood City in October 2007 and I met Roy Yost who recognized the car from ~35 years ago. It seems he was a neighbor of Jerry Casellini who was the owner of the car for about 8 years. I had never met Jerry so I found his number and called his home in Santa Clara. He was very receptive and wanted to see the car. I told him I would take it to the Bethel Church show (Nov. 17, 2007) and he showed up. He was so pleased to see it in such good shape and went on to tell me some stories about the car when he owned it. He was in his 20s and had several cars including a ‘32 Ford, ‘47 Chev, 356 Porsche and a early pickup truck. He was recently married and it was their “good” car which they named Stately as the black exterior and whitewall tires gave it a classy look. When they had their first son he was a few weeks premature and needed constant visits in the hospital. Since they didn’t live near Stanford Hospital where the baby was, Jerry said they lived in the parking lot in the Olds for a while! It was a low mileage car he bought from a Redwood City mailman named Mike Smith. Smith had bought from a co-worker, mailman Mike Ryan. Ryan had bought the car from the estate of the original owner who had passed away. We don’t who the first owner was but many have comfirmed the owner lived near Topaz and Jefferson in Redwood City and had it regularly serviced at Bray Olds since new. It was often seen driven by a white haired elderly lady that may have been a school teacher.

Ryan bought the car around 1972 with ~20K for $200. He owned it for about a year and sold it to Smith for ~$600 and during Smiths short ownership he found ~$800 hidden under the trunk mat. Someone had used it for their bank and it wasn’t Ryan! Around ‘73-’74 with ~24K miles on it Jerry bought the car and owned it until October 1981. He sold it to Phil Moorehead in Santa Clara with ~50k miles. Phil’s timing was bad as the car soon needed an exhaust system, fuel pump, carburetor, tune up, and brakes all in a 10k mile span. When the master cylinder went bad he parked it and a few years went by and he lost interest in fixing it. I came by in July 1987 when it had 61k miles and bought for $750. I rebuilt the master cylinder, installed it on the spot, fired it up and drove it home. It ran terrible until I added some new gas over the 2 years old gas and it smoothed out and began to purr. Not knowing it’s past, Linda and I named her Nellie, like the old CJ-2A WWII Jeep Nellybelle that was driven by Pat Brady, the comic sidekick on "The Roy Rogers Show." Nellie was dirty and needed TLC. We put new wheel cylinders on, changed the tires, oil, filter and cleaned her up and headed for Reno’s Hot August Nights at the end of that same week. It ran great and we had a ball.

We repainted it black lacquer again, reupholstered her and re-chromed most bright work. We have since taken her to Prescott, Reno and Tahoe a number of times, used her for our Tahoe wedding, two other family weddings, a trip to Seattle in 2005, and at least half of the OCA Pacific Southwest Zone and NorCal Olds shows since 1989. She still runs great and smooth and is our “good“ car too.