The Old Reo

The Old Reo was called the Old Reo back then in 1945, so who knows how old the Old Reo was even then.  Over the years that car became for me a sort of mystical and mythical beast—the car I rode in to get from San Diego to Ora, South Carolina.  Some might say we were going in the wrong direction, but who cares.  We went where ever we went in the Old Reo.

Suffering as all kids do from Infantile Amnesia, I have no recollection of the trip; and by the time I started having a memory the Old Reo was defunct.  I remember it only as a car carcass sitting past the barn at Grandma’s place and slowly sinking into the weeds.  It did not decay as most old cars do via rust, but actually rotted since a good portion of its frame and paneling was wood.

 So that’s me in the Old Reo with the old man.  The Old Reo was probably related to the more famous Reo Speedwagon.  Along the hood of the truck—for I think the old Reo was technically a truck—appears in a little inlay the word Delivery.  This is in another picture and I cannot make out the word before Delivery because I am sitting in front of it.  But this suggests the Old Reo was a Delivery Truck.

If this is the case, in all likelihood, the truck probably had only a front seat and a lot of room in the back for other stuff.

So we crossed the County in a Reo Delivery Truck.  And so we were Delivered.