SSgt Gene Gausman, U.S. Marine Corps (1953-1963)

The favorite car that I owned in the Marine Corps was a 1957 Mercury 4-door hardtop that I bought in November of 1959 after returning from a tour in the Far East. I owned it for about nine years, and even after I left the Corps, I courted my wife and got married in that car. Together, that car and I traveled through nearly half of the U.S., and I towed a boat through probably 20 states.

Back to the Marine Corps. The car was a dark green metallic with a white top and gold anodized aluminum panels in the fins above the rear quarter panels. I was to find out later that it was apparently a unique combination. I had owned it for over a year and had never seen another exactly like it until one evening when I pulled into the parking lot at the Staff NCO Club at MCAS Cherry Point. A Master Sergeant yelled across the parking lot, “Man, am I glad to see you!” He owned an exact carbon copy, and as it happened, he moonlighted at a part-time job in Havelock, NC. As a young, single man, I frequently visited the local watering holes.

The Master Sergeant would take off in his Merc to go to his part-time job, while his wife might get into their other car and go grocery shopping or be out on some other errand. When she would see my Mercury parked in front of a local tavern, she would assume the worst without checking the license plate. The poor Master Sergeant was catching all kinds of grief, yet he was totally innocent.

Also at Cherry Point, my best buddy in the Corps, Dick, lived in a trailer park with his wife, Jan, and their two-year-old son Clifford. When Jan was about seven months pregnant with their daughter, Dick had to go TAD to Norfolk, Virginia for a month or six weeks. While he was gone, Jan would occasionally call me for help around their trailer.

When Dick got back from Norfolk, a neighbor took him aside and said he thought he ought to tell him about a fellow who occasionally came and went from his trailer. Dick asked, “Did he drive a green Mercury?”

The neighbor replied, “Well, yes.” Dick proceeded to inform him that that green Mercury had as much right to be parked in front of his trailer as his own car did.

That old Merc did like to run, too. There was a time I went from Cherry Point TAD to an Army base on the outskirts of Albuquerque, New Mexico. As I approached Tucumcari from the east on good old Route 66, the New Mexico State Police clocked me at 87 mph in a 70 mph zone. Anyone who’s driven that area knows that feeling—there was a butte that looked about 20 miles away, and I’d been driving for an hour, and it hadn’t moved!

Two New Mexico State Troopers were at the top of a hill, one operating a radar set and the other in a catch car. The trooper in the catch car had gone behind a pile of rocks to answer nature’s call when I passed, so the other trooper scrambled him to give chase. He had to interrupt his business and chase me down. By the time he stopped me, he just didn’t have his heart in his work. He said, “Dang, when you start going over ten mph over the limit, they sock it to you sometimes. I’ll just make the ticket for 80 in a 70 zone.” I didn’t argue.

One Saturday while in Albuquerque, several of us went to the top of Sandia Peak. It was a beautiful spring day, with downtown temperatures around 70 degrees and sunny skies. Halfway up Sandia Peak, we ran into a snowstorm. At the top, it was snowy and flurrying. (See picture.) Going back down, we drove through the storm again, only to return to 70-degree sunshine back in downtown Albuquerque.

That Merc had a huge trunk compared to today’s cars. You could fit a standard 4×8 sheet of plywood with only about a foot sticking out. Shortly before leaving the Corps, I was stationed at MCAS Beaufort, South Carolina. I stopped at a lumber yard one day to pick up a couple of sheets of plywood for a project in the base hobby shop. After paying, the clerk asked if I had a pickup truck to haul the sheets. I said, “Naw, I’ll throw them into the trunk of my car.” He had to come out and see it for himself.

I met my wife and we began dating shortly after I left the Corps, and I drove that old Mercury the entire 20 months we dated before getting married. Even after we had a newer car for the family, I continued to drive the Mercury to work for several years until I eventually needed a pickup truck. I sold the Merc to a teenager as his first car, and I lost track of it after that.

My wife and I celebrate 59 years of marriage this month, and we still occasionally make fond comments about that old green Mercury and the memories we made with it.

Read the Military Memories of our Runner-Ups.